A walk, maybe: she seized a hooded sweatshirt from the pegs by the door and slipped her sneakers on.
For all its size and population density, Seattle was a different creature at night than New York City. There, badly planned streets, alleyways, and fire escapes had made a night walk a potentially lethal decision. Here, she could see around herself, and the streets were somewhat empty, even at this peak hour. There was a light mist drizzling through the streetlights as she stretched, and she couldn't help but contrast it to the first snow that would soon be turning New York into a powdered-sugar snowscape. In their own ways, each were equally beautiful, and they were equally treacherous, as well. You slid just as hard on mud as ice. Limbered, she wove her way down the streets, running two blocks south, past the park she could see from her bedroom window. She turned away from it, heading toward the city's heart, and then turned abruptly north. Even at this hour - early for a metropolis like New York - some of the Seattle businesses were closed for the evening. She passed a tableware shop, an Indian bazaar, and a brightly lit coffee shop at a fast jog, then turned inward another street.
A wooden sandwich sign, planted in the center of the sidewalk, gave her pause. "Free Lessons," it read, and Wynn stepped back. The shop to her left was dark, its "Please Call Again, We are Closed" sign neatly centered in the middle of the glass door. The one to her right was lit, and she could hear the soft burble of voices coming from the gap of the blocked-open door. Suddenly hungry for companionship, Wynn stepped toward it, battling the innate shyness that made her want to bolt. It wasn't as if they wanted to eat her brains. Just, she decided, casting a glance at the sign above her head, teach her to...knit...or something. Hah, she couldn't learn that. She was all thumbs!
Two hours later, when the last of the women around her had gone on their way home and the shop's proprietor had run the vacuum and jangled her keys noisily a few times, Wynn was forced to admit that, yes, she could. What was more, it filled her hands and soothed her on a primal level: she clutched the needles in her hands as she maneuvered her way home through the empty night streets. The shopkeeper had sold her a pattern for a scarf, and some claret-colored wool: she would knit the scarf for Evan, for Christmas. It would keep him warm and warm her, too, knowing he would think about her as he tramped around outdoors, overseeing the construction crews. Sliding into her bed, she produced unsteady stitch after unsteady stitch, the fabric becoming more perfect as she instinctively improved. The act of knitting made her eyelids heavy, and she slipped into sleep without a protest.
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The office was deemed ready for the next stage just a week before the Thanksgiving holiday that Wynn had bought plane tickets back to New York for, but it wasn't the last few inspectors that had her on edge as she prowled through the Lucite and blonde wood furnished rooms, her heels' clicks echoing on the hardwood flooring. It was a Tuesday, and, as she verified by lifting the abused and empty foil packet from the inner liner pocket of her purse, her period was late. This wasn't too troublesome in itself - she had had a stressful month - but she still felt some irritation over it. If her luck held as it usually did, she would be menstruating while she visited Evan, and that would never do. On a whim, she phoned the clinic that her insurance provided, spurred by an article she remembered reading in a wedding planning magazine. Slating a gynecological appointment in for the next afternoon, she sighed. At least she'd have plenty of time to work at Evan's growing scarf: between the looming holiday and the way it thinned her flow of job applicants and her anxiety over her upcoming "vacation," she knew she wouldn't sleep right until things were fixed the way she wanted them. And she needed sleep: she seemed always to be tired these days!
"We'll send these samples to the lab, Ms. Winslow," the doctor assured her as she peered over her bent knees at him. "And you said you wanted that prescription? But your period was...hm, it was nearly five weeks ago. Why don't you ask the nurse for a pregnancy test before I prescribe this to you?" he inquired, his eyes bright, even though the bald dome of his head, peeping through the thinning fringe of his brown hair, had blushed to a rather becoming shade of pink.
"I can't be pregnant," Wynn told him, not bothering to correct her name.
"Well, we just like to rule these things out first," he reassured her, standing to leave so she could put her clothes back on. Because she wanted the pills, she sighed and made sure to ask the nurse for the test. "How long will it take before you know?" she asked, curiously.
"Oh, just a few minutes," the nurse said, briskly, ushering her to a tile-lined bathroom and presenting her with a cup, complete with a printed label. "Now, follow the directions on the wall," the nurse instructed,"and pour the urine from the collection cup into the specimen cup. You can leave it in the little drawer beside the toilet," she said. "If we don't call, that means your test was negative, and you can pick your prescription up tomorrow at the pharmacy."
"In that case," Wynn muttered, scanning the directions thumbtacked to the wall across from the facilities,"it was nice not hearing from you."
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