Flash fiction, tome 1

I hadn't been in the city long. Certainly not long enough to make it mine or allow it to penetrate me the way places sometimes do. I had taken its trains. I always start with that.

So many sights on the train here. The pregnant women left to stand, the businessmen carrying their worry in the same hand as their briefcases - leaving the other hand free for the newspaper, the old women making endless trips somewhere. Wherever do they go these old women? I dream of being able to talk to one of them, just one. She'd have something to tell me about this city I haven't felt yet.

After the trains, I move on to the men. Different physically but all alike too. I've never met a wolf I didn't follow home.

But apparently the sun was in my eyes today. There was a man, I was sure he was a predator, and our eyes met in that big music way. And then he said something I never would've expected, "Filthy American." Perhaps I was. But I was no longer a stranger in the city. An insult is just a welcome of a different kind.