Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    At the Soups
    Unavailable
    At the Soups
    Unavailable
    At the Soups
    Ebook22 pages17 minutes

    At the Soups

    By Rowan Wolf

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    She eased the door shut behind her. Even so, pulling it closed slowly by inches, the hinges squeaked a little and on settling the latch bolt clicked loudly into place, like a soft gunshot. At least to her ears.

    She stood there for a moment, very still, her ear to the cold, blue plywood door and listened for any sound from within the apartment. Nothing. It was perfectly silent. She turned then, hitched her tote bag higher up on her shoulder and set out down the landing, careful to step lightly. The sun had yet to rise, but the sky had begun to blush in the east; she could make out the contours of the eastern part of the city. The morning air was cool with traces of gasoline still lingering from yesterday’s smoggy triple-digit heat, as if giving fair warning that today will not be much better.

    She glanced at her watch. She had forty-five minutes to get to the corner of Santa Monica and Vermont where Kathy’s friend would be waiting in a blue Toyota pickup.

    She descended the landing stairs one quiet step at a time, but once on solid ground she abandoned caution, hurried across the parking lot, turned right onto the sidewalk and now began walking in earnest.

    The blue pickup was there. As she walked toward it she realized she didn’t know his name. Kathy had never mentioned it; or if she had, it hadn’t registered. But this was the right guy, it had to be. His was the only blue Toyota pickup around, his was the only blue anything around. And hers were the only red sweater and black tote bag—those had been Kathy’s instructions.

    His engine was running. She could see the mist of exhaust, orange in the street light, like some strange, round-legged animal bleeding into the air.

    No, there was no mistaking either one of them. He watched her approach and as she rounded the hood for the passenger side he leaned over and opened the door and she climbed in. The car was smaller on the inside than she had expected. The door wouldn’t shut. She tried again.

    “You have to slam it,” he said.

    “Oh,” she said.

    She let it out a bit farther and pulled hard. It sprang shut with a squeal as if hurt and for just a shadow of a moment she feared she might have woken him up.

    “That’s the way,” said Kathy’s friend, as he put the truck in gear.

    She had no idea what Kathy might have told this guy, but she was grateful for whatever it was. He did not try to make her talk. He drove, eyes straight ahead, Santa Monica Boulevard east and then onto the Hollywood Freeway south. Some traffic already, but nothing to speak of. She leaned back against the head rest and tried to feel that immense relief she had planned to feel just about now, but it wouldn’t show.

    She was finally sitting in a car going south toward downtown and away from him but she did not feel like an eagle just let free, not like a prisoner just escaped, not like that suddenly grownup woman she was supposed to feel like now. She closed her eyes and heard the engine hum and both heard and felt the little jolts of the wheels hitting the joints between the concrete freeway slabs—tedan, tedan, tedan, tedan (as if on a train)—but all she felt was the motion: tedan, tedan, tedan—and she remained her sleeping daddy’s little girl. Kathy’s friend remained silent. Eyes on the road. Driving.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRowan Wolf
    Release dateFeb 6, 2018
    ISBN9781370739547
    Unavailable
    At the Soups
    Author

    Rowan Wolf

    I was born Ulf Ronnquist one snowy night in late October, in one of those northern Swedish towns that are little more than a clearing in the forest. Many years later, once I begun to publish my stories, I was casting about for a good pen name. This is how I came up with Rowan Wolf: Ulf is actually an old spelling of the Swedish word Ulv, which in turn is an old word for Varg which means Wolf. Ronnquist, in turn, means "branch of Rowan Tree." So I flipped them and got Rowan Wolf, a name I then used for many years. Once I got my U.S. Citizenship (2002) I decided to use my legal U.S. name, Ulf Wolf, as my pen name as well. Recently, however, I moved back to Rowan Wolf, my initial love as names go, to go along with my site: RowanSongs.com. I have told lies all my life. Initially just to vent my overactive imagination, or to profess innocence (while guilty). A little later I channeled this creative drive into stories. Initially, I wrote them in Swedish, but for the last thirty or so years in English. To date I have written seven novels, five novellas and forty odd short stories, along with songs and poems.

    Related to At the Soups

    Related ebooks

    Psychological Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Freedom

      Aug 6, 2020

      Freedom
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Book

      Oct 30, 2019

      The Book
      20 min read

    • Article

      A Double Life

      Dec 7, 2020

      Sadie is in the kitchen, already dressed in school uniform, fastening the clips on the violin she chose for her most recent birthday, when Gabriela heads downstairs the following morning. Seven years old: how the hell did that happen? Briefly, she wo

      6 min read

    • Article

      Begin Again

      Jun 14, 2022

      My grandfather came to live with me. There was nowhere else for him to go. What had happened to all his children? Death, decay, exile—I hardly know. My own parents died of pain. But I must not be too gloomy, at the beginning, or you will leave me, an

      6 min read

    • Article

      Push

      Aug 4, 2022

      Push
      5 min read

    • Article

      Soul On Sale

      Aug 10, 2022

      I was waiting for the call at the telephone booth. I’d been waiting for fourteen or seventeen minutes and finally, I decided to leave. It was pointless. I only had a 20-dollar bill on me and no coins for the slot. Hard rain was coming, some type of s

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE

      Mar 1, 2023

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE

      Mar 1, 2023

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Woman In The Bay Window

      Feb 4, 2021

      The Woman In The Bay Window
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      A Gentle STIRRING

      Mar 13, 2024

      A Gentle STIRRING
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Way Things TURN OUT

      Jun 3, 2020

      The Way Things TURN OUT
      7 min read

    • Article

      Mount The Sky To

      Jan 1, 2019

      Mount The Sky To
      18 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Best

      Oct 29, 2022

      Best Of The Best
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Touch Of Summer

      Sep 7, 2020

      Leila had found a place she could go. A sandy cove, a short cycle ride from her flat, where she could spread out her beach towel, put on her headphones and watch the sea lap up onto the shore. She wasn’t sure what kept this spot so quiet, when the ot

      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Noah Warren

      Dec 1, 2020

      Some waves came up overnight, though in Norderney, there was no weather.At the commercial wharf, a thin stream of white exhaust rose vertically from the ferry.The first service would depart soon. The puddles lay dark in the stone streetsand in the ga

      3 min read

    • Article

      All The Different SHADES

      Jul 6, 2022

      All The Different SHADES
      6 min read

    • Article

      Lies I Tell My Father

      Feb 10, 2024

      “How’s your job at the newspaper?” my father asks me. He is sitting on a couch, a plush throw blanket spread across his legs. “The newspaper’s fine,” I lie. I lie because it is simple. I lie because it is quick. I lie because it is easier than trying

      10 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Music Of Angels

      Sep 1, 2018

      The Music Of Angels
      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘Sing to It’: Featured Fiction from Amy Hempel

      Mar 25, 2019

      If she was home at night in her husband’s bed, did he care what she did with her days? The post ‘Sing to It’: Featured Fiction from Amy Hempel appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Stay

      Dec 15, 2018

      Pushed from its hidden end, a sofa drifted into the parking lot under my window. The pushes became feeble thrusts and then short convulsions, until, with a final spasm, the couch nudged one of the abandoned supermarket carts by the trash containers a

      17 min read

    • Article

      Writer’s Rock

      Mar 16, 2020

      Writer’s Rock
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ice cream DREAMS

      Jul 28, 2021

      Ice cream DREAMS
      8 min read

    • Article

      From ESTRANGEMENT

      May 1, 2022

      From ESTRANGEMENT
      4 min read

    • Article

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    Reviews for At the Soups

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words