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The sun was warm, enticing, shining through her office window and warming her back through the glass. It made a bit of a glare on the computer screen, and she turned around with the intent to close the blinds and finish work, when a butterfly alighted on the tree branch just outside her window.
She watched it for a long moment, saw its wings slowly opening and closing. It wasn’t particularly pretty, not a monarch or anything, but it compelled her to watch, nevertheless. She realized she was timing her breathing to the fragile creature’s movements.
In the space of a moment, she decided to shut down her work for the day, and go outside.
The grass had never seemed greener, the air never cleaner, the world never brighter. She sat cross-legged on one of the lawn chairs.
And a butterfly landed on her head.
Their first date had been to dinner and a movie, and they’d ended up in bed.
Their second date was an all-day trip to San Francisco. She didn’t live there any more, but she believed everyone should see it. She was wearing flowered stretchpants, a baggy sweater, walking boots. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a trench-coat. They held hands, and bumped their hips against each other as they walked.
They stopped in a comic book store, for him.
A stationery store, for her.
A sword store, because they both wanted to see the shiny metal weaponry.
Later that night, on a pier overlooking the ocean, they held hands and kissed, and the salt air stung their faces but they didn’t care.
Ten years later, they would separately remember the first days of their life together. Life wasn’t so bad now, but there were stressful jobs, mortgages, car payments - so many things they hadn’t had to deal with a decade earlier.
She keeps a box of his old letters to her, opens it from time to time. The one about just sitting and holding her hand makes her cry, and the tears taste like salt, but they don’t sting.
He wants to know what’s wrong.
“Nothing,” she says. “I just love you.”
For the Cafe Writing March Project . Option One: Fiction.
Written for the January Project at CafeWriting. Option 2: Pick Three.
“Race you to the jetty!” I yell and take off without checking to see if Sam is running or not. I don’t much care if I win, I just love the way the sand feels under my bare feet, warm at the surface, then colder beneath, and I love the way the blood surges in my veins as my legs move and my arms pump.
Breathless, the wind and ocean in my ears, face, and hair, I can’t really hear his footfalls, but I can feel his presence a little bit behind me, closer to the surf. Just as in the scene from Atalanta, we reach the jetty together, and sprawl in the sand near the slate blue rocks.
“You cheated,” Sam accuses, his stormy eyes meeting my darker brown ones. He reaches out to tickle me, and I scoot backwards in the sand to avoid his fingers.
“Maybe a little,” I confess, but there’s no shame in my voice.
We are silent for the next few minutes as we watch the tide come in. The sun is sinking, and as the sweat evaporates from my skin, I shiver.
Sam takes off his faded blue sweatshirt and tosses it to me. I pull it on over my tank top, and pull my ponytail out of the neck hold. “Thanks,” I say, and flash him my most impish grin.
He reaches out to ruffle my hair - I allow this - and then something changes, and he’s caressing my face, cupping my cheek in his calloused hand that never smells like fish, even though he works with them all day.
I open my mouth to say something, but before I can speak he’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him, and suddenly, I’m not cold any more.
We kiss for a while, but when the sun has dipped completely below the horizon, we both get up. He captures my hand, and we walk back down the beach, up the stairs to the boardwalk and then across the street, where he has to go straight to get to the apartment he and his mother share, while I have to turn right to get to my grandparents’ old house, three down from the corner.
“So,” he says. “Meet you by the steps tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say.
We kiss again, in the damp evening air, under the glow of the stoplight at the corner, until finally I have to stop, because there’s this feeling welling up inside me and it might burst.
He senses it too, for he ruffles my hair again, and starts toward home. I watch for a moment, then walk toward the warmth and light of the old house with the wide porch, where my grandmother is waiting, reading a novel by porch-light and citronella candle. She raises one dark eyebrow at me, notes my attire, and lets her lips curve into a gentle smile.
“I was cold,” I say, and walk inside.
Once a week, the maids come and go while she is out at work, and when she arrives home at the end of the day, not merely tired, but weary down to her soul, she is greeted with the faint scents of pine-sol and lavender. The former is cleaning fluid, she knows, the latter she has to think about, but each week it comes to her: linen spray she was given as a gift and keeps in the closet. They change the sheets, these maids in their blue t-shirts and khaki pants, and give the pillows a spritz of lavender, “for lucky dreams,” as her grandmother would have said.
They used to come on Wednesdays, but she changed the date to Friday because she leaves her office an hour earlier on that day, and likes coming home to spend the weekend in a sparkling-clean home. She’s grateful that she can afford the maid service, because they vacuum and dust and do all the things she never seems to, but her favorite feature is that she arrives home every night to a bathroom full of bright, white, welcoming porcelain and chrome.
It has become a ritual of sorts, to usher in the weekend with a bath. She begins by turning the space heater so that it faces the tub instead of the shower, and then she turns out the lights in the room, leaving only the hi-hat on over the tub, and a small lamp on her dresser in the adjoining master bedroom. She turns the radio to NPR, lights the candle that she keeps on the false wall at the end of the tub (it is vanilla), and starts the hot water, waiting for it to be completely heated before she closes the drain. A dash of cold water is added to the stream filling the spa-sized tub, and bubble bath that smells of tamarind and peach is poured beneath the tap. A fluffy towel is left on the sink, a bath-pillow affixed to the “head” end of the tub with suction cups, and a hand towel, washcloth, book and bottle of water are placed within reach.
She strips in the bedroom, walking into the bathroom without benefit of a robe, but wearing fluffy white slippers. Her long hair is pulled into a pony-tail then twisted into a bun on top of her head, and her watch is removed.
As the radio drones on, interspersing news, talk and light jazz, she steps gingerly into the hot, sudsy water, first her left foot, then her right. She turns around, then sits in the water, swishing it around a bit before she settles into a reclining position, adjusting her head against the pillow, and drying her hands before she picks up the book.
On Sunday, she will repeat this ritual, with wine instead of water, preparing herself for the week ahead, but for now, she is content to read and soak, until the water turns uncomfortably cool.
Written for the December Project at Cafe Writing.
Written for the October fiction project at Cafe Writing: “Let some things remain mysterious.”
“There are footprints in the bird seed,” I announced at breakfast one morning.
“Of course there are, dear. The birds stand in it while they’re pecking up the seeds,” came my husband’s dry tones.
“No,” I said, “not bird prints. Mammal prints. Or maybe a lizard. Something with paws. Or at least proper feet.”
“Birds don’t have proper feet?” His voice had that bemused tone that never fails to exasperate me. The one he uses when he’s baiting me, and I know he’s baiting me, and I rise to it anyway.
“You. Know. What. I. Mean.” I bit out each word and spit it at him.
“Maybe it’s a possum,” he said, after I’d glared at him for several seconds.
“Maybe,” I agreed. I went outside, and shook the pan of birdseeds, resolving to invest in a proper tray feeder with a cover. The small table over the tray which sits on the large table is ridiculous, as well as being largely ineffective.
I watched the tray through the window for a long time, sipping my coffee while my husband flipped through the paper. When I’d reached the bottom of my mug, I let the dogs into the yard for their morning business, and checked the tray again. I hadn’t seen anything near the picnic table where it lived but sure enough, footprints - paw prints - were there again.
I went back inside, flanked by dogs who were understandably upset about not being allowed to track the scent from below the table.
“There are more,” I said to my husband, “paw prints in the birdseed.”
“I thought you were watching,” he said.
“I was,” I confirmed.
“Well, dear. It seems you have a mystery.”
Sometimes, men are no help at all.