Stories of the Street - eleven

John the writer looks out onto the street and stares into the face of a postal worker named Anna who is quite attractive in a weather-beaten, worldly sort of way. Her dark hair is long and very strong, flowing out from her post-worker’s hat and her full lips have a pout which promises passionate encounters that are more than hinted at by the direct gaze of her very dark brown eyes. She is of Russian origin and still has a sense of émigré in her body language which adds to her general mystique. The fact that she directly returns John’s stare would suggest to anyone looking that they knew each other and were on intimate terms.

But John is staring out into a battle scene which is unfolding in deep space several millennia from today and Anna is immersed in her on-going plans for when she wins the lottery.

Today, her fortune will be kept secret. She will veil it with subtle changes to her life over a period of a year or two. None of her money grabbing relatives and friends will guess that she is really rich and yet her private life will be comfortable and free of the stresses she has faced all her life.

She is selecting the post for the café as she sinks deeper into her reveries for the day.

First, she will mysteriously inherit a dacha just outside Moscow. She can make it look like a modest gain and allow the occasional relative the opportunity to stay in it for free to compensate for the fact that they did not inherit it, themselves.

A post card drops into the vacant flat above the grocer’s shop as her dream continues.

Next, she will pretend to sell her little terraced house and “make a new life for herself” in Italy. In reality, she will just rent it out after doing it up a bit. The last thing she wants to do is let go of even the smallest of her assets. Instead of paying off the mortgage she can use the rental income to pay it off for her. In Italy, she will buy a lovely home in the hills just outside her beloved Florence. She calls the city this but she has only been there once before. Still, she fell in love with it immediately and has wanted to live there ever since.

Her answers are vague when she enters the butcher’s and the two men behind the counter try to chat her up. Stand-off bitch, one of them thinks while the other just dreams of her soft, full lips.

She is thinking that she will also have a very private flat in the city, here, but she will tell no one about it. This will be her secret bolt-hole and when she is not in Italy she will have ‘phones and post redirected so that no-one will ever need to know where she really is.

Another couple of flats are served as she moves on to a favourite topic – who to show favour to and to whom she will choose to offer no help.

She asks herself if she will she help anyone out financially? Well, she has had several different approaches to this. As she wants to keep her riches secret she will need to keep her help secret and keep it to the scale of the changes she is trying to sell to every one. So, through her own generosity, she will discretely help a few good relatives and friends asking them not to let others know about it and hinting that it is from the larger than expected proceeds of the sale of her house. “let it be an interest free load with no pressure to start paying it back.” Will be her approach so that they will not loose face and will feel that although she is being generous she is not awash with money, either and may need it paid back at some point in the future.

By the time she needs to go back to replenish her post sack she has set up a small trust fund for her favourite charities and bought yet another bolt hole; this time in San Francisco, where she has never been but is convinced she will fall in love with once she gets the chance to go there.
Yes, she thinks, ‘Frisco is a good place to be on mild summer evenings.