Coffee shop observations

Meeting there seemed wise, she knew that nobody would suspect anything if they saw her meeting him in that kind of place. Affairs are not conducted in coffee shops. If she met him there, people would think she was having a business meeting, nobody would suspect a thing, as long as he didn't stare at her longingly, like he had the other night, when they'd met at an edge-of-town motel, all affair-like, while she told her husband she was going to a PTA meeting. Her husband had a 'late meeting' - his most unoriginal euphamism for 'a date with my secretary, who I've been shagging for three years.'

She couldn't do another motel meeting, it had made her feel seedy and dishonest, rather like she was having an affair or something. She worried, too, that she'd bump into her husband and said secretary. That would just be awkward. So, yes, a coffee shop was a better option. They wouldn't be able to touch, but at least she could see him, and talk to him, and try and quell the fierce missing that they both felt.

What she hadn't taken into consideration was that love and passion can't be hidden by the aroma of coffee and baking muffins. Holding hands or not, the lady sitting waiting for her friend in the corner having a glass of wine can see it shining off her. It's alright, though, she has made up a story in her head and will keep mum. You deserve some happiness.

The bridge ladies, a story

Her lipstick was just a little too red, her eyeshadow a little too dark, her skirt a little too short. At least, according to their very exact, and much gossiped about standards. The room became murky amidst a cloud of judgement from the other women in the room, their lipstick slightly duller, eyeshadow less dark, skirts slightly longer. She swept through the room, her high heels catching ever-so-slightly on the thick carpet, her hips swinging provocatively, keeping her gaze on the door leading out to the patio.

They'd been playing bridge all morning. None of them really knew how to play properly, it was just an excuse to get together and twitter. Not in the new-fandangled Twitter internet way, no. This was twittering of the slightly nastier version. That one where affairs, divorces, in fact anything a little bad newsy, was regarded as highly interesting and very talkworthy. Especially if it involved people outside their bridge circle. They'd been known to make ladies cry. Ladies who didn't conform to their exacting standards, their dour, boring, existences.

They stopped twittering as she walked through. As she felt their eyes on her, sixteen of them, taking in her provocation, her lipstick, her short skirt. Turning to them as she opened the door onto the patio, the young man outside standing, ready to greet her, she smiled at them, her too red lips stretching across her face, her eyes lighting up beneath the too dark eye shadow, and they all looked down, fiddling with their cards.

She greated the man outside, hugging him and leaving a blood red imprint of her lips on his stubbled cheek where she kissed him. Sitting down, she ordered a Singapore Sling, with two cherries.

Writing Prompt Six: Thumblessly happy

So I've crazily signed up to do NaNoWriMo - write a 50 000-word novel in November. I don’t have the time, but I’m going to try. If it doesn’t work this year, I will try again next year when, hopefully, I will be in the place my heart swells and have plenty of time on my hands, and inspiration. In the meantime I fear this blog may be a little neglected for the month. Here’s another Writing Prompt for now – they are such deliciously bizarre prompts, see at the end, after my little story…

Alice had always known she was a little different. It had started with her not having thumbs, and the endless string of childhood taunts that elicited. Then that whole trip to Wonderland. Why she’d told them, she herself couldn’t fathom. The fact that she kept going back there reinforced her differences, despite her keeping her dalliance’s with the Cheshire Cat and what had developed into a rather passionate affair with The Mad Hatter, quiet. He really wasn’t all that mad, after all, and damn, he was good in the sack. It was the only place where people didn’t stare and snigger at her lack of thumbs.

It was just a pity that she had to work so hard to earn the money to go, and then pay to stay. Despite that sweet storybook tale, which made it sound free, her trips to Wonderland, like any fabulous holiday, cost. As sweet as the Old White Queen was, she had a business to run and staying in one of the hundreds of rooms in the castle added up. Alice had tried camping, once, but the campsite was owned by The Caterpillar and his incessant smoking had made her sneeze. It wasn’t free, either.

So she’d been going back and forth, conducting this long-distance relationship with The Mad Hatter, missing him when she was away, loving him there (but not enough to move in with him – he was a slob, she could never share a bathroom with him). Knowing this, he kept sending her e-mails from Red Heart Realtors with pictures of properties for sale, but they, too, were exorbitant.

And so it went, year after year, Alice being inconsolably unhappy each time she had to return to the Real World, slaving away, making doughnuts for a living, saving each cent, until she could return and then being happy as a lark for her time there. But always she had to return to the teasing and grey Real World.

