Fish Traps

She stands with her black face some six inches from the moist window-pane wondering if it would ever stop raining. Her clothes barely warding off the cold, she gripped the cold steel of her umbrella and sighs, ten minutes more. She watches the puddles on the street as rain drums on endlessly on her rusting roof top. Gray clouds stretched on for miles. She worries of Marcelino’s fish traps.

On Tuesday afternoons she would watch him on the beach as he gathered the nets from the sea. He is a small man—short and small-boned, but work has sculpted his body- just like hers. His eyes were kind, steady, confident. How she gazed at them the first time he looked at her.

“Here, take these. The nets are heavy today, we’re blessed,” he said as he handed her two fresh tunas by the tail.

“Do you want. . . anything in return?”

“No, for a beautiful lady like you, they’re free.” He smiled and turned back for the shore. He loved him since then.

The rain grew fiercer, the fish traps may not hold. Marcelino could be there at the beach trying to save his catch, or

She closes the window-pane, turns off the lights. It’s ten past nine and it’s running late. She opens her umbrella and steps outside the beating rain. . or he may be at home warmed by his fair-skinned wife.

Shivering, she started to walk through the weeping evening and wet deserted street, wondering who her Marcelino would be for tonight.

Reader-Response theory:

Fish traps suspends some information in the beginning only reavealing it on the latter part of the story. The readers need to fill-in some parts like where the lady was going, or did Marcelino like her in return, and so on. The readers have to finish the whole text to understand the character of the lady in the story.