Déjà Vu and a Do-Si-Do

For years, it has been like a dance, back and forth, and a do-si-do.  She's been whirled around the floor until she was dizzy. Each partner grabbed her arm to set her a-spin and then moved on before she could really focus and get a good look at him.  Bow to your partner and allemande left, into the arms of the next one.

The dance went on and on. Even here, she feels like she’s been endlessly riding the music, up and down, around and around the dance floor, her emotions rising and falling with each new appeal. But now the music has stopped.  In a few hours, she will make her final curtsy to the audience that has come to watch her last performance.

As she waits to take the floor for the last time, she is surprised at how silent it is.  She has become accustomed to the sounds of this place, the murmurs and echoes that seem to never stop.  But tonight it is deathly quiet, the ticking of the clock in her head the only sound she can hear.

The minister came this afternoon, and asked if she wanted to pray.  She declined, knowing that praying was fruitless. How many prayers had she said while flat on her back, and how many were answered?  That told her all she needed to know about prayer.

About an hour ago, she was served the dinner of her dreams.  Oh, yes, she’d dreamt about this dinner many times since that first time. As soon as she took the first morsel of lobster, dripping in warm melted butter, into her mouth, she was carried back to the dinner that brought her here.

He was her salvation, her way out of the life.  He talked of love and care and slow waltzes alone under the moonlight.  And she believed.  What he hadn’t talked about was his resentment of all the partners who’d whirled her around the floor in the past.  He never spoke of the jealousy he felt every time another man so much as glanced at her.  He never told her of his lightning quick temper and even faster fist.  She didn’t learn of those things until it was too late.   

She waited until their first anniversary, and then fed him the dinner of his dreams.  She prepared all his favorite foods: succulent lobster stuffed with her pain and perfectly seasoned with arsenic. She served it with a side of potatoes au gratin, delicately sauced with her feelings of hopelessness and just another light touch of arsenic.  And for dessert, he enjoyed homemade strawberry shortcake, topped with a pillow of whipped retribution sweetened with a sprinkle of arsenic.  After gorging himself on her misery, washed down with a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé, he slumped in the recliner in front of the TV, fell asleep, and died.  She did the dishes, finished cleaning up, and called the police.  Through every step that  followed, she found it hard to keep the smile off her face.  She never expressed a bit of remorse, because she felt none.  She felt nothing but satisfaction, and no reluctance to show it.

Now, as she wipes the last of the whipped cream from her lips, she reflects that it had been worth it.  And then she waits, listening to the ticking clock.

Soon enough, they come.  Taking her arm, they escort her down the long corridor, and into the room where she will perform her last do-see-do.  After they strap her to the table, and insert the needle into her arm, they open the curtain to the audience.  She closes her eyes, and a feeling of déjà vu washes over her for the second time tonight.  How many times has she danced like this, on her back while the partner of the moment took his turn with her?  Well, this is the last time.

The audience wonders why she died with a smile on her face.

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This was written for The Inferno, where the prompt was "déjà vu."

The Boys at the Corner Table

This was my entry for a recent prompt of "good luck charm" over at The Inferno A Writers' Challenge. For more charming writing, pay them a visit.

The Boys at the Corner Table 

They've come for breakfast for as long as Gladys has been working here.  They came in for the first time on her first day of work at the Cloverleaf, and they've been coming ever since.  They never fail to brighten her day, and besides, they've taught her everything she knows about baseball.  After all these years, she considers them her good luck charms.

They meet every morning at 7AM, always taking the table in the corner by the window.  They used to sit in a booth but now that they’re older, their creaky knees make sliding in too hard.

Gladys looks up from the counter she’s wiping down, and calls out, “Mornin,’ fellas. Be right wid-ja.”  She grabs four of the thick white mugs on the shelf behind the counter and pours their coffees, except for Herb, who gets agita from coffee now and reluctantly takes weak tea.

They met at the ball field out by the Community Center, where their sons played Little League.  Talking about baseball and that bum Dick Williams, they became fast friends and have been coming to the Cloverleaf for 40 years.  In the beginning it was only on Saturday mornings, a little treat before mowing the lawn or doing the other chores their wives had lined up for them.  Then about 15 years ago, they began retiring, one by one, and they could meet two or three mornings a week, as long as the wives didn’t object.  Harry thought his wife was actually glad to get him out of the house.

Now, they are all widowers, and there is no one left at home to complain.  So every morning, here they are, eating breakfast with the only family they have left.

Gladys walks over to their table, the support stockings beneath the pink uniform she’s been wearing since forever announcing her approach (swish, swish, swish).  She sets down the coffee (and tea; sorry, Herb) and asks, “So, what’ll it be?“  She takes their breakfast order and writes it down for the check they’ll split later, but she doesn’t need to.  They’ve been eating the same thing for the last forty years, too.

