Flash Fiction: Swing It

As promised, some very-semi-autobiographical flash fiction which I hope you enjoy with your Friday morning! And I do mean "I hope you enjoy it" because I am late to work for its sake. Hurray and all that. P.S. If you ever get the chance, PLEASE learn East Coast Swing. It's the bee's knees. That's all.

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"Swing It"

By Rachel Heffington

In response to its infernal ringing, Willoughby lifted the receiver of his desk-telephone and grunted into it: H’lo? Willoughby Colbert’s office.”

“Take me dancing and make me forget there was ever a man named Christopher Markham.” The person on the other end of the phone-line drew a few reedy breaths, then laughed a little off-center.

Willoughby rocked back in his chair and peered at the yellowing calendar on the wall. Yep, still 1944. “Sal, that you?”

“And who the deuce else would it be?”

Then it was Salamanca Deathridge, calling him up at nine PM on a Tuesday night after two and a half years of friendly silence. Already, Willoughby felt the buzzing warmth speed into his blood. Sal’s voice, homelike, smoothed glossy paint over all the cracks worn into his soul by the last thirty-two months.

“Rizzio’s?” he drawled.

“9:25. I’m taking a taxi. And I won’t pray before I get in.”

The sharp click on the other end of the line told Willoughby that Sal considered the appointment made: he’d show up, because he always did.  This eternal availability might’ve been because he was one of the only single men not kicking Hitler’s butt in France right now, but Willoughby preferred to think she favored his friendship over those  tributaries which ran dry. He knew exactly which troublesome grey umbrella Sal walked under tonight: the daring, wild, implacable mood of a woman who’d been spurned by someone or another. And he knew exactly how to sooth her, as he had so many times. Sal might go two years without speaking  to him, might not even remember there was such a guy as Willoughby Colbert in New York City, but get her in a pinch and she’d remember soon enough. Adorably predictable in that way. Kinda kid-like. She knew where to come for the real stuff.

Willoughby took his feet off the desk, spun his hat in an uncharacteristically flamboyant gesture, and walked, whistling, out the door, taking care to lock it behind him.

I don’t know why I care. Why do I care? I don’t. I don’t care.

“You got troubles, lady?”

Sal, too depressed to bother with activity, answered the cabby’s question with a non-committal “Mmmfh.”

“It’s just, you’re not looking quite yourself.”

This comment coming from a cab-driver she’d never met in her life caused Sal a momentary flicker of interest. She took her chin out of her hand and moved glazy eyes to the cabby’s potato-shaped face. “What’s that?”

He jerked his head over one shoulder, switched lanes, and jutted his chin. “Your lipstick’s coming off.”

Sal whipped out a compact mirror and saw, to her concern, the man had made an accurate observation. A vibrant red ring around her lips, a non-committal pink between.

“You know, I don’t know why I care.”

“About the lipstick?”

“People.”

“So don’t,” the cabby advised helpfully.

Sal fished deeper in the little net clutch and extracted a tube of lipstick which she proceeded to apply. “Drama!” She flourished the tube. “ Everyone has to have their little pouch of drama, which wouldn’t be so bad if it could be rationed out or something. They ration everything else, you know. Why not drama?”

“Hear, hear!” the cabby pounded the edge of his steering wheel and pulled alongside the curb in front of a small dance-club. “Hey, lady.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying not to care about, but get this: it probably won’t matter tomorrow morning.”

Actually, it probably would matter tomorrow morning. Especially because he’d said that just now, in that absurdly cheerful manner of his. Sal manipulated a sulky smile onto her newly-rouged lips and handed in a fifty-cent coin. “Keep the change.”

“It won’t matter!” the cabby yowled after her as Sal slipped past a group of businessmen headed uptown. “Tomorrow, it won’t matter.”

Sal waved her net bag without turning around and barged through the door into Rizzio’s. A well-groomed attendant took her light wrap and asked if she waited for a companion.

“Seen a long-legged loser come in recently?”

The waiter answered that, if she referred, perhaps, to the gentleman sitting at the bar just there, then perhaps miss would like him to go apprise him of her arrival?

“Thanks.”

The attendant glistened off and Sal watched the old play of familiar figures: the immaculate waiter clearing his throat at Willoughby’s side, Willoughby, thoroughly absorbed in a cup of coffee, not hearing him. The waiter trying again, Willoughby coming-to with a jolt, the soft lights of the bar gleaming on his head of unabashedly good hair. The crinkle-eyed smile was followed up, as always, by the whole six foot-five of Willoughby Colbert extending itself to full running-trim as he found her and came forward.

“Salamanca Deathridge. Two years have done you no harm.”

“And if I’m allowed to hope that you’ve done no harm to anyone in two years, I think we must render ourselves satisfied.”

Willoughby’s eyes ran over her face again and again and she knew he saw straight through the confident lipstick. That was why she came.

“Let’s dance.”

Sal proffered her small, manicured hand and let it rest in Willoughby’s big, empty one. He put his other hand firmly in the small of her back and steered her to the floor where a black jazz band played one of her favorite songs. She couldn’t remember the name of it right now, or any of the words, but let her body sway to the rhythm. She’d missed this. Why had it been two and a half years? No wonder she felt thin and frail and half-starved.

