I Write: Virtual Trip

The assignment for Writing Mysteries and Thrillers this week was to take your reader on a virtual trip to a place that is not your hometown. It could be somewhere you've been, or somewhere that you've just researched.  The second part was to guess whether we'd been there or not. 

My piece is below - of course, I talked about a bookstore - El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires. If you haven't heard of it, please google it. It's beautiful. 

She was on her way to the El Ateneo Grand Splendid when she felt the tail behind her. She’d always wanted to visit the theatre, turned cinema, turned bookstore but she’d never been to Buenos Aires before. Now that she was being followed, a famous tourist-filled bookstore seemed the best place to hide. She quickened her pace as she rounded the corner onto Avenida Santa Fe and skirted around the patio tables lining the sidewalk.

And there it was. Her eyes went automatically overhead to the stylized marque above the street entrance before she glanced behind her and ducked through the glass doors.

She allowed herself only a moment of awe at the restored theatrical elegance before dodging left into a shelf row. With the exception of the escalators leading to the basement kids section the store was historically beautiful – high frescoed ceilings overhead, and ornate theatre boxes to the sides. Up front, she could see the plush red stage curtains remained, separating the café on the stage from the store proper. She moved toward them, ducking in and out of shelves and around shoppers before spotting a staircase. She hiked up the stairs and into one of the balcony seating areas where she could catch her breath and survey the ground floor from above, hoping she’d lost her tail in the crowd.