Everyday, as regular as clockwork: the same time, same guys, same table, same meal, and pretty much the same conversation.  Same old, same older.  Except today.

As they are digging into their eggs and toast and griping about those Red Sox, who can‘t seem to take the division lead away from the damn Yankees to save them, a boy comes into the Cloverleaf.  Dressed in pants that are too long for him and a faded blue T-shirt, he is all angles and elbows.  He hesitates inside the door and looks around.  His eyes light on the food on the table in the corner, and he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. He’s probably about twelve, but he is so skinny, he seems much younger.  Except for his eyes.  He has old eyes, which look as though they have seen far too much for their young age.  He hesitantly approaches the counter, where Gladys is filling the salt and pepper shakers.

“What can I get ya, son?”

Looking down at the counter, the boy swallows, setting his Adam’s apple aflutter again. He answers, his voice jumping from that of a boy to a young man and back again, “Um, I can’t afford to buy nothin', ma’am.  I ain’t got no money.  But my ma’s sick, and I need to get some food for her.  I was wonderin,’ um, if I could sweep up or somethin’ for you in return for some food to take home.  It don’t have to be nothin' fancy. Leftovers'll do just fine.”

As he speaks, the boys at the corner table stop speaking. They glance meaningfully at one another, and then Joe calls out, “Gladys, I believe we’ll buy this young man here some breakfast, maybe a big old stack of blueberry pancakes and eggs, with a side of  bacon.  And fix one up to go for his mama too.  Just put it on our tab.”

Astonished, the boy turns to look at the old guys.

“Come on over, young fella, and pull up a chair.  You can’t eat standing up, now can you?”

The boy walks timidly over to the table and drags a chair over into the space they clear for him.  “Gee, thanks!  I dunno what to say,” he says as he sits down.

“Think nothing of it,” Mike answers. “Everybody needs a hand now and then.  We'll talk about how we can help you and you mama in a minute.  But this is breakfast! We gotta start the day with the important stuff.  So, you like baseball?  How ‘bout those Red Sox?”

.

Future-Perfect Blindness

This was my entry for the recent prompt of "blind" over at The Inferno A Writers' Challenge. I was in the company of some wonderful writers there.  Pay them a visit.

Future-Perfect Blindness

Most people consider the brutal temperatures of winter to be the harshest.  The frigid wind whistling through the canyons has taken its deadly toll, no question.  Seems like every year, he loses a friend to its cruel indifference to life.

But, so far, he has been able to survive the hungry appetites of winter.  It’s this gawd-awful heat that threatens to consume him.  It is everywhere, oozing around corners, filling every inch of space with its suffocating presence.  In winter, he can always find shelter from the cold if he looks hard enough.  But today, he can find no shelter from this monster which will surely devour his flesh, having roasted it to perfection first, of course.

Every time he really thinks about this sorry state he has come to, he is surprised all over again.  In his heart, he still thinks of himself as the big time big deal he was. Wall Street hotshot.  Not just any Wall Street hack, but the best. Oh, yeah. He was that guy who walked by a few minutes ago, all crisp and cool in his tailored Bond Street summer-weight suit and Italian butter-soft leather shoes.  And like that guy, hurrying to his destiny in the bright sun, he’d been blind to the future that awaited him, sleeping in what little shade he could find in doorways and under park benches.

He’d never seen it coming.  He thought they were too blind to catch on.  One day, he’s on top of the world. The next day, he’s at the bottom of the heap.  On the way down, he’s lost everything.  First his license and the job, followed closely by his reputation.  Then his Ferrari and the Park Avenue apartment.  And finally, his wife, who took what little remained with her when she left.

Mostly, though, he doesn’t think about all that.  He thinks about where to sleep awhile before the cops roust his ass and tell him to move on.  He thinks about where to find food still good enough to eat. And he thinks about begging for enough change to buy himself a bottle of cheap booze to carry him though until he’s forced to think about these things again.

He finds a patch of marble steps not too hot to sit on in the alley in back of the Exchange and he settles in to eat lunch.  He has managed to find a half eaten hamburger than hasn’t begun to rot yet, and even better, filled his water bottle from the hydrant they opened for the kids.  He’s grateful that the kids were blind to the bum who joined them under the spray. City kids have seen it all.

He sets down his ragged bundle of belongings, and begins to lay a few scrounged newspapers on the step to protect his backside from the hot surface.  As he spreads out the papers, a headline from today’s front page catches his eye:

“Wall St. Hiring in Anticipation of a Recovery”

Huh.  He shrugs, and unwraps his hamburger.