“So who’s Christopher Markham and when can I do the honor of punching him for you?”

They’d gone away for a few minutes, and now all of Sal’s troubles came galloping back to stampede across her mind and leave her exhausted again. She wilted a little against Willoughby’s supporting arm and shook her head. “He’s Dorcas’ sweetheart.”

“Dorcas Bowman?”

“Yep.”

“I thought she was with Donny.”

“She broke that off eighteen months ago.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have known.”

Was it just her, or did Willoughby sound a little defensive right there? She thought she’d better wake him up a bit. “I was thinking, I ought to throw a little party for all of the old set: Dorcas, Annie, Ben, Frankie, Martin, Priscilla. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“If any of the old set is still this side of the Atlantic.”

Definitely defensive this time. Sal wilted a little further as she realized, barring she and Dorcas and Priscilla, who were nurses in a hospital here, all the old set had signed up for the war in their different capacities. All except Willoughby, who’d been excluded on the ridiculous grounds of asthma or something and now worked in the ad business.

“It’s okay, Sal,” Willoughby was saying now. “Somebody’s gotta stick around to paint Uncle Sam’s picture. ‘We Want You.’ It’s only those he doesn’t want who get the honor of making him look welcoming. I know his best angle. He says I’m his favorite portrait-painter.”

“I didn’t mean to pinch a sore spot, Wills.”

“Aw, I know, kiddo.”

He spun her gently out and brought her back, but it was an empty gesture, she felt. No pizazz in it. And this music was too slow. How was a girl supposed to cheer up if the band kept playing sentimental ballads?

“So what has Dorcas’s boyfriend done to peeve you?”

Christopher Markham of the excellent nose and devastating profile  stalked into Sal’s mind. She gave him a mental kick in the pants as the band wrapped up one piece and started into “Swinging on a Star.” Willoughby’s hands gripped hers a little tighter and she leaned back into his tension.

“Christopher Markham,” she said, “Is a great big bad egg. He’s ridiculously handsome and Dorcas is absolutely ga-ga over him. She’s never home. We make all these plans to meet for dinner and she always forgets.” Maybe it was childish of her to feel cut out, but it wasn’t like Dorcas ever made any effort to keep things up. And they were roommates for heaven’s sake. “Chris is eternally taking her to the theatre, or the USO show, or out dancing. And when she is home, it’s nothing but, ‘Christopher this,’ or ‘Christopher that.’ I swear, Wills, I could tear that man’s eyes out with my fingernails.”

Willoughby cut off Sal’s bad humor by snapping her into a spin and dip. She came up laughing and not half as angry at Dorcas as she ought to be.

“A mule is an animal with long funny ears, kicks up at anything he hears.” Willoughby sang in his shameless way, a little oblivious as to tempo, but thoroughly good-natured. “His back is brawny but his brain is weak, he’s just plain stupid with a stubborn streak.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her to make her laugh, and tossed her to one side, then the other, gripping her close and flinging her away.

The joy of dancing – of being dragged through a musical kaleidoscope and making trails in the notes with their feet –began to intoxicate Sal. The new-fangled Latin dances were all dandy if you wanted something romantic, but for forgetting your woes, for forgetting everything but the easy presence of a good friend, there was nothing like swing. Willoughby was an excellent dancer – one of the best, in fact. Besides, she could always wear high-heels around him – the highest she wanted – without ever being taller than him. And this was a useful thing when you’re over-the-average tall for a girl.

“Still stewing over this Christopher Markham fiend?”

“Who’s Christopher Markham?”

“Atta girl. Any other men bothering you?”

“Men? A bother?”

“It’s been over two years. Can’t imagine a pretty, spunky thing like you’s been spending her time alone. You’re a nurse in a big hospital. Bet every soldier comes through your ward and leaves lovesick.”

“You’re a big tease.”

“I’m being one-hundred-percent honest, kiddo.”

Sal shrugged. “Maybe there’ve been a couple disturbances.”

“Major infractions?” Willoughby wrinkled his nose and laughed. “Anyone need a fist in the face?”

“That’s a little cruel when most of them have  Kraut metal in there already. No, no one needs your charming fist, but thanks.”

Willoughby quieted a little and shook his head seriously. “God knows I wish I had a chance.”

“To fight?”

“All these other fellas.” He spun her again. “And I don’t have even a fraction of a chance.”

She thought he meant a chance to fight. He probably did. Of course he could have meant something tenderer, but Sal was a sensible girl. She knew better than to ruin a perfect friendship by asking it if it wanted more. They danced closer to the band and, Sal imagined, made all the other couples jealous with their unaffected happiness.

“And you, Wills?”

He tilted his head down to look her in the eye. “What about me?”

“Girls?”

The gaze lifted. “Nah. Too busy.”

Sal could translate: “I can’t fight so I’m not worthy of any woman.” That’s what that meant. She backed them off the dance floor as the song finished and rested her hand with purpose on Willoughby’s arm. He flinched a little as if even that was too good for him but Sal stayed with him and felt his pulse under her touch.

“Wills, you are valuable.” She gave him one of her best, most encouraging smiles.

He laughed, as he always had, like it couldn’t be true but that he was glad she’d said something. “Hey, Sal?”