And then, one particularly damp and miserable day, she won the lottery, packed her worldly belongings and moved to Wonderland with not a look back, where she lived thumblessly and happily ever after in a beautiful house with candy floss wall paper, next door to her love, The Mad Hatter. The sun shone all the time, unless they felt like a bit of rainy weather, and then it rained. The End.

Prompt 6: Imagine if your favorite character from 19th-century fiction had been born without thumbs. Then write a short story about them winning the lottery.

Writing Prompt Three: Dottie

Another writing prompt. This one I struggled with and I think the story is a little silly, but I don’t have the energy to write/think of another and I want to do them all, to complete the full thirteen prompts, as tempted as I was to just ignore this one. Historical figures are not my forte and so I did cheat slightly – I’m not sure she really falls under “historical”.

My mother never thought I’d amount to anything. It’s not really expected, you see, for imps to amount to anything, so my mother’s attitude was not unreasonable. I, however, had other ideas and from when I was knee-high to a flea and scribbling poems in my tiny imp diary, knew that I’d prove her wrong. My goal – to use a human to take me to greatness, even if it was unrecognised greatness, my mum would know it was me, and that’s what mattered.

Imps are, essentially, set on this earth to be, well, impish. We were of the New Jersey Imps, a particularly good breed, if I may say so myself, known for impishness pertaining most often to baking. That cake that flopped in the middle and tasted soapy? Probably one of my uncles, swapping the baking powder for washing powder. Not that we were only into baking, we did the common garden imp stuff like hide one sock behind the couch too. I, however, wanted more.

Luckily, I grew up under the floorboards of a Manhattan apartment lived in by the Rothschild’s, a family prone to tragedy with a daughter who they referred to as “difficult”, Dorothy. She was indeed difficult, but I knew I could make her clever and witty and so I moved in, just behind her right ear and started reciting my poetry to her. She wrote them down, my poems, thinking they were hers.

As she grew into a feisty woman, I started giving her my one-liners too, and watched how people laughed and called her “ascerbic”. She got our poems published, we ran with an artistic crowd, she fell in love, over and over, married three times (I can’t claim that as my doing, I was the poetry, the wit, she was the passionate lover.)

I also can’t claim to be responsible for her political aspirations or views, imps are just not into politics. I could’ve done without having to be arrested with her that day in Boston but there you have it: the joys of being an invisible imp behind a famous person’s ear.

Also, I tried so very hard to make her happy. I thought my funny, witty one-liners would perk her up and that our poems, despite them not being of a frivolous nature, would make her smile, but she was a dark soul and the drinking didn’t help. All through those suicide attempts I was fearful, and sad, and became inspired by it in my (her) poetry.

I got her notoriety though, and recognition, and almost an Oscar, twice, and, most importantly, I showed my mother that I could (under cover) make something of myself, despite being a tiny, invisible imp behind somebody’s ear.

If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
If cool my heart and high my head
I think "How lucky are the dead."

Dorothy Parker

Prompt 3: Choose your favorite historical figure and imagine if he/she had been led to greatness by the promptings of an invisible imp living behind his or her right ear. Write a story from the point of view of this creature. Where did it come from? What are its goals? Use research to make your story as accurate as possible.

Writing Prompt Two: The lake

Further to my writing block deblocker challenge, here’s my second attempt. The city has again wrapped its little fingers around me and is leaving me feeling slightly deflated or, rather, paralysed when it comes to writing. Here goes:

It was one of those grey days that wraps itself around you like a damp shawl. The mist hovered over the lake and twirled amongst the bulrushes around its edges. Next to the path the trees rustled and whispered to each other, telling the secrets of the night before in the early morning coolth. It was strangely quiet and perfectly still, as if even the birds had burrowed back into their nests on seeing the chilled mist.

The man walking along the path looked young, but wasn’t. He walked slowly, struggling slightly with two plastic bags from a grocery shop in town filled with something heavy. Around his neck hung four brightly-coloured ropes that made him look as if he were about to be part of something fun. But he wasn’t.

He walked out along the wooden jetty where he’d fished as a child, the worn planks familiar beneath his feet, and sat down at the end, his legs splayed in front of him, the heavy bags between them. Threading the ropes through the plastic bags he sighed, an exhalation of pure relief that joined the swirling mist.

Once the bags were tied, firmly but not too tightly, he stood up and shuffled awkwardly to the edge of the jetty and looked down into the clear water while inhaling the earthy smell of the tiny gardens of moss on the jetty’s edge. He looked up, smiled, and stepped off, sinking rapidly to the muddy floor where he rested, still smiling and looked up through the water, watching his air bubbles rise, to see a milky sun pushing its arms through the mist, turning it golden.

As the sun poked through, the dull cries of the hadedas interrupted the stillness as they called their morning greetings to each other.

