Red

Hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the first thing you notice about Amy is her haircolor.  She's a woman with short, strawberry blonde hair with a heavy red sparkle to it.  Years in the sun with freckles unusual for a sixty something widow speak volumes about her former lifestyle.  Her husband was twenty years her senior, and passed some two decades ago.  She has to work.

Each morning she scurries to her first floor office hoping no one will see her.  Yet the door to her office is always open. She keeps her distance and stays in her office most of the day.  The only escape is outside the slider to smoke yet another cigarette.  More crows feet await her. Its two degrees outside.  She is covered with a chocolate buckskin coat lines with cream-colored fleece. Impeccably dressed. Frightened.  Afraid she will be fired.  Again.

One can't imagine the life this woman led.  Anything but privileged. She is well educated. From an Irish Catholic family.  The school of hard knocks and a lifetime with her anthropologist husband of twenty-five years complete her.  Rumors abound about her though few will tell the whole story about why the former owners fired her. Many are conflicted about her.  She is more like a clerk, typing problems with resident's apartments and handing them to the maintenance man.  She isn't effective and people are growing weary about her.

Shere comes to see her.  Her apartment has been broken into again. The second time, the things that were stolen were returned.  The same is true of her Chevy Impala.  Coins left in the cup holder disappeared.  She called the complex owner.  This time she didn't accuse anyone in the building.  Yet.  She doesn't accuse Amy.  Not this time.  Not yet. 

Both distant with family, especially her three children Liz has become more and more paranoid.  Amy won't do a thing about her.  She never does.  But today, the owners are more than happy to release her from the lease.  Everyone wants her gone.  They want the accusations to stop.

Liz scurries back to her office.  She sees Shere ambling down the hall.