Another whole-hearted smile. “Yeah?”

“I think you’ve got some lipstick on your tooth.”

It didn’t bother Sal how she looked in Willoughby’s presence.  He was too familiar for that. All the same, blood shot to her face and shame – though she was unsure why – flooded to her fingertips. She growled savagely and swiped at her teeth.

“It’s probably because,” she protested, “I put it on in a dark cab with an impertinent driver looking on.”

Willoughby tossed his head, laughing the old laugh that forgot itself. “C’mon, goober. Let’s dance.”

He tugged her out to the floor and she followed, slipping past a young woman in evening dress who had stepped to the front of the band to sing. Willoughby looked back to smile at the girl appreciatively. Sal laughed in his face.

“What about her, Wills?”

His eyebrows shot up. “You’re not suggesting I pick up a chorus girl?”

“She’s an entertainer, and a looker to boot.”

“You’re horrible, Sal.”

She shrugged, pleased with herself. “I know.”

The band played a slow, bluesy tune and Willoughby’s arm fit easily around her waist. She was pleased for a slower pace and glad it wasn’t a waltz – her left arm always ached from reaching up over his Alpine shoulder. The room darkened and what lights there were focused on the singer, who smiled a little sadly and slipped into the first lines of a bittersweet, familiar tune.

“I can see no matter how near you’ll be you’ll never belong to me,” the girl sang. “But I can dream, can’t I?”

Her voice was devastating. Tears pinched the bridge of Sal’s nose, unreasonably she felt. Why the heck was she crying? What about? Nothing. Besides, Willoughby always hated that sort of thing.

He continued to lead well. Hadn’t seemed to notice her sudden depression. Bless the man’s obliviousness. Sal sorted through a stack of conversation-starters she might use to distract from this unwanted emotion. She could tease Willoughby again about the entertainer, or suggest he cut his hair differently, or admit to being as tired as she suddenly felt. If she employed the latter excuse, he’d take her gently to one of the cocktail tables lining the walls. He was that sort. A good sort.

“Can’t I pretend that I’m locked in the bend of your embrace?” the woman sang. “For dreams are just like wine and I am drunk with mine.”

Sal’s breath caught like a half-sob in her throat. Good heavens, woman. Collect yourself. Willoughby was humming along now. She felt his deep voice thrum against her palm which rested on his back, and at the next line he broke softly into song, keeping company with the entertainer:

His smile reached deep into his eyes, deprecating even the moment, apologizing for things that could not have been his fault.  “I’m aware my heart is a sad affair. There’s much delusion there but I can dream, can’t I?”

Smile. Say something flippant, but Willoughby spun three times and the opportunity dropped someplace on the floor between them. The bridge of Sal’s nose hurt worse than ever and now her throat was tangled up in the trouble, asking to air-drop an embarrassing cargo of tears.

“Can’t I adore you although we are oceans apart?” Willoughby would sing. “I can’t make you open your heart but I can dream, can’t I? Dream on, dream on…”

The song finished on a sorrowful note. People were applauding for the songstress and Sal joined blindly in. She wasn’t so far gone as to forget what a beautiful moment the silk-clad, sparkling girl had given her.  Then, before she’d had a chance to shirk the memory and let it fade, the band-leader grinned and jerked into “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

It jarred against her emotions like fingernails on old stone. Great. The Moment was now cemented in her heart forever by an incongruous set-list. No laughing it off now. As suddenly as Willoughby’s rich mood had dropped upon him it wisped away and he was his old, half-contrary self: a boy’s face and a man’s loyalty draped over six and a half feet of clumsy, good intentions.

“He’s in the army now blowin’ reveille, he’s the boogie-woogie bugle boy of Company B,” they sang together.

Willoughby bobbed his shoulders up and down like a simpleton. “They made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam. It really brought him down because he couldn’t jam…and now the company jumps when he plays reveille, he’s the boogie-woogie bugle boy of Company B.”

They finished with a deep dip and Willoughby half-dropped Sal. She squeaked and clung to his arms.

“Don’t drop me!”

Cackling, he lifted her back on her feet. “Just trying to shake that glum look off you. Shoot straight with me now, little Sal.” He tucked his chin and looked stern. “There’s a fella overseas, isn’t there?”

“Now what makes you think –”

They sauntered toward the bar. Willoughby motioned for two glasses of water. “Your face a minute ago. I can read faces.”

“Mmm.” She leaned against the counter. “You’d be a lot smarter if you learned to read books.”

“Ouch. What’s his name?”

“Whose?”

“The fellow.”

“Which fellow?”

“The one overseas.”

She sighed heavily. “Would it surprise you very much if I told you there isn’t one?”

“I’d be confused about your pouty-face.”

“Confusion is yours.”

Willoughby downed his water and viewed her a moment through the bottom of the glass. He set it down on the counter with a careless clack.

“Tell Dorcas I said hello.”

Sal jumped a little, then laughed. Dorcas with her sudden inability to remember any commitment, her protests when teased, her piled-on apologies, assurances of how sorry she was she’d left Sal – again – to her own company. Dorcas with her hideously perfect boyfriend.

“I hate this,” Sal admitted.

Willoughby flung an eyebrow upward. “What?”

“This annoying realization.”

“Which one?”

