Section 1 is a few posts below. Thank you for the feedback so far:
After her classes were over, Dorothy walked uptown to the Royal Tea House, where she began the six hour shift that would take her to the end of the day. As she had suspected, as the day grew later the wind picked up and clouds rolled in. The Tea House was quiet, the crowd of remote workers and nervous Tinder dates turning to an older clientele unwinding after a show at the Met. The calm broke when an older black man barreled into the door, carrying an old banker’s box seemingly about to explode. He stumbled around the shop until he found a seat, balancing the box on his knees as he looked through its materials due to a lack of available tables. At first, Dorothy felt sorry for the man’s poor luck. If he had arrived forty minutes earlier, the night’s music would still be playing and at least one table would be open. Then she noticed that the man didn’t have any rain gear and reassessed the situation. Elder or no, this man wasn’t unlucky, he was unprepared. And then the thunder cracked, and the rain poured.
Dorothy rang up another customer, but then heard a yelp, turning to see the man lift the heavy box clear over his head to protect from liquid flying from the cup of a woman who had tripped nearby. The steaming hot liquid hit the man square in the face, but he managed, somehow, to refrain from either yelling or dropping his materials. Dorothy grabbed a cup of ice and walked over to the man.
“Are you okay, sir?” She asked.
“Yes ma’am. Thank you so much for checking in.” The man smiled at Dorothy, the only evidence of the incident being a stain on his shirt which somehow seemed appropriate for the faded tweed jacket he was wearing, like something that an actor would wear while playing a college professor, albeit significantly more lived in. The smile struck Dorothy as somehow akin to that of the man whose umbrella she now kept in her locker, the kind of knowing smile that suggested that its wearer really did know something you didn’t, although Dorothy doubted that the man could really know that much given his lack of umbrella.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?” Dorothy asked.
“Unless you can send the rain away, probably not. Admittedly, if you could do that, we’d probably have all sorts of other problems. Thank you anyway, miss.”
Dorothy went to turn away, but as she did so she saw what was in the man’s boxes. Papers and documents in careful, scrolling script on linen paper. Dorothy had only seen something like it once, when she was researching the William Wallace papers at the main branch of the Library for her Sophomore Legal history class. Then, she needed gloves to handle the documents, and she could only view them in a climate and light controlled area. This man had centuries old, irreplaceable documents in a busted cardboard box.
“What are those papers?” She asked.
The man stopped, seemingly lost in thought, and then replied. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt to tell you. These are correspondences and contracts providing proof of a sale of a land parcel and home in Southampton, about 15 years after your Revolutionary War. They were lost, or stolen, or somesuch, but my client is in a dispute over ownership of said land and needed them to prove his claim. I’m not one to brag, but finding them was no small thing. Not that it matters much now. Even walking three blocks, This rain will damage them far too much to be of use.”
Dorothy started doing numbers in her head. She was just a student at John Jay College, but her law and history classes were more than enough for her to see that any case requiring centuries old contracts to settle could be worth millions, particularly if they were Hamptons contracts. Moreover, the papers were a part of history, and they were beautiful. She couldn’t let them be damaged if she could do something about it.
“Sir, if you’re willing to wait until I get off shift, I might be able to help. I actually brought two umbrellas with me to work today.”
After her classes were over, Dorothy walked uptown to the Royal Tea House, where she began the six hour shift that would take her to the end of the day. As she had suspected, as the day grew later the wind picked up and clouds rolled in. The Tea House was quiet, the crowd of remote workers and nervous Tinder dates turning to an older clientele unwinding after a show at the Met. The calm broke when an older black man barreled into the door, carrying an old banker’s box seemingly about to explode. He stumbled around the shop until he found a seat, balancing the box on his knees as he looked through its materials due to a lack of available tables. At first, Dorothy felt sorry for the man’s poor luck. If he had arrived forty minutes earlier, the night’s music would still be playing and at least one table would be open. Then she noticed that the man didn’t have any rain gear and reassessed the situation. Elder or no, this man wasn’t unlucky, he was unprepared. And then the thunder cracked, and the rain poured.
Dorothy rang up another customer, but then heard a yelp, turning to see the man lift the heavy box clear over his head to protect from liquid flying from the cup of a woman who had tripped nearby. The steaming hot liquid hit the man square in the face, but he managed, somehow, to refrain from either yelling or dropping his materials. Dorothy grabbed a cup of ice and walked over to the man.
“Are you okay, sir?” She asked.
“Yes ma’am. Thank you so much for checking in.” The man smiled at Dorothy, the only evidence of the incident being a stain on his shirt which somehow seemed appropriate for the faded tweed jacket he was wearing, like something that an actor would wear while playing a college professor, albeit significantly more lived in. The smile struck Dorothy as somehow akin to that of the man whose umbrella she now kept in her locker, the kind of knowing smile that suggested that its wearer really did know something you didn’t, although Dorothy doubted that the man could really know that much given his lack of umbrella.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?” Dorothy asked.
“Unless you can send the rain away, probably not. Admittedly, if you could do that, we’d probably have all sorts of other problems. Thank you anyway, miss.”
Dorothy went to turn away, but as she did so she saw what was in the man’s boxes. Papers and documents in careful, scrolling script on linen paper. Dorothy had only seen something like it once, when she was researching the William Wallace papers at the main branch of the Library for her Sophomore Legal history class. Then, she needed gloves to handle the documents, and she could only view them in a climate and light controlled area. This man had centuries old, irreplaceable documents in a busted cardboard box.
“What are those papers?” She asked.
The man stopped, seemingly lost in thought, and then replied. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt to tell you. These are correspondences and contracts providing proof of a sale of a land parcel and home in Southampton, about 15 years after your Revolutionary War. They were lost, or stolen, or somesuch, but my client is in a dispute over ownership of said land and needed them to prove his claim. I’m not one to brag, but finding them was no small thing. Not that it matters much now. Even walking three blocks, This rain will damage them far too much to be of use.”
Dorothy started doing numbers in her head. She was just a student at John Jay College, but her law and history classes were more than enough for her to see that any case requiring centuries old contracts to settle could be worth millions, particularly if they were Hamptons contracts. Moreover, the papers were a part of history, and they were beautiful. She couldn’t let them be damaged if she could do something about it.
“Sir, if you’re willing to wait until I get off shift, I might be able to help. I actually brought two umbrellas with me to work today.”
