>>> Item number 12474 from WRITERS LOG9305B --- (211 records) ---- <<< Date: Fri, 14 May 1993 10:42:37 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: SUB: The Fairy and The Nymph - A Love Story I'm still working on this, but I thought I'd get your impressions and comments while I still can. Any suggestions as to where to market something like this? Wonder if the gothic horror folks would take it - it has that flavor, even though there isn't a brokedown castle anywhere in sight... hum - are the little editorial summaries too intrusive? Also, in several places I give away what's going to happen to the reader _before_ describing it in the scene or having the characters catch on. Do these "reverse hooks" work? (i.e. do they keep your interest or ruin it?) (jan - you want to rewrite the female dialogue so it rings true? or did I do better this time?) (tink insists that the announcer should preface this by saying the piece was composed for skin flute and gut violins. That's mere vulgar punnery. Pray ignore it:-) [enough. enjoy!] mike -------------------------------------- The Fairy and The Nymph - A Love Story m. barker May, 1993 1719 words Bob arrived early, and looked around the room. He noticed the man at the bar, the way he sat on the stool, and the glance thrown over his shoulder. Bob turned away, grimaced, and sat at a table. He ordered a beer while he waited and stared at the doorway. Gretta stepped inside and blinked. She tossed her head, sending blonde locks back in place, then reached up and stroked the curl at her forehead with her thumb. He stood and waved. She smiled, the blonde goddess firmly in control, evidently joyful at finding the person she was looking for. Three other men in the bar dropped their eyes, picked up drinks, and sipped. Someone else would come in sooner or later. She walked to the table, and he went around and pulled the chair back. Her hip brushed his hand as she sat. He pushed the chair in, then went back around to the other side of the table and sat down. "You are Bob, right?" He nodded. "And you must be Gretta. I've heard quite a bit about you from our friends." She laughed and laid her hand on the table. "I hope they didn't tell you everything. We won't have anything left to talk about." He laughed, then waved at the waiter. "What would you like to drink?" "Oh, a beer would be nice. But you don't have to sit so far away, you can sit over here." She patted the table in front of the seat beside her. He lifted his beer and swallowed, then set it down again and cupped it in his hands. "Well, Gretta, I wouldn't want you to think I'm pushing." Her beer arrived, and she turned her attention to it for a few moments. He studied her as she drank. As she set the glass down, she caught his eye and wiggled a little in the chair. "I don't mind if you push a little." He coughed and glanced at the bar, then pulled his eyes away from the man on the stool. "Look, Gretta, I don't want to hurry you, but maybe we should go over to the restaurant now, before the crowd gets there." The fairy had a rounded stomach, jiggling along as he strode through the woods and valleys that he loved. His tan face and hairy forearms always seemed to glow whether he stood in front of a high school class introducing them to the mysteries of literature or showed young friends how to find sassafras. His private tastes ran to friends first met in the Navy, exploring exotic lonely islands together in the Pacific during the war. His name is Bob. The nymph was blonde, Scandanavian, lovely and tormented. She knew her tastes, driven again and again to slake the burning in secret, and yet her life was empty. Friends often wondered at the parade of men, seen in glimpses, for moments, just passing, never stopping. Still, she seemed so cool, so controlled in her life. Her name is Gretta. Friends suggested they meet. To avoid arguments, they agreed. In the car, she snuggled close. He took a deep breath, then suggested that she needed to give him room to shift. She moved back over toward the passenger side and looked at him. She stared at him while he drove. After several dates, they went camping together. He took her into the valleys and showed her the wild rabbits, a flashing glimpse of a fox, beds of strawberries unpicked. He fixed dinner from supplies he had carried and plants picked while they walked under the fall trees. The reds and browns glowed in the sunset, and the quiet peacefulness sighed all around their camp. The sassafras tea was a surprise for her, and they sipped it together, sniffing the delicate scent in the steam. The firelight was dying, the moon bright when he waved at the tent. "Which.. which side do you want?" She grinned and pressed his arm to her side. "I thought these sleeping bags zipped together. Isn't that what you want?" He could feel her trembling against his arm. He lifted her arm, pulled his arm away, then slid back a little. "Gretta, what.. what do you want from me?" She sat silently. "Gretta, I'm.. well, I'm just not the