At the end of the day, Ayla was feeling thoughtful, so after she closed up the shop, she headed to the cemetery to visit Selim and their baby's grave. She bought a few bright flowers from the florist, who gave them to her for less since they were mostly leftovers at the end of the day. Oddly, she didn't feel the loneliness that usually drove her there. Instead, she just had some thoughts she felt like talking to someone about, and in the absence of any friends, she went to talk to Selim. She sat there, relaxing against the small stone in the poor section of the church's graveyard, tracing the name carved there with her finger as she chatted on idly in Turkish.
When the sun dipped below the river, she headed home to her mean little apartment; just a little place with a Murphy bed and bureau, a bath, toilet and sink behind a partition, and little kitchen area with an icebox and a stove all in one room. It was one of three similar bedsits above a shop on a noisy, poor street, but it was clean and warm and affordable. Ayla made a little pot of soup from some vegetables she had in the pantry, and treated herself by adding milk to make it creamy. That, some toast, and a cup of tea was her dinner, and the most she'd eaten in one sitting all day. Well, things had been worse.
Dinner and washing up completed, Ayla took the two heated kettles from the stove and poured the hot water into the bath, adding enough cold water to make it bearable. It was nice to be able to actually have a bath more than once a week. She washed and scrubbed her fur and even washed her hair. Once clean and brushed, she put on her nightdress and moved the table up against the stove and icebox, making enough room to pull the bed down. She closed the curtains to the solitary window above the kitchen counter and turned off the light, slipping into bed. She wasn't very sleepy, but it's not like she had much else to do tonight. She lay awake, thinking of the handsome officer in the shop today. At least she knew he looked good for whatever function he needed to go to this evening.
Yes, he looked very good.