ADULTERERS ANONYMOUS by KATHERINE CARTER Winner, 2010 AAF Greenville Silver ADDY Award Winner, 2010 District Silver ADDY Award
She worked at a small diner in the middle of the town. It was in a quaint building made of very old brick. The bricks were faded, the mortar had cracks in it, and the seams where it had been repaired over the years were visible. It had two large arching windows, smoked glass, and a single, peeling door that faced the street. On the alley side of the building was a metal staircase that climbed the wall to a small apartment. There were always men going up and down the stairs at all hours. Fronting a cobblestone walk, its patio lined with handsome trees and crowded with wrought-iron tables, the diner bespoke a rustic beauty. In front of the dark arching windows, the tables, each with two chairs, were topped with a weave of metal, a pattern 60
of diagonals. The diner was on his way to work, as she moved through the tables like a Spanish and because of this he saw her often. In the dancer. She wore beautiful dresses that she mornings, he would see her out in front of the made more beautiful by wearing, but he always diner straightening the tables for two. Their wondered how she could afford them. dark shapes cast long beautiful shadows across Some days, if he were to pass by the diner the cobblestone walk and up the stacks of aged earlier than usual, he would see her walking brick walls. She looked beautiful in the dawning down the cobblestone with fresh cut flowers in light. He liked the way the sun wrapped around her hands. She cradled them in her arms and her and fell over her as she worked. Beams against her breasts like a baby. In some strange of light played in the leafy trees that lined symbiosis, the flowers seemed to make her more the street and, as she moved through the beautiful, and somehow she seemed to make the flowers more beautiful. The flowers were from a streamlets, she seemed to be dancing. As she went from table to table tucking the chairs shop just up the street. They were picked from in and filling the crystal vases with fresh water the hills and meadows outside of the town. They were all wild flowers with names he didn’t know. and fresh flowers, she moved quickly. In her wake, her dress would follow in centripetal They were never roses or orchids, and this made circles around her body, twisting, and turning, him like her even more.