On the Move
by Treehouse Editors
Anita Haas
“No problem.” I assured him on the phone. “Stay as long as you need to. Those bastards.”
How was I going to explain this to my wife?
Not two hours later he was at my door.
“Need some cash to pay the driver?” I looked past him for the cab.
“Came on the subway.”
“And your bags? You bringing them later?” I eyed his beloved trumpet case.
He pushed past me into the sitting room where we had jammed together so often over the years; playing music, drinking, smoking, toking, detoxing, retoxing, re-detoxing.
Over.
The years.
He staggered to the couch next to my piano, brushed aside some of my kid’s Legoes, collapsed onto it, and gave the trumpet case an affectionate pat.
“Got all I need right here.”
Anita Haas is a Canadian writer based in Madrid, Spain. She has published books on film, as well as two novelettes, a short story collection, and articles, poems and fiction in both English and Spanish. In 2015, three of her flash stories won prizes. Her free time is spent listening to flamenco with her husband and two cats.