From Those We Love the Most

Part 2


She walked with heavy and labored steps back to her apartment, which was more or less a duplex. Her companions were Bohemian artsy types who she did not approve of in manner or in smells. But then she thought about sorrowful Jesus on the cross who would have said "for shame, Hazel!" and she thought about Sister Oksana who primarily communicated in grunts. 
She wrestled her key out from the lining of her coat, where she kept it like a trade secret. Inside, she would take an Advil and wait for her students, with her leg crossed her lap, wait for them to stop by for the weekly prayer and piano lessons that united them all. 
"Damn that ass is fine!" someone screamed from the inside of a car passing by. Are they all just passing by? Well, Glory be.
Her students were sometimes the highlights of her Thursdays or her Fridays. And sometimes she couldn't stand them. Currently, she was mentoring Charlie and Veronica. The sweet Perkins boy and the aloof Dahlstrom girl. They warmed her heart to some unknowable degree. Not that it needed to be warmed anymore, mind you. It was like chocolate on the pavement of the hottest day of summer. 
She cleared the dust off her piano keys (how had it gathered so shortly?). The dust was enough that you could easily leave fingerprints and trails swirled into it. The coating would have choked her pets, or infants, had she any of either. The sheet music to some Webber musical sat above, along with your trademark spirituals and token standards. Bach, the New York Times' greatest composer of all time, was not too far out of reach, either. 
Sister Hazel then chose to wait. Being warm outside, she needed not change out of her typical outfit. To see her as a nun was not a hard thing;  she wore modest clothes and the headwrap. She had a tendency to wave towards white. If she had her color scheme theorized, she would have been called a spring. 


Outside her door, Charlie was approaching. He had been named Charles for a succession of reasons, but the most pressing was his mother's childhood Roald Dahl obsession. She did not care for his later works.