“That the cabby was right. It already doesn’t matter.”

And because Willoughby understood her so well, he didn’t immediately inquire what cabby. The twenty-piece band, the soundtrack of their incongruent lives, struck up another tune.

“You know what, Sal?” The wry brother-smile.

“What?”

“I say swing it.”

And really, put that way, his was the best logic in the world.

A Verbal Self-Portrait

Hello, ducks! I went a creative route with the Description of Moi so that I could set up a scenario in which someone (I chose a man) was doing the describing. I find that having a set of eyes through which to see the character helps color the actual description. You know? So today you are seeing me through the eyes of a man sent to observe and describe me to someone else. This is, of course, a purely fictional occasion, but it is quite the truth. Hope you enjoy it. :)

(an actual picture of me in action, though less sparkly than usual)

What was she like? She struck one as being monstrously alive. That impatient toss of side-swept bangs, the inviting laughter spilled from one sentence into the next.. He'd been asked to describe her carefully. Easily requested, harder to fill. Her eyes might have been any color they were so caught up in her smile but he thought they were light. Light what? Green, gray, blue? Did she even know? As for pretty, he supposed she was in her comfortable way: generously curved in all the right places. Too curved in some. Womanly. Pleasing. In possession of all the required normal features in rather normal quantities and style. Brown hair bounced around her shoulders, got whisked to one side then the other as she spoke. Natural waves. Not uniform at all.

He drained his glass, glanced away as she shot an inquiry at him, and returned to studying her when she'd got distracted again. No, a million girls could fit the physical description: a stylish, plump brunette of middling height, moon-eyes, cracking grin. It spoke nothing of her. One didn't notice any of these things when she talked, and had he ever seen her stop in her ceaseless revolutions from group to group, caught in the bokeh-effect of her own light? He couldn't remember. She always talked. Talked with her whole body. Her head made as many motions as her hands. Her eyes expressed even more than her laughter. And when she was especially happy, she rocked her hips side-to-side, perfectly unconscious of the gentle swaying. She noticed his studying, flashed the moon-eyes just once, and hurried on with her next statement which, like them all, would be of a different tone than anyone else's. Shyness. There were bits of it still in her. Bits that turned her cheeks just a few shades lighter than her reckless lipstick.

He laughed at her, giving in, and was rewarded with a second moon-flash. He'd lost the battle; his laughter was probably what she'd wanted all along. But he'd given in to a worthy foe. After all, her whimsical charm was notoriously hard to resist, even for the most well-regulated of logical minds.

Write Yo-self.

I'm issuing a challenge today, born out of this thought I found on Pinterest:

Because I do wonder, I'm going to write that passage, and challenge the rest of you to write it as well. Write a description of yourself as found in a novel and post it on your blog in the next few days. Mine will be up tomorrow, and I hope you'll join me. Nothing like using a live model for a character sketch, and if one uses oneself, the risk of offending the model is little to none. ;)

As far as updates go, I've fixed all the glitches in the domain-switchover except the follower-block. Still working on fixing that up and figuring out just where it went wrong after following advice found on the Blogger forums hasn't quite played out. Writing-wise I'm in a flurry to finish polishing The Fox Went Out and send it into Narrative before the March 31st deadline, after which I will continue writing Scotch'd the Snakes. May I recommend never adding a lisp you intend to take out? One misses so many places when removing it. Elisabeth Foley has been more than helpful in suggesting edits and in return, I am (I get to) read the first half of her novel for children, The Summer Country. There are pros to asking for help, because often people will ask for help back, and then you get to read things the general populace does not. And in the realm of reading, I've got Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers in the works for light reading as well as Flannery O'Connor's Mystery & Manners for heftier stuff.

So, off with you! Describe yourself in a short passage as if you had found your likeness in a novel, and leave a link in the comments below if you'd like me to read it. I can't wait to see who will take the challenge. At any rate, I'm taking it and my word-portrait will be posted tomorrow. Be brave. Be kind. Be true. Till tomorrow, then!

Copper, Like Everything

When I'm between stories, I tend to write a lot of flash-fiction. Really, I like this stage. It gives me the opportunity to write in different styles and follow characters only so far as I want to follow them. This time, I have something odd for you. I don't even really know what it means, only that it was inspired by a new worker at the Starbucks near us whom I describe (in the physical sense) honestly. I assigned him a unique personality, gave him a tattoo, changed my personality, and invented a conversation between the results. Also, every idea in my writing life begins with flash-fiction about coffee. Fly Away Home? Coffee. Anon, Sir, Anon? Coffee. I'm not promising anything or even predicting. I'm only saying. Enjoy.

//pinterest//

The man behind the counter--who was he?

Revelation came like hail: unexpected and with the sound of thunder. Outside, a deluge thrashed the parking lot.

He looked like Ishmael. The Moby Dick protagonist. Or, if you preferred it, like Ishmael’s ginger counterpart.

When he handed her drink across the counter, she wanted desperately to say, “Have you ever been whaling?” but to her shy nature that sounded like some odd sort of come-on: something she wished fervently to avoid. Instead, she murmured a thank-you and took her coffee to a nearby table. She had only ten minutes and that she would spend studying the Ishmael who wore the name “Levi”.

