Not coincidentally

From The Everywhere Girl Diaries – a work of fiction

First week of February, year one

Dear Diary,

This week I’m checking out businesses on Rainbow Rd. Mr. Mallard likes to use the word “visiting” but we all know it’s more than that.

It’s a short little street, but nonetheless home to eight or nine small shops of one kind or another.  They’re somewhat jumbled together – some set back from the street in a lovely little courtyard, others in second story spaces you can only get to by a staircase in the back of the store below.

So far I’ve shopped for French linens (ooh la la), determined the cost of 150 red helium balloons, and feigned interest in baseball cards. I ask a lot of questions and try to make small talk.  I always try to bring up the subject of rainbows, which is fairly easy to do because of the name of the street. When I leave I write down my observations in a little notebook.  Not coincidentally, it has a rainbow (and also a unicorn) on the cover.

I’ve written three of four pages about each place.  It’s all random stuff, but Mr. Mallard says that you never know. So far, Over the Rainbow Balloons has seemed the least interesting. It’s weird since that’s the other rainbow business he had mentioned to me in December. Maybe I’ll go back tomorrow and make sure I didn’t miss anything.