The old story wasn’t working. This one is.
Thursday, 3 AM. The city quiets down, this time of night. Oh, it never wants to, like a child who keeps yawning for five minutes more; but when it just can’t stay awake any longer, it collects itself and settles in for a few hours of fitful street, before rising in dawn’s early light. Maybe the eyes are more red than bright, and the tail’s still ragged in places, but this city needs all the beauty sleep it can get. So when it sleeps, it sleeps deep.
The guy in the alley in front of me was sleeping deep, too. The kind no alarm clock can shift. I wasn’t immediately sure about the cause of death, although I figured the pool of blood underneath him was a clue. It was for sure the cops weren’t treating this as somebody accidentally falling onto a wall.
One of those cops detached herself from the crime scene and strode her way over to where I was standing and scribbling notes. “Oh, it’s you, Joe,” she said. “I don’t suppose you wanna confess now, save us all some time?”
“And a good morning to you too, Sergeant Meyer.” I peered past her, trying to scribble details about the crime scene before this turned into a for-real shoo-off. She nicely gave me a whole thirty seconds before her foot started tapping. “All right, all right. You know how it is. I gotta get it down in my head, make sure it’s fresh. Right.” I looked at her. “So, you’re who I’m interviewing?”
“a few hours of fitful street” – I don’t *think* that’s what you meant?
“but this city needs all the beauty sleep it can get. So when it sleeps, it sleeps deep.” Used the word “sleep” a few too many times in quick succession. Would suggest rewriting the first of these two sentences. Also, maybe replace the period in the middle with a comma, or even a semicolon, as the second is technically a sentence fragment as-is. If a semicolon, perhaps remove the “so”. Also, “this city needs all the beauty sleep it can get” has a bit of a weird clash on a metaphorical level with the fact that it’s fighting sleep a bit further up.
Dunno… “fitful street” vs “busy street”, “quiet street”, “tense street”. If it’s a typo, it’s a subtly clever one.
Agreed, sleep needs a rest after that paragraph.
Mew