She faced me three-quarters front, moving a lot on her chair, talking, gesturing, frequently bending - almost swooping - across the table towards him. In her thirties, lushly featured and fully made-up, wearing a loose dark green blouse with loose sleeves. Her hair was dark brown or perhaps black and I imagine it had started out that evening as a neat soft cloud round her head. But animation and (pure imagination, this, but it fitted her character) a tendency to run her fingers through it at moments of emphasis had deranged it pleasingly.
From three-quarters rear he was everything she wasn't. He sat erect and immobile, his gaze permanently directed at her. Balding, he had had the remainder cut very short, but his was not one of those heads shaped for hairlessness: almost perfectly spherical. suggesting somehow a tennis ball. Jacketless, he wore a formal pale blue shirt (almost certainly with a tie) and the fabric looked over-starched. Possibly close to forty.
They were a couple, both demonstrably interested in each other. If she talked he certainly listened. I think they were having a good, albeit adult, time.
In my fiction I prefer female rather than male heroes. As happens these women are attracted to men. But how can that be? I look at men (including myself in the mirror) and I see only the physical imperfections, the self-interested sexual stratagems, wariness, insincere responses, a certain slowness. Men seem unattractive and if women pair up with them surely it's because there's no better alternative. Yes I am heterosexual but that isn't the full answer.
You're saying I'm a romantic simpleton but there's more groundlaying to come.
Well, I'll just put my foot in.... there's more to a man (and a woman) than looks.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like the start of another story...??
You will surely by now have supplied or invented the dialogue missing from your vignette which invenevitably provokes curiosity.
ReplyDeleteM-L: No doubt, no doubt. How could Barbara Cartland and five hundred Mills & Boon authors be wrong? But alas, that isn't the subject I'm trying to raise. Nor am I embarking on a short story. Part Two will attempt to lift the veil a little further but may well fail.
ReplyDeleteJoe: I'm sorry to have misled you. No amusing dialogue, no imminent short story. The couple are entire unto themselves and are there as a scene-setter. Part Two may or may not make things clearer, while Part Three has one simple aim: to call into question one of the building blocks of Creation.
PS: Depending on whether I'm able to control my eloquence the series may run on to Part Four. I am not expecting anyone who has read and/or commented on Part One to make it that far.