Day 28 - Another Opening

The prompt for this day 28th of May 2024 was:

Take an opening line from a book you love and rewrite it to create a similar, but different opening for your story

That said, an opening I’ve liked in the past, so much so I’ve taken inspiration from the genre on two previous occasions Day 13, 2019, and in a longer short story ‘An Explanation’ in March of the same year. The following is an example opening paragraph from ‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handker-chief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

And here is my take. Similar, but different:

The chair scrapped immediately to her right dragging her attention momentarily, it was the waiter, he smiled at her conveying several things but one.  She glanced back at her coffee, it was two-thirds gone, not finished.  Looking across the street the piano bench was still vacant, although it was starting to fade, it was 5:30 pm, the 29th of May, the closing days of Autumn, it was getting dark, and he’d arrive soon.

‘Excuse me, Miss.’

She looked up, smiled and dropped a fiver on the table, ‘Thank you.’

Taking the cup, she gulped down the last of the coffee. As she stood, the cup rattled on the saucer, a lipstick smear marking its rim.

She pulled her coat tight, flinging her scarf around her neck as the chill of the evening descended upon her.