Postaday for January 18th: Pleased to Meet You. Write a post in which the protagonists of two different books or movies meet for the first time. How do they react to each other? Do they get along?
It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday. Paul, the real estate novelist, is pounding away at his keyboard, furiously. He knows better than to used adverbs like “furiously,” but he can’t help it. He hasn’t sold a house in several months. Or were it years. Music, ignored, pours out of speakers on either side of his computer screen. 20 plus years of collected MP3, and iTune set on random. He hears none of it.
His fingers are sore. He doesn’t care. His back is sore. He doesn’t even feel it. Words pop up in staccato as his slow word processor tries to keep up with his rat-a-tat keyboard stabbing. But Paul’s eyes are in between keyboard and screen. He’s composing. He’s decomposing.
A knock on his door. Paul writes, “he gets up and answers it.”
Light from the hallway haloes a figure in an evening gown, crowned in roses. She says, “What am I doing here?”
Paul’s eyes adjust to the light. A woman, mid-twenties, sandy-blond here, chubby cheeks, bright eyes. Half a smile on her face. She looks confused but not uncomfortable. She looks real but not substantial. Paul tries to concentrate. Glances back at the computer screen.
“Um,” he says. He half turns, half points at his computer. “Um,” he says again.
She brushes past him. “My name’s Heather, right?” she says. And walks past him. She sits down on a huge overstuffed chair. Her sash reads “Miss Rhode Island” which becomes unreadable when she sits.
“Uh, yes. That is, no.” Paul says “Your name’s actually Cheryl.” He walks back into the room, sits on his computer chair, glances at his screen, focuses on the part where he’s written “Cheryl Frasier.”
“Frasier,” she says, and smiles. “Oh, that’s a nice name.”
Paul smiles back. “Thanks! I mean, well, it’s your name. I like it too.” He looks at her for a moment or two. He never had time for a wife. Most Saturdays at nine finds him in bar, talking to Davy, who’s still in the Navy, and has been since 1973.
“1973?” She says. “That’s two years before I was born!”
Paul gives her a quizzical look. He doesn’t like that he’s used a trite phrase like “quizzical look,” but at least it’s better than “he looked at her quizzically.” He turns to the keyboard. How did she—
“Ooh, what’s this song?” she says, jumping up and leaning over his back. She smells like flowers, sweet, yellow, and just a hint of something else… he can edit that in later, maybe.
Paul reaches for the mouse to show her the song is Burning Down the House by The Talking Heads. Before he can click away from the word processor, She giggles. “Burning Down the House,” she says. “I was ten when that song came out.”
Paul spins the chair to face her. She smiles down at him, the look on her eyes enveloping, trusting. He says “Well, Heather Burns was 10 when this song came out. You would have been somewhere between 7 and 13.”
She sits in his lap. Puts her arms around him. “I think I like you.”
Paul rest his head on the “Miss” of her sash. They hum along to the rest of the song together. Then the writer stops before the next song comes on, because he’s afraid of what it might mean for them.