Prompt 2: Write a short scene set at a lake, with trees and shit. Throw some birds in there, too.

Writing Prompt One: Melting ice

I’ve decided to do a thing, due to my blocked writing channels. A couple of years ago I wrote a month of 100 words – basically 100 words exactly, every day, for a month, it’s a fabulous website and documented a very beautiful time in my life and I really enjoyed it so I've decided it's time for something like that again.

A while ago I downloaded a list of thirteen writing prompts from a website somewhere and I’m now going to do them. Some of my blogs will be stories I’ve made up, using the prompts. They’re quite cool, and a bit difficult, but I need a challenge. I’ll tell you the prompt after each story. Here’s the first:

The walls of the flat are thin, and it’s a hot evening so the balcony doors are open to let in what I hoped would be some cool air. In fact it is only letting in more of the hot, still breaths of the sweating city and the noise from the next door flat. The air fills with the shrieking that one expects to hear when something really bad happens. It’s followed by some ineffectual interjections from a lower voice, one of those overly calm kinds that would certainly make me shriek louder.

I step onto the balcony in search of the non-existent breeze and because I’m a voyeur and can’t hear properly, the thin walls muffling the noise. As I settle into the canvas chair on my balcony and put my glass of wine filled with ice-fighting-for-its-life-in-the-heat, I see a flurry of letters being thrust from the next door balcony and I smell a tiny whiff of cheap perfume from the papers that flutter lazily downwards. Someone’s history, left to fend for itself on the hot city pavement below.

Contemplating running down the stairs to gather them up and read them but too hot to move, I sip on my wine. The ghosts of the melted ice form condensation on the side of the glass and cool my lips momentarily. The shrieking continues but moves further away, finally punctuated with the slam of a door. I take another sip and watch a black cat hunting a chip packet on the other side of the street.

Prompt 1: Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man’s friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

I’m not sure that I got it quite right but I had fun doing it so that’s okay, right?

The old man

He was old. The kind of old that squishes up your face with wrinkles that tell a million stories of a long and difficult life. He was crippled, limping along with a crutch to help him, up the long hill to the hospital where he’d sit all day, waitingwaitingwaiting for somebody to see him.

We stopped in our big-comfy-car-with-just-two-people-in-it, he struggled to get in, his one leg stiff and sore. Close up, he was even more wrinkly, his face filled with stories I’d love to have time to hear. We glided up the hill, dropping him at the entrance. He quietly thanked us, unnecessarily, as we helped him out, asking for his little plastic bag which he’d left on the seat. Inside: some dry bread, to keep hunger at bay on the plastic chairs while he sits waitingwaitingwaiting.

And again my throat constricts at the great divide as I try to swallow my priviledged tears and try to think of how to make it better.

Frieda, the flappy insect

And then there was Frieda. One of those big, flappy night insects, she was seated quite comfortably on my curtain, in front of the open window (note: open window... this is an important point in the story). I said "Hello", politely, as my mother taught me to do on encountering visitors. She was a big, flappy insect, as I said, but not quite big enough to see her little head nod in acknowledgement, but I'm sure it did.

From then on, we got on with our own things - me getting ready for bed, her doing whatever it is that big, flappy insects sitting on curtains do. Maybe flossing her teeth? Only later did I work out what it was she had done. And then I turned off my light to go to sleep. And sleep (oh delight!) I did, after my abortive night the night before.

That is, until my alarm decided, at about 2:23am, to throw a hissy fit, for no reason. It woke everybody up, including half the neighbourhood I'm sure. After much fumbling and cursing, the plug was pulled out. Alarm guys came today. I don't want to talk about it.

I slept again until, through my dozy haze I heard flapping and bumping and flapping. Frieda. Trying desperately to go somewhere. Obviously not out, as the window was open (see above) and she was throwing herself at the walls, one at a time, then ignoring the (open!) door and throwing herself against the ceiling. Her poor flappy wings bashed loudly against each of these (very obvious) barriers, but Frieda continued.

And it was then that I realised. Frieda had not been flossing her teeth while she sat sedately on my curtain... She'd been taking out her contact lenses. Doh.

A liitle sad story

She was running, as fast as she possibly could. She imagined that, to someone watching her, her legs would be a blur. She breathed raggedly, sucking in lungsful of the freezing air which felt like it slipped down into her lungs and created tiny icicles falling and piercing her insides excruciatingly.

Attached to her wrist was a red helium balloon which was bobbing comically in the air, trying its hardest to escape from the humdrum of this running-as-fast-as-you-can-standing-stillness. She’d flown away with it, into the bright blue sky, over green fields, but that was before she got concreted. Each time a growling car passed, the balloon bumped and pulled.

