The Gaslight District, Part 4

He continued looking out his window, down on the dark street below and the rows of brownstones that littered the block. The early-morning dog walkers started to emerge from their houses and sleepily made their way down the long flights of stairs leading to their doors. The street consisted of many of these old brownstone buildings – many of them hundreds of years old – and a single large apartment complex on the end. Each side of the street was lit with gaslights – a dozen on each side, leading all the way up to the other side of the street, to the chestnut tree on the other end. The street sat on a hill, enabling anyone at a high enough altitude and facing the west to look down upon the entire Gaslight District, and, further on in the distance, the rest of Boston.

As the old man stood staring out his window, he heard a sound from the kitchen. It seemed to be a slight rattling noise, although he could not pinpoint the source of it. At first he thought it might be an intruder, but he soon realized that was not the case, as his front door opened into his living room, and he would’ve heard someone enter the front door long before this. As he stepped into his kitchen, he spotted a mouse scurrying across the floor. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped in its tracks, and looked up at the old man, who continued walking into the kitchen. The mouse stood, frozen. Not one step. Not one hesitation. It was not out of fear – in fact, it stood there casually, making a chirping noise with its mouth. Even the mouse knew this man meant no harm.

Then, abruptly, the room went dark. He looked out his window, and noticed that one of the gaslights had gone out. Now all that remained was the moonlight. As his eyes slowly adjusted to the faint lighting in the room, he squinted behind his thick glasses and staggered over to the kitchen table, where he sat down at the rickety old chair near the window. He looked through the aged, scratched window glass and observed the stars fading one by one, and then the first rays of sunshine struggling to penetrate the thick morning fog. As he watched a young city worker trying to fix the broken gaslight outside, he turned his attention back inside, where he noticed his little rodent friend was how sitting on the table next to him. Years ago, he would have chased the little animal away, broom in hand, all around the apartment – as if he was reenacting some lost comic image from an old Charlie Chaplin film. But age had gotten to him – in more ways than one – and now he slowly raised himself from his chair and made his way to the cupboard. He rummaged through the boxes and cans, and victoriously arrived at a box of crackers, which he opened up and brought back to the table. He took one out of the box, breaking a piece of it off and carefully placing it down on the table. The mouse’s first instinct was to snatch it up as quickly as possible with its little paws and run back to its hiding place, but this was a different situation, and it knew this fact very well. It confidently strolled over to the cracker and ate it in that very spot, mere inches from the man’s hand. After it was done, the man broke off another small piece and placed it in the palm of his hand, laying the back side of his hand flat against the table. The mouse hesitated this time, but its little feet began to creep forward, until he was next to – and then in – the palm of his hand. Just then, a loud sound outside made the man jump, and the mouse went scurrying off into a corner. Looking outside the window, he noticed the worker who was fixing the gaslight had dropped his toolbox, which had sent dozens of wrenches and hammers onto the street and scattered across the sidewalk. The old man turned his attention back inside and began to look for the mouse.

The Gaslight District, Part 1
The Gaslight District, Part 2
The Gaslight District, Part 3