Free First Avenue by Lowen Clausen Page A

though she would stop. She continued walking. What did they want?
    Sunlight crossed First Avenue at each intersection. The rest of the street stood in shadow. The wind felt cold as it circled around buildings and blew into her face.
    She approached a building with one door and no windows. Big signs advertised girls. “Girls, Girls, Girls,” it said. So that was what the men were looking for. Not me, she wanted to shout.
    She looked ahead for a way to escape and saw instead the sign for Pike Street . There was also a sign protruding from a brick building at the corner that said “Donut Shop.” She forgot the men with watching eyes and the building with “Girls, Girls, Girls.” She walked to the corner and looked sideways into the windows like the men who had watched her. She did not see him.
    Maria walked inside and stopped close to the door. There were only a few customers. He wasn’t there. A man behind the counter with greasy black hair waited impatiently for her to decide what she would do. She walked up to him and ordered a doughnut.
    “What kind?” he asked.
    She looked down at the glass counter smudged with fingerprints. She could hardly see through it. She pointed to a tray of doughnuts that had the least amount of topping. She wondered why he liked this place or why he would want to spend time here.
    “One of those,” she said.
    “Do you want anything to drink?”
    “A carton of milk, please.”
    The man nodded and walked slowly back to a refrigerator behind him. As he opened the refrigerator door, he looked beyond it to the kitchen where the doughnut machine stood and a boy was wiping the side of the stainless steel machine.
    “Use more soap,” he said. “You’re just smearing the grease around.”
    The boy looked up from his work. He had no interest in removing grease. Without speaking he walked over to the sink and turned on the faucet. He stuck his finger into the stream of water and watched the water run down the drain. The man shook his head and closed the refrigerator door.
    “Everybody likes to eat, but nobody likes to work.”
    It was the friendliest thing he had said so far.
    “Seventy-two cents,” he said. “The two cents is for me. The rest is for everybody else.” His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he had not slept for a long time.
    She gave him the correct change and took her doughnut and milk over to a table beside the front window. She saw the man walk back to the kitchen, heard voices, and heard the water running again. She opened the carton of milk and inspected the rim. She had forgotten to ask for a straw. She took a sip of milk and a small bite of the doughnut and looked out the window. A police car passed slowly on the street. There was a man inside, but she could not see his face. Even so her stomach churned. She watched the car pass from sight, then put the doughnut down on the napkin and pressed her fingers to her lips.
    The boy who had been in the kitchen walked to the front door and threw it open. He left without a word, but once outside and beyond the vision of the man behind the counter, he raised his finger in a gesture flung toward her. It was not meant for her, she realized, but toward the doughnut machine or the man who stood at the counter. The man did not move, but his face hardened into an angry mask. Perhaps he had seen the gesture. When she looked toward the street again, she saw that it was not possible.
    An old man came through the door. He bought a cup of coffee at the counter, but his hands shook most of the coffee out of the plastic cup before he reached a table. A woman pushed a shopping cart heaped with bags and boxes past the window where
Maria
sat and parked it at the front door. She plodded wearily inside, and the odor of her body beneath winter clothes followed her.
Maria
would have left if the woman had sat close. However, the woman did not even look at a table. Her dull eyes stared straight ahead, but at nothing. She took her two