right man for you. I mean, I don't think I can.." She turned and looked at him. "Bob, I know I'm pushing. But maybe you don't understand. This, this is something that I need. If it isn't you, it will be somebody else. I know maybe you are shocked, but this is the way I am." "But.. Gretta, you don't understand. I'm homosexual." She started to laugh. "Really, Gretta, I am. I've never told another woman, but it's the truth." She stopped laughing for a minute. "Bob, listen to me. I'm a nymphomaniac. Now I know why they always say all the good ones are gay or married." He looked at the ground, at the sky, at her. "Did you ever wonder how many are both?" Their friends thought that this was a marriage made in heaven. Friends are often wrong. When Gretta came into the house and pushed the door shut with her foot, Bob was sitting in the kitchen and stood in time to catch her. He laid her on the kitchen floor and knelt, then got a washcloth and the first aid kit. "What's happened, Gretta? This one must have been.. God, Gretta, he was an animal. Why don't you stop seeing him and find another." He wiped the blood away from her eye. She gasped as he started to wipe her cheek, then bit her lip. "Gretta, it's almost as though the better our life together, the worse the men you're finding. Why?" She blinked and her eyes squeezed shut, her face paling. "I.. Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. It isn't you. I love our life together. I.. I love you. But I need.. I need someone to hurt me. And they are easy to find. Sometimes I feel as if they are just waiting for me to walk into the bar. Hold me, Bob. Hold me!" He took her into his arms, ignoring her jump when he pressed on her side as she crawled into his embrace. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked at the sunshine on the kitchen window. He turned his head and let the tears soak into her hair, smelling the sweat and feeling the slick oils matted against his cheek. She finally raised her head and smiled at him, her lip trembling. "Hey, did you know all the good ones are gay or married?" He bit his lip, then answered. "Yeah, but I'm both!" Then he helped her up and cleaned her up enough to go to the doctor. He came into the living room, frowning. Gretta was waiting, and looked up. "Bob, what is the matter? Problems with your friend after all these years?" He rubbed his right wrist with his left hand, then smiled at her. "Not really. He's.. I suppose he's jealous. He says I had more time for him before I got married." She sat forward. "Is it true? Do you need more time with him?" Bob shook his head. "No! I'm spending more time with him than we ever dared before. He just doesn't understand, that's all. I don't think he ever thought either of us would get married." She laid her magazine down, then smiled. "Tell him all the good ones are married, why don't you?" He laughed. "I did, and then proved to him that I'm both!" They went to art shows together, they laughed and read together at home, but even as they learned to care for each other, their life was torn. Knowing each other's secret, covering for each other, they tasted the bitterness growing. She left the day after a man she picked up in a bar broke her arm and took all her money, then left her lying in a motel room. She called and Bob went there in the middle of the night. He cleaned her up, paid for the room, took her to the emergency room, and brought her home. When he got back from school, she was sitting in the living room, her bag packed beside the sofa. She stood up, the white cast in a sling like a shout of pain against her pastel clothes. "Bob, I've got to go. I just can't keep living like this, and it hurts you." He dropped his briefcase and stepped forward. "Gretta, we can work this out. Somehow. But you have to stay. You have to." She shook her head, slowly. "No, Bob. You are good for me, and I think I really love you. But the better it is for me, well, you see. And I think soon one of them would kill me." Bob took a deep breath. Then he took another one. "I love you, Gretta. I really do. I don't think anyone could understand that, how I go to my Navy friend and you go out with men you meet in a bar, but it is our life, and I love you. So, yes, you had better leave. Just..just do it quickly, because I want to hold you so much." She picked up her bag and started toward the door. He pulled it open, then stepped away. She stopped in the doorway and whispered. "You know, it really is true, all the good ones are gay or married." He felt the tears starting, and his chest was tight, but he answered, "Yeah, and I'm so damn lucky, I'm both." She went outside. The door closed. Bob sat down. A year later, the fairy still sat, divorced, alone, ignoring electric shock treatments and pleading doctors at the Veteran's hospital psychiatric wing. The glow was dim, but sometimes he'd look at fall leaves, point across the valley and say, "That's a sassafras, you know. Good tea for pain." ------------------------------------------