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31_days2012-03-01 05:47 pm
treeflamingo.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2012-03-01 05:47 pm
[March 1] [Original] Weightless
Title: Weightless
Day/Theme: March 1 - us for the life romantic
Series: Original
Characters: a girl; Frederick
Rating: PG
Word Count: 800
A/N: Would anyone care to take a guess at the time period? I'm not sure I've been clear enough.
The days they spent in Key West slid by like heat haze steeped in spiced rum. She spent the morning hours beneath the palms which lay behind and just out of sight of the club house’s wide sprawling porch, rolling slowly in the coarse sand, browning her skin in dappled lines through the fronds. At lunch time Frederick would sneak out to her with pilfered club house food, swimming around the treacherous jut of stone which broke the soft beach, coming from the golf course side, the back eight, which was always abandoned at that time of day. She would unroll the blanket and they would eat and make love. She would swim with him for a while, and if young Timothy was on that day, they would float into the strange little divot in the rocks, a deep and tiny gully where the waters swirled down and out again, where they could both feel almost weightless, and she would wrap her legs around him and they would make love again. Timothy was a good sort of boy, terribly poor and brown, and he would tell all sorts of lies for Frederick, so long as he got his candy in return. The two never failed each other. Timothy got his candy every Sunday.
She slept through the afternoon, beneath the blanket, and as the sun turned to an orange half-disk in the water she would gather up her things – the large canvas bag with her books and her gown – and she would put on the linen muumuu with the hibiscus design – and walk the servants’ path up to the club house. The cook’s boy was sweet on her so she always got her dinners free – although Frederick paid a dime for his. She would rinse and coif and paint herself, and enter the stage just as the band finished tuning. When she was a girl, her father had told her she could sing a nightingale to sleep, or a bluebird to tears, or an owl awake in the middle of the day. These nights she sang until the men in the bar just hated the coins in their pockets. The women would call her things like dear heart, and ask her to let them dance, or cry. She would sing until her head swam with the drinks all the sad hopefuls had bought for her, and then she would call a break. She and Frederick would walk hand in hand down the green towards the beach, but she would always stop midway and collapse on the grass, saying she was too drunk to go any further. So they would lie for a while and stare at the stars and pretend that they hadn’t both abandoned everything they’d ever had, hadn’t run away penniless, just to be together. They’d pretend there’d never been anything of them before this, and that there’d never be anything afterward.
Then she’d go back to singing and Frederick would take a nap in the changing room, but he’d smile when she woke him up to walk home with her.
She didn’t tell him when she found out the doctors were wrong, that the accident with the horse when she was seventeen hadn’t been so dreadful after all, that she could have children. She didn’t tell him, because it was something they’d decided: for them, the life romantic.
Frederick didn’t tell her when he got the letter from his father, the frosty old badger, saying he’d fallen ill, and fallen to thinking, and that, if they’d come back north and act respectably, he would accept them both. Cut Frederick into the family business. Make amends with her family, even. Try to anyway. Vengeful sort of people, maybe it wouldn’t work, but every effort would be made. Verse in the Bible somewhere to that effect, certain your mother would know where.
(She found the letter while packing – after he’d shown her the train tickets – his father, the badger, had a veritable loathing for pronouns.)
The north was cold and the gowns stiff and she never got pregnant again. She had a feeling it had to do with the time of day. Frederick never came to her at lunchtime anymore.
His father’s secretary was quite ten years her junior, but his ambitions were the ancient ambitions of kings. She’d forced him to be very persuasive with her, and she hadn’t accepted again that old argument, that there’d be no repercussions anyhow. That had been Frederick’s argument; she would save it for him. But when he told her that in Las Vegas they could stay in bed together till noon and she could sing her heart out all night, she’d agreed.
She agreed, because it was something she’d decided: for her, the life romantic.
Day/Theme: March 1 - us for the life romantic
Series: Original
Characters: a girl; Frederick
Rating: PG
Word Count: 800
A/N: Would anyone care to take a guess at the time period? I'm not sure I've been clear enough.
The days they spent in Key West slid by like heat haze steeped in spiced rum. She spent the morning hours beneath the palms which lay behind and just out of sight of the club house’s wide sprawling porch, rolling slowly in the coarse sand, browning her skin in dappled lines through the fronds. At lunch time Frederick would sneak out to her with pilfered club house food, swimming around the treacherous jut of stone which broke the soft beach, coming from the golf course side, the back eight, which was always abandoned at that time of day. She would unroll the blanket and they would eat and make love. She would swim with him for a while, and if young Timothy was on that day, they would float into the strange little divot in the rocks, a deep and tiny gully where the waters swirled down and out again, where they could both feel almost weightless, and she would wrap her legs around him and they would make love again. Timothy was a good sort of boy, terribly poor and brown, and he would tell all sorts of lies for Frederick, so long as he got his candy in return. The two never failed each other. Timothy got his candy every Sunday.
She slept through the afternoon, beneath the blanket, and as the sun turned to an orange half-disk in the water she would gather up her things – the large canvas bag with her books and her gown – and she would put on the linen muumuu with the hibiscus design – and walk the servants’ path up to the club house. The cook’s boy was sweet on her so she always got her dinners free – although Frederick paid a dime for his. She would rinse and coif and paint herself, and enter the stage just as the band finished tuning. When she was a girl, her father had told her she could sing a nightingale to sleep, or a bluebird to tears, or an owl awake in the middle of the day. These nights she sang until the men in the bar just hated the coins in their pockets. The women would call her things like dear heart, and ask her to let them dance, or cry. She would sing until her head swam with the drinks all the sad hopefuls had bought for her, and then she would call a break. She and Frederick would walk hand in hand down the green towards the beach, but she would always stop midway and collapse on the grass, saying she was too drunk to go any further. So they would lie for a while and stare at the stars and pretend that they hadn’t both abandoned everything they’d ever had, hadn’t run away penniless, just to be together. They’d pretend there’d never been anything of them before this, and that there’d never be anything afterward.
Then she’d go back to singing and Frederick would take a nap in the changing room, but he’d smile when she woke him up to walk home with her.
She didn’t tell him when she found out the doctors were wrong, that the accident with the horse when she was seventeen hadn’t been so dreadful after all, that she could have children. She didn’t tell him, because it was something they’d decided: for them, the life romantic.
Frederick didn’t tell her when he got the letter from his father, the frosty old badger, saying he’d fallen ill, and fallen to thinking, and that, if they’d come back north and act respectably, he would accept them both. Cut Frederick into the family business. Make amends with her family, even. Try to anyway. Vengeful sort of people, maybe it wouldn’t work, but every effort would be made. Verse in the Bible somewhere to that effect, certain your mother would know where.
(She found the letter while packing – after he’d shown her the train tickets – his father, the badger, had a veritable loathing for pronouns.)
The north was cold and the gowns stiff and she never got pregnant again. She had a feeling it had to do with the time of day. Frederick never came to her at lunchtime anymore.
His father’s secretary was quite ten years her junior, but his ambitions were the ancient ambitions of kings. She’d forced him to be very persuasive with her, and she hadn’t accepted again that old argument, that there’d be no repercussions anyhow. That had been Frederick’s argument; she would save it for him. But when he told her that in Las Vegas they could stay in bed together till noon and she could sing her heart out all night, she’d agreed.
She agreed, because it was something she’d decided: for her, the life romantic.