It was not difficult to watch him, though the workspace was crowded with his fellow baristas. He was too tall and thin a figure to lose even in a mist. So tall and thin and straight that he reminded her precisely of a mast. Even his face had that wooden peg look, striking one across the face when aided by the baldness of his crown and the curly red beard fringing it beneath. But he was young. Paradoxically young and weathered as only a man who has grown up on an ocean swell can be.

She sipped her mocha and tasted seawater. No, the flavor was salted caramel and she only projected the briny association. Still, when the man named Levi approached her table and wiped it down with a clean white cloth, she held herself very small and very quiet in the largeness of that silent question: “Who are you?”

She might ask if she was very bold and cared less about the fact that she was the only customer in the shop. But she was not very bold--not in that way.

Levi slid his cloth across the polished table and swung to the opposite side with a sailor's sure-footed gait. Stubbornly, she kept her lashes cast down, focused on a book she was not reading and the unintelligible mark he had scrawled on the side of her paper cup.

He paused and she shifted her eyes. Not a lot, but enough that she caught the tight angles of his muscular arm and the peculiar color of his skin. It was not pale as one might expect from a ginger, but beard-colored. His beard-colored. Copper, yet not. Too faded to make a true auburn--and who had auburn skin? No, the sun had darkened his arms and bleached his beard till they were equal shades of a nameless, ruddy gold.

“Excuse me.” The voice belonging to Levi rumpled the smooth air between them and startled her gaze to standing position. There, she met his eyes and it was to the credit of her nerves that she did not flinch. For his eyes were matched to the rest of him: guarded, golden, sun-smirched.

“May I clean your table?” he asked.

“Yes.” She felt a disquieting sensation that if he was Ishmael, he had scented a whale. And who was the whale in this analogy? There was a rough familiarity in his look that unsettled her.

Slowly, she moved to let him pass his white cloth over the already-clean surface. His palm quietened between her hands and her book and he waited.

Finally, she felt compelled to speak. “Yes?” Still not looking.

“You love ships, don’t you?” And the odd thing was, his voice so near sounded like the sizzling foam of a wave as it licks back to sea.

How could he know she loved ships? How could he know so specifically it was ships and not the ocean itself that held a match to her gypsy-candle heart? For indeed, she respected the ocean with an awe approaching fear and could not quite love it. How did he know that, or anything at all?

Seeming to understand he had spooked her, Levi bent his orange-rind elbows and stood his wooden face to her angle and she could not avoid the meeting.

“How long since you tasted sea air?”

The flavors of mocha and pink salt warmed her tongue. Who was he, this man who conjured waves with his antiquated words?

“Too long,” she confessed. Then, “How?”

“Your eyes are an ocean.” This was no flirtation. “And you steer by a star.” He turned his arm outward a fraction and there, crossing the blue veins like lines of longitude and latitude on the charts she loved so well, was a peculiar tattoo in copper ink, shaped like a compass-star.

She dared not meet again those eyes that saw too much and told too little with their metallic probing. “Who are you?”

He swirled his cloth in the space between her hands. The tendons beneath the tattooed star shifted with the colors of an unquiet sea. “I am like you.”

A reply came, though her mind screamed that it was long-since time to leave this moment: “And what am I?”

“A brave, lone ship seeking a lone white whale. What your white whale might be, oh, I couldn’t guess, but you are consumed with the finding of it. As am I.”

“As everyone is,” she protested, not wanting to be linked in any way with this strange being.

“Ahhh, no.” Levi smacked the table too suddenly and unfurled his full, stiff height. She could not help that he pulled her gaze upright with him and pinned it on his face.

“Not all are as we,” he said, far too loudly for privacy’s sake. “Will you find your whale? I wonder.”

“Quiet, would you?” In her death-grip concern that he might vanish like a nightmare without explaining himself, she grabbed the star-drawn wrist. His skin under her fingers lavished heat like summer sand. “Who are you?”

“I am Levi.”

“But what do you mean?” she half-sobbed in an outraged whisper.

A smile on his face fit as strangely as a smile would on a ship’s wheel. Carven, unnatural, almost macabre. “I am what October means when it rears scarlet against the parchment year. I am what the road means when you’ve been home too long. I am what the sea means when it whispers, ‘come away.’”

Thoroughly frightened, she released him and saw the pale circles pressed by her fingertips into his skin.

“Furthermore,” he said, backing away and swinging his cloth with that meaningless smile, “I am what you mean when you stare at me so. I am,” he finished with that tone like the end of a wave, “boundless curiosity. The real question would be, what are you?” He winked one copper eye in his copper-mast face and returned to his duties behind the counter.

She stood without feeling anything and turned with her drink to face the rain-streaked door. It was past time to go. Raising the cup to her lips, she paused, seeing again what Levi had scrawled. On the side of the cup, suddenly legible, was a symbol, not letters. Not meant to be read, but noticed: the sailing-star and a trail of water behind.

Copper, like everything.

The Rain-People

In Romania, we spent a happy hour in the top floor of Betel Biserica Baptista, watching people in the rain ...

