one

I'm really not exactly sure what this is for yet.  So far, I think it is about reading and writing, but maybe also drinking.  I'll start with writing.  With this little story.

The Pink Tie With White Paisleys

He owned a menswear shop, and could think of nothing more appropriate to do during slow times than sit at the till and count money.  This is what he was doing when the door burst open and a woman, fifteen, twenty years younger than him stumbled in.  She was soaking wet, although the sun was shining and the streets were dry.  She stood up straight and looked around her.

            The shop was small but densely packed with suits, vests, ties, socks, hats, and shirts.  Bright pink paisleys; violet and baby blue stripes; red, yellow, and orange polka dots; plaids in pastel greens; and every shade of white, grey, and black beamed gently from the low-lit shelves.

            The shop was small but Edgar was proud to see this woman’s shining, wet face turn across the walls, her eyes alive.

            Suddenly, it was raining, and thunder shocked them both.  She jumped a bit and looked immediately to him.  She frowned, and took a few steps toward him.  He turned to a shelf of handkerchiefs behind him and took one, offered it to her.

            “For your face.”

            “Thank you.”  As she took it, she stopped, frozen completely.  In that moment, she reminded Edgar of a photograph he had once seen, taken long before he was born, of a nurse in the first world war, a French woman.  She had had blood all over her hands, and splattered over dark stains on her smock.  She was staring at the camera like it had shot her, and she had just realized that all that blood was hers.

            “Wet out.”  He nodded toward the window.

            “Edgar?”

            She spoke his name like she was afraid of it.  He put both hands on the counter.  He looked at her, but only recognized the expression she still wore, and that only from the photograph of the bloodied nurse.  He tried to remember.

            “Do I know you?”

            “Oh.”  She hesitated, her mouth open just enough to imply speech.  “No. Of course not.”  She stepped backwards, then forward, gave him the handkerchief back.

            “How do you know my name?”

            She turned toward the door, but saw the rain and turned back.  Her wet hair flicked across her shoulder and the rest tumbled, lock by lock, down the front her shirt.  Edgar watched in silence.

            She darted down a staircase under a sign for sale clothes and accessories.  Edgar stood at the counter for a few minutes.  A crash of thunder made him look to the window, where thick streams of water rolled down the glass amid the tiny, disordered splashes of drop after drop.  He put the unused handkerchief on the cash register and headed downstairs.

            The sale room was more dimly lit, the shelves and tables more laden with clothes.  Silver and gold cufflinks, tie bars, watches and money clips shone brightly, and the same rainbow of colors lined the walls.  The room smelled of leather – wallets, flasks, belts and gloves were piled on a table in the center of the room.

            The woman stood next to a wool tweed suit, her fingers in the inside breast pocket, her body turned away from Edgar.  On the other side of the room, a row of folded ties had fallen off of a table and pooled on the ground.  Edgar imagined the way they unfolded, like accordions, and fell one by one, their twinkling descents the only motion in the room.  He closed his eyes against the stillness.

            “Miss, did you knock these over?”  He accused her immediately, but did not know why.  She did not acknowledge his question, which suited him.  But she turned toward him, her hand still inside the jacket.  She stared at his eyes and never looked away from them.  She spoke clearly and confidently.

            “I want to buy this suit.  Don’t worry about the measurements; I want this exact one, off the hanger.  And those silver cufflinks, the little crosses in the purple box.  A white shirt, any one, and that tie.”  She pointed to the small body of ties at his feet.  Her voice lost its confidence, became like stuttering, splashing water.  “The pink one with white paisleys, on the left there, the wide end sticking up, the rest rising and rolling like a sea serpent.”

            Edgar looked at the ties, which did resemble a roiling sea.  Again, he was surprised by his own animosity. 

“I won’t sell you the suit without measuring.  Come back with measurements or a man to dress.”

            She stared at him, her long arm still extended, pointing at the tie.  After some time, she lowered her arm and took slow, halted steps backwards until she nearly tripped over the first stair.  She ran up and out the door.

            Edgar knelt next to the ties and started to pick them up.  The wind howled down the street, rattling the door against its frame.  He thought he heard sobbing and stopped, frozen with his hands on the ground beneath the sea of folded silk. 

The pink tie with white paisleys slithered over his hand, into his jacket sleeve.  It pulled itself up his arm, came out at the neck.  It licked at his throat, caressed his jaw.  He listened to the wind, and a blast of thunder that rolled down the street.  The pink tie with white paisleys hissed in his ear, and behind his tight shut eyes, he was a soldier, lying on a hospital bed, standing on a boat.  The pink tie with white paisleys wrapped loosely around his neck, over his eyes, and entered his mouth.  He stood still, a soldier on a boat in a tweed suit, being shot while she leaned into him, her fingers in his inside breast pocket.  He watched the woman’s bloodied hands pull a bullet from his chest.  He listened to the water.  He held her tight and tried to remember.

Hopefully, I will not just keep posting old work.  Eventually, I might actually write something new, and then it will (maybe) make it up here.

Thanks.  Seriously.