It is Saturday night and my eyes are full of tears as I throw open the wooden doors to the Sunset Deck at the rear of the steamship. Sunset is a misnomer, because tonight the sun is setting over the forward deck at the opposite end of the ship. The rest of the passengers are gathered there to watch so I’m confident that this is the one place I can go to have a good, undisturbed cry.
I fling myself at the railing and let the tears fall overboard. At dinner Alan had once again been oblivious to my desperate attempts at flirting, and I'm so lost in my anguish over him that I don’t notice the small boy standing next to me until he speaks.
“Why are you crying?” he asks.
- excerpt from The Sunset Deck, a short story
The sentence that begins "At dinner" has me very confused due to the mixture of past and present tense, but I think it's right. I don't have a lot of experience writing in present tense, but I believe this story requires it. If anyone with better grammar experience has an opinion on whether it is correct or not, please let me know!
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I am by no means a grammar expert but I do write and also read A LOT and I read right through that sentence -it felt and sounded fine and I was busy thinking --where is she going? what's Alan's problem anyway!?...who is that little boy?
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CJ
Thanks, CJ! I'm glad to know that sentence wasn't distracting.
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