Looking around she realised that, in fact, she wasn’t moving at all. She tried to run faster, but she was concreted in that one spot, surrounded by suburban houses trying to outdo each other with higher walls and shinier doorknobs. Cars and taxis whizzed past her, growling, baring their teeth, and coughing their poison gases over her. She smelt the rot of the city.

On the verge was a small patch of grass upon which five children sat, a steps-and-stairs bunch, playing. They seemed to be conducting some sort of experiment with some snails and two ants. She tried to run towards them, her breath shortening, but she remained rooted and they started to blur, first losing their outlines, then their entire beings, until all that was left was a small shadow on the grass, an outline of love.

Her heart was being strangled by the whole scene and she began to realise, while she was concreted to that spot, the balloon wasn’t, so she began to bite through its string until it flew up, carried by that icy wind into the bright blue sky.

She watched it twist and turn and dance and as she watched she felt her substance draining away. A gust of wind blew down the street gathering her fluttering shell up in it, blowing her along the gutter to the rain drain at the corner, next to a Simba chip packet which fluttered disconsolately as she landed on it.

The girl in the bar

She could be fifteen or thirty-five, it’s hard to tell. Her hair is two-tone – blonde above, black below, and a little greasy. Standing up in her aubergine-coloured velvet tracksuit as we enter the bar, it is obvious she needs to lose a little weight. Her smile is sweet and kind, but her eyes hide something. The bar smells of smoke, as if the windows (which are all there, eagerly awaiting) haven’t been opened since 1976. In fact, bar the enormous flat screen TV in the corner blaring E!, nothing much has changed in this bar since then, with it’s stained carpet (each one, I’m sure with a story to tell) and fake leather chairs.

It’s early Friday afternoon and the place is desserted. She fetches us two wonderfully cold beers from behind the bar. It’s a typical small town South African bar – an enormous bottle of brandy half-full (she says the farmers come and drink five litres in a night) amongst multi-coloured bottles of too-sweet-headache-inducing-shots, the essential array of foreign notes stuck to the walls and a couple of ‘bar joke gimmicky things’ strewn about the place.

She plonks herself next to us, at our table, and first explains what’s going on with the Playboy-Bunny-Types on the TV, my inquisitive soul asks questions, encouraging her tales. Her family bought this hotel four months ago and she lives here, alone. They visit at weekends sometimes. She is essentially a small-town girl, who has had flashes of city life. They didn’t agree with her, you can tell, but she doesn’t elaborate. Her loneliness spills over our table in a sweet stream of strangely naïve but street-smart stories of her life. This girl has seen things she wishes she hadn’t.

The boys who manage the golf club arrive and they greet her by name, in a brotherly fashion they tease her. There is no question that they will join our conversation. They get their drinks, and do. It’s friendly, it’s small town, and it’s Friday afternoon. Then the local mechanic and his sullen wife with their two children (!) arrive. The children have a pack of cards and they sit at the next table and play Rummy. He turns his back on his wife, talking to the golfing boys as she sips on her alchopop. The Jukebox is cranked up to a volume where conversation becomes difficult.

We’re hungry so we leave them to it. The Friday afternoon sun shines on the dusty main road outside as we leave, loud music following us down the street.

Her eyes are haunting me still.

A story

I am still wading through that squelchy, confused mud, but am trying to be a good girl and write regularly. After all, this is my practice pad, and what's a practice pad's point if you don't practice on it? It doesn't have one. And I'd hate for my very own practice pad to feel pointless. But my brain is befuddled and not-so-bemused, and is dwelling on the transience of it all, after hearing some news last night that I'm not ready to write about yet so, instead, I will write a story about a girl watching her shadow on the beach.

She sat above the shoreline with her knees against her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. There was a slight breeze but it is was surprisingly warm considering the time of year. She breathed deeply, inhaling the smell of the ocean - seaweed, salt, mermaid's breath. As the sun set behind her, she watched her shadow lengthen across the sand until it reached the wet sand where the waves washed up.

She lifted her arms and saw her Dr Seuss-like shadow fingers reach into the lacy foam at the edge of the sea, then watched as it rushed up the shore, eating her head, neck and then shoulders. There it stopped and withdrew, dropping her shadow back onto the sand as it receded.

There her shadow being was again, on the smooth wet sand, her neck, like a Modigliani woman, even longer now, as the sun sunk lower behind her. A welk made it's way through her shadow ear, down her neck and toward her breast.

She stood up, stretched her neck, and walked down the beach, her shadow hurrying behind her, glancing at the sun nervously, knowing it's time on this beach was limited.