   Sitting up there, it seemed we were demigods. The people below--the old woman with a black kerchief tied under her chin, the Orthodox priest, the teenagers--were unaware of the onlookers as the rain began.
   We opened the screenless windows and stretched our hands into the play of the rain. Rain, we knew. Rain was neither American, nor Romanian, nor Russian nor Chinese. Rain was home, whomever you were. The rich scent of it pressed into our faces as we leaned out the fifth-story window and laughed at the bits of humanity, small and significant under our outstretched palms.
   Most of the crowd shifted from one foot to the next and seemed to ignore the rain; one or two people looked up and shrugged. Looked up,but not up enough to notice us and we were glad. Anonymity suited our mood because we were not ready to meet more people whom we would have to bid goodbye. No one thought that clearly, however; we all just wanted a show and a silent seat in an opera box.

   A tram scooped half the crowd into its shovel-mouth and shuttled off to another street, another stop, another priest hearing thunder and crossing himself for safekeeping.
   A boy opened a green tin gate and a pair of breedless terrier-things pelted after an old man with a white beard who had passed that way. The boy gave chase. His mother pursued.
    The rain, by now, was tremendous.

   Another tram: hiss, scoop, shuttle-shiver and the street was empty. An incoming deposit of tram-riders was received to the drumming of a million raindrops. A million was not too many. Two, three million, and still there were drops uncounted.
    Shirtless, a muscular young man darted from the tram into a doorstep crowded with damp humans. He laughed, shook rain from his bare shoulders, and pulled a dry shirt over his head. We laughed high above the street.
   This group dispersed in pairs and singles like damp ads peeling from a wet cement wall and the bare-chested man jogged down the street beside a stranger or a friend--it little mattered; a thorough soaking is as good a bond as any for forming quick attachments.

   By and by, hail mixed in with the rain and the thunder grew ravenous as a blood-hungry lioness. We leaned further into the glory and caught the hail. Some of us ate it and were happy to have known what sky-ice tastes of beyond the Atlantic. Ferocious now, wind thrashed our street with a whip of braided rain. Lightning and thunder kept precarious time and we marveled at the unconcern of the little old lady with her great big purse and a drenched trio crossing over our way.
   Gleefully, we watched as they missed a shallow crossing and plunged ankle depth into a rushing run-off. It was funny to us and stayed so because the trio laughed among themselves and did not seem to mind.

   If ever a wild rain had rained, this was the occasion, for it seemed the drops were contesting in girth and speed to see who might claim superiority.

  The soaked, cloth-plastered woman on our corner crossed to the other and took refuge in a window-ledge where she stayed with a cur-dog for company. Unmoved by their mutual plight, the dog slunk away to play road-kill in the afternoon traffic. A moment, and the woman made a dash for the green tin gate, only to meet water to her calves. She dragged out of the river one shoe at a time and adopted a soggy course town-ward, defeated in the art of staying remotely dry.
   From below us, an old man with a sock fitted over one hand walked away and we wondered why he obscured his fist from everyone's sight.

   Traffic dwindled, rain slackened, and another old gentleman--patient, slow--toddled down the cobbles. His umbrella had played games with the wind and bent like a cup, filling itself from the downpour. Nothing is more frustrating than an umbrella that does the opposite of keeping one dry, but this old man took a philosophical view of the misfortune: one spine at a time, he turned his umbrella right-side out and a gentle, satisfied smile sat on his face.
 
 Then off he went--patient, slow--and we watched him behind our curtain of rain.

Character Pieces: Starling

Now that I am in town for a few weeks I have been working hard at my non-fiction project. I find, however, that I feel stunted if I'm not working on my novels. And when it gets down to bare basics, I'm a child at heart and I can't help but write children's stories. That's why The Baby (Thrice Removed) is getting more space and time than the other projects I had going on. In an attempt to get to know the characters of The Baby, I looked up some character-building writing exercises which I always enjoy but seldom actually do. I am planning on doing various Character Pieces to help familiarize you (and myself) with the cast of The Baby. I found a couple of really great ones that I hope to do later on, but the one I went with was:

In the First Person perspective, write a scene of the first hour of your character's day.

The character I chose for this exercise is one you've not met yet. One neat bit of trivia about this novel is that at least three or four of the characters are built off of two particular dreams I had that were peculiarly vivid and that made me think at the time, "Gosh, they need a story." Today you get to meet Starling. Her dream was one of the strangest dreams I've had yet. All I know is that I was going down through a peculiar castle that was all twisty and odd and I ended up in a cobbled kitchen with bookshelves that looked terribly unsteady and leaned out from the walls. There was a queer mess of dirty dishes, pots and pans, stacks of teacups, and books on the shelves, and sitting in a pile of rags with an absorbed determined look on her face was a girl of about fourteen. She had very little time to spare for me because she wouldn't leave off running her finger up and down the pages of a book, trying to teach herself how to read. She didn't know how in the world to begin and she was frustrated almost to tears, but the creature was determined. Somehow she was having to cram lessons in to odd cracks because she wasn't supposed to be learning how to read. I don't recall what my purpose was in the dream and it had no conclusive end. All I know is that is how Starling was born.

source // The Baby pinterest board

In looks, Starling is stunted. Think Young Cosette advanced six or eight years. Her costume in the dream was very very similar, and she was "all over with smuts". As I learned, she's an under under undermaid and is a terribly obscure but eventually important piece of the Castle of Crissendumm. Anyway. I just started writing with that exercise, and I've posted the bit here so you can all get to know Starling:

I dreamed I was not a under-under-under maid any longer, but a princess. I had a nose that turned up in a delicate point and a dress that crinkled when I walked, and long golden hair.

