A salty sharp smell crept up the stairs to meet her.
Specify-- oyster sauce, or something like it.
Yes, I told you, I will be working late most nights
"I told you" sounds patronizing and irritated. Do you want your heroine to sound like that?
he machine-gunned orders
Something less aggressive here? How about just "yelled?"
rolling Lotus Root that had leapt from his grasp somehow.
Good, but you don't need to cap "lotus root"
from water that magically fell from the sky.
Magic water? Unless you later delineate that she came from the desert, it is too flowery.
portend something exciting.
"portend" is too pompous.
tan bricked building
"brick" or "building with a brick facade"
it’s all about.
"It is about"
there remained a few wholesale canneries.
"a few canneries remained"
Break this sentence up, like this:
At the southern end of the street, Seattle’s skyscrapers dominated. At a dozen or so trendy restaurants, waiters with bow ties and exaggerated accents offered overpriced seafood. At the coffeehouses, anxious executive secretaries surveyed lists of pricey concoctions.
Two weeks ago, the morning of Snow’s first day in Seattle, she had stopped at Monica’s coffee hut eager for the caffeine and to be left alone. But Monica would have none of that and had grilled Snow with questions about how she came to be here and had offered stories of her husband Charlie, who worked the late-afternoon shift at the hut, and her two daughters who were involved with various angst ridden teen and pre-teen dramas that threatened to ruin their lives. The cause of which primarily being their insufferably embarrassing parents, unfair teachers, and the wrong boys giving them the attention they craved.
That evening Snow had secured a job playing guitar at Kirk’s club and had walked up and down Alaska Way until early morning. By early evening she had found her studio apartment above Ling’s Market and she had assumed this would be her life for a while yet. It had been a productive day. She had thought she could hole away playing in the club and let time bring to her what it will.
The next afternoon Snow had found herself wanting more stories of Monica’s domestic trials and she went for more coffee. They had talked even longer, Snow leaning over the plywood counter of the hut and listening. Daughters that made a crisis out of everything and husbands that loved their wives but were mostly insensitive dolts had all sounded so normal. A life Snow knew she would never have.
“That would be great. I’ll reserve a table for you up front. Just let me know when.” Snow said after turning back around and sidling up to the counter, her guitar case slipping from her shoulder and it banged against the coffee stand. She hunched her shoulder and pushed it back in place. “I don’t know if I’ve earned any privileges yet, but I’ll try.” She fingered her necklace, the wood charm on it smooth in her fingers. A reminder to her that guitar playing was the only thing left she had to offer the world.
“Oh, that’s okay. We won’t be able to stay very long. Some boy has been calling for Kelci every night for the last week. It may not be a good idea to leave her home alone for very long. She’s coming with us tonight to help with inventory.” Monica smiled wide and she gave Snow one of those looks that passes between women that says so much.
“It’s okay,” Snow said, “I’ll try and get the table anyway and if I can get it you can come and go as you please. The club’s manager has been flirting with me since I got there and I’ll bet I can make it work. We start playing at nine. The first set lasts about forty minutes and it’s our best stuff I think.”
“Okay, Babe,” Monica said. Monica had called her “Babe” when Snow had left her stand that first afternoon and Snow had liked it.
This belongs here. Snow is a very lonely person, and Monica is her first friend in town. This is very important, and must be placed earlier in the story.
held upright by aluminum tubing set in a triangle
Appears to be an unnecessary detail.
'Yesterday when Snow had stopped by Monica’s coffee stand, she had heard a sixteenth century guitar piece by De Lorenzo. She normally wouldn’t carry one of her guitars from the club to her apartment and back again, but she wanted to work a particular bar into her solo "The Girl’s Got Steam." '
Wrong order. I would rewrite like that.
Snow had never understood men who used hair product.
Unnecessary.
that kind of pretense much too feminine and
either delete that phrase or use the word "vain" Sounds sexist to me.
Which made it easy to ignore
"This" instead of "which."
Which is what she had wanted.
You can delete this, since it is implied in the previous sentence.
boots that she wore when she played. The frustrated lesbian look, just enough to keep most men away.
She wore a more stylish version, which were still intimidating enough to keep most men away. (Again, sexist)
There were a few cars parked on the street, and urgent business men and women still too low on the corporate pay ladder to afford parking garages closer to their work walked toward the corner.
Break up that sentence.
Utility Man stayed his course, causing the professional people to veer from his path.
I like this. He thinks nothing of educational and social class distinctions.
Maybe I will get my nails done? Get a nice pink polish at the same time? Before the barbecue?
A guitarist might have trouble with keeping nail polish looking nice.
I like the rest, especially the suspense at the end.
Or, at least, that is how
I would rewrite it.