Prosing Again

I am studying hard for my competency exams, and am not able to take much time to write for myself. All of my novel manuscripts are off the back burners and into tupperware in the freezer until I can thaw them out, probably in several years. It breaks my heart. Fiction keeps my soul alive. I have posted fiction here before, and I'm stalled somewhere near the end of a story at Josephina's Northern Pig, so this will have to do. You will forgive me if I pause here for a moment and pull a strand from my head.

Also, my typewriter isn't working. Neither of them are, really, and since one of them is eighty years old, and the other is full of circuit boards, I can't do a thing about it. I have used my typewriter to brainstorm when I didn't want my ideas running around without leashes.

Clouds in My Coffee

Cheryl watched people, and knew another watcher on sight if not before, when the muscles between her shoulder blades twitched. The sharp, narrow man in the felt, wool, whatever, olive overcoat was not a watcher. He was a reader, which meant he wouldn't look up from his tablet computer until his smartphone rang, or his coffee chilled. His sling-bag hung diagonally across the back of the wooden stool, and the table in front of him was empty and clean. His eyes blinked over the screen, no hint of enjoyment or enthrallment. Perhaps he read a dry text in a subject he did not enjoy.

The large woman with the magenta-rinsed hair tapped her foot impatiently and watched too, but she only watched the door and would not look around unless she heard her name spoken by whomever met her. She tucked a purse next to the table's leg, and held it with her foot, nearly spilling something white and creamy onto her mandarin-red blouse. This early-evening rendezvous. . . girlfriend? Co-worker? Just for coffee? No, Cheryl decided it must be an internet date. How adorable. A first meeting. Perhaps they would be suitable, and Cheryl would see the overtures of a grande affaire. Things like this always require extra e's.

Bookstore patrons filed past, browsing games, souvenirs, gadgets, novelties. Shoppers were never watchers.

The Barista called another name, and the line shuffled forward towards the register as the one who had been called rose up from ignominy into brief celebrity, then faded back into a conversation with his attractive mate. They spoke in serious tones, nodding often at each-other and offering an uncomfortable amount of eye-contact, even for Cheryl. She blinked and looked away.

Two businessmen with suit jackets slung across their forearms stood and shook hands, then laughed as they walked together toward the door.

Cheryl leaned back in her seat, turned away from the walls and windows. She let her eyes wander, to swallow the room whole as the noise oozed from inside it, as if it were a jelly-filled pastry. She tapped a painted fingernail on the sleeve of her paper cup.

Her shoulders shifted behind her on the wall, and she narrowed her eyes. One of them. . . Ah. Yes. THIS was a fellow-watcher. Their eyes met across the dark-wood floor, and Cheryl's lip twitched upwards into a smug smile. The teenage boy nodded slightly, and stepped to the end of the order line, his eyes back under control before she could mistake attention for attraction.

Well, she thought as she raised her right index finger into a kind of wand, watch this.