I was enjoying that dream.

“Thump.” Something hit me crack in the belly and the dream disappeared. I wasn’t a princess no longer. I was just me--Starling--and my stomach hurt. I screwed open one eye and saw Cook across the room. On my belly was Charlemagne, the cat. He’s fat and I’m puny--it hurt when Cook lobbed him at me like that.

“Get your lazy buns out of that bed, girl!”

I screwed both eyes shut, wishing the dream hadn’t gone away. I bet princesses didn’t get a cat in the belly every morning. Charlemagne was tired of just sitting there and decided to help Cook wake  me up by pushing on my cheeks with his claws out.

“Owgeroff!” His fur muffled my protest and I scrambled up in bed, shoving him off the edge with my blanket and put a hand to my cheek. It came away with little streaks of blood.

“Ain’t there a law ‘gainst Child Aboose?” I asked.

“Child Abuse?” Cook’s  face twisted in her ‘You Stupid Oaf” look. “Of course there’s a law ‘gainst it.”

“Then I ought to tell someone you beat me,” I said, trying to remember if I was in trouble with any of the constables and if so, who I’d tell instead.

Cook’s face was very red and I bet she had been drinking all the cream off my milk again. “I don’t beat you.”

“You throw cats at me,” I said.

“That’s hardly what you might call beating.”

I rolled off the cot and pulled my flimsy petticoat off its hook, snagging the fabric and widening the tear. I looked at Cook through the hole. “So it ain’t beating. But it hurts all the same.”

“An’ well it should if you’re such a lazy clot.” She flopped onto my nail-keg and it disappeared under her. Her fat little legs stuck out on either side and she swung them till she looked very much like one of the black beetles I turn on their backside while sweepin’ the hearth.

“I like this room,” she said after a bit. Her eyes were roving around and looking at everything and my fingers shook so I couldn’t do my buttons. She might see my Letters.

I cinched the rag of an apron around my waist. I could pull it tighter each day and I didn’t even have to wear a corset--when you’re fed off of crumbs and dribbles you’re never what they call Plump. “‘Course you like it,” I mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“OF COURSE you like it,” I said, and shoved the board I used for a shutter away from the tiny window. Early light seeped into the room and puddled on the floor, making a safe wall between me and Cook. “Know why you like it? ‘‘cause it’s mine and you don’t like me to have anything nice.”

Cook lumbered up from the nail-keg, for all the world like a great, heaving cow and the red in her face started to mix with bits of purple. “What are you sayin’?” She crossed the floor and came up evil-close to me.

I filled my lungs with breath and held it a moment, then it let it out, choosing my words with care. “I’m sayin’ you’re a mean, cross old woman and you’re jealous of an undermaid’s undermaid’s undermaid.” I folded my arms across my flat chest and glared at her. Later I’d pay for my words and then I might care, but for now I liked just looking at the old fool and watching her fish around for words like an overfed pigeon in a worm-garden.

“Starling-chit,” She grinned a grin like Charlemagne’s after catching a mouse, and fidgeted with the strings of her veskit. “This room is my room now. You’ll sleep in the dairy-house tonight.” With a sniff she whipped out of the room and left me half-dressed, starin’ after her.

I weren’t so very worried--I was joggled from place to place every couple of weeks because somehow Cook always liked where I slept best. The dairy was a new thing, but maybe after a few weeks she’d want to trade places again, and that heifer would finally be where she belonged. I stuffed my straw-colored hair into my cap and--after being sure no one looked on--took the Announcement from its hiding place and puzzled over the symbols that I prayed would someday make words for me.

The many faces of Wade Barnett

In the past weeks you have seen a lot of Fly Away Home. It is the project I am working on most consistently, and I've been able to put at least 1,000 words into it each time I sit down. {Which has been pretty much every day!} Thus it is nearly the 40k word-mark which is pretty good! I already know that this story won't stretch out much more than 55-60k words--it is not meant to be a hefty, serious novel. But though you've gotten to know Callie, and though you've heard a lot about her boss, you don't know him that well as himself. I am going to remedy that today.

At first glance, Callie and I thought Mr. Barnett was just an old-fashioned goose who happened to be famous.

After all, he doesn't approve of and hardly understands Callie's ideal of a successful woman. To him, success is entirely based upon merit. He even looks down on his own fame as being a whim of society, and something he really doesn't care two pins about. He is easily pleased and has some idiosyncracies of his own, like having not one, but two files marked "Things That Make Me Smile" and include items like "blueberry pie," "feeding pigeons in the park," and more. He is rather considerate than otherwise, and is ever eager to be of use.

Just that description alone would make a nice, lovable character, but for me it was too one-dimensional. So Mr. Barnett is just a stick-in-the-mud, albeit a charming one? 

Nope.

There is a downright alluring side to Mr. Barnett that is a bit scheming, a bit roguish, and a lot smart. Of course he means well, but he can play the antagonist on occasion. He bosses Callie around about what she ought to wear, and gives her frank opinions of everything--even when she doesn't ask for it. He's always poking at Callie, trying to whip her into a froth so that:

"...think about tonight from a professional perspective: Nalia loved you. Our little tiff has earned you a new friend already. If we both continue on clever as you please, our little partnership will take off in no time.”

“It sounds an awful lot like a set-up,” I said. “Still…it might be fun.”

“Might be fun? By Jove, Callie! To see your eyebrow arching higher with every jab and to see you parrying each thrust like a master swordswoman—anyone in Society would pay good cash to see a match like that. We’ll sell the act, Cal.”

The more conversation Callie and I have with him, the more I realize there's a tiger beneath the faded brown coat. 

Wade Barnett is not a bit absentminded. In fact, he's more alive to the moment and more in tune with the heartbeat of Society than most anyone out there. It's that very thing that makes him such a cool guy. He's got the observation of Sherlock Holmes, the decency of Mr. Knightley, and the wit of Benedick.

He trusts Callie, which is also a thing that could perhaps be his downfall {no promises here} and feels comfortable in her presence. At first he was all courtliness, but the farther we get in the book the more he walks with his hat tipped back and his hands in his pockets. He starts to drop "Miss Harper" and takes up "Callie" as a more natural form of address, though he's not bold enough to call her "Cal." At the same time that they strike sparks from one another and are definitely attracted to one another, he doesn't let her forget that he's the teacher and she's his pupil. Vexing for Callie, but one of the reasons I like Mr. Barnett so much. 

        Mr. Barnett roused me from my brown study with a rap of his knuckles against my arm. “We’re here. Now remember what I told you. Be charming and engaging—like you did at the club last night—but keep your eye and ears open. Take notes on what they do tell you, but also on what they don’t. You must learn to tune your ear to suggestion and to ferret out the cause of that suggestiveness. But whatever you do, don’t be pushy.”

He has no false ideas about anything, including a relationship. He's not so blinded by Callie's wit and charm that he fails to see her bad points. He knows she's naive and not well-trained so he sets about fixing that at the same time he is relying on her. Wade Barnett is not a perfect man and he doesn't boast to be. But he is a veteran in the field of journalism and a man well-accustomed to the world. He has strong values that he is immovable on, but he's tactful and considerate of everyone.

One of my favorite tasks in writing the relationship between Calida Harper and Wade Barnett has been getting to show that they don't take themselves seriously. They are ever exchanging barbed insults that would kill other people but merely give each other amusement. There's a constant give and take in their relationship that makes for a really interesting science experiment at moments. Sometimes he's almost tender, others he and Callie spar like alley-cats. When I started Fly Away Home and realized what sort of book it would be, I challenged myself to write a character I could fall in love with...

...Mr. Barnett...you've gained my undying devotion.

the cultivation of vanity.

Calida Harper is a mess. But I love her. She's complicated (to say the least), she's insecure, and she never quite knows how to react in a given situation. She has emotional issues leftover from her father abandoning their family when she was a very little girl, she has twisted ideas of success and glory, and she's a perfect basket-case.
But I find that Callie is one of the easiest-to-write characters I've ever created. Because despite all this, the one thing Callie has going for her is a big personality. She's winsome and insecure, frightened, and quaint. And her voice is so distinct that I find the character is really speaking...I'm not speaking for the character. (It does help that Fly Away Home is written in first-person.) Though I'm not a big fan of First Person Present Tense, (i.e. I come in and see that Mr. Barnett is sitting at my desk. "Great," I think, "Now I'm in for it.) I do find that one can get a sense of identification with the character quicker--if written properly--than the usual third-person narrative.

Of course third-person narrative gives you a bit more option as far as POV goes. You can switch from character to character (only one per scene, mind you) whereas in First Person that's a little trickier.
My favorite part of writing in First Person are the clues you can drop as to your protagonist's whole view on life...it's a much more intimate acquaintance with a character--being inside their head:

" 'What will I wear?' If I was like any other woman I would have asked the question of my sister or my best friend or my hairdresser…but my only sibling was dead, I didn’t have friends, and I was scared to death of the German woman who trimmed my hair." 

In just a few short lines you learn a lot about Callie...her mental voice, the fact that she's an only child now, she is lonely, and she has a good sense of humor. This technique is harder to accomplish (I think) when using third-person. Therefore any writer who can accomplish an intimate acquaintance with a character using third-person has my respect. I do use third-person narrative often in my own stories (The Scarlet Gypsy Song, Scuppernong Days, Cottleston Pie) but I knew when I began Fly Away Home that the only way to write Calida Harper was to give her the full stage.
Callie sees the world through a wry, half-smile. She's got a great sense of humor that comes out with her head cocked to one side. I love her so much.

"I was going to have to start scoring some vanity-points. I was in the habit of cultivating a good opinion of myself much as the average housewife is in the habit of cultivating ferns and geraniums and other plants on her windowsill. Recently we’d been in a drought in that category—my battered pride couldn’t take much more of this."

Yes she's vain and she has her faults, but the lovely thing about Callie is that she knows it and she's able to laugh at herself after the storm's over. :) It's a privilege getting so close to a character, and I am enjoying every moment of my time with Callie.

Which style of narrative do you write? What are the pros/cons of it?