NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge Results

Got the second round results from my Flash Fiction Challenge last night over at NYC Midnight.  

My second story, Dogs Don't Make Plans, received 10 points!  Not bad considering it was written two days after my second dose of chemo!  (Possible side effects may include nausea, fatigue, hair loss and improved writing skills.) 

I'm pretty darn excited about this.  Not only did I move up seven places from Round 1, I finished in 6th place for Round 2 and in 11th overall.  I didn't make the top five, so the contest is over for me for this year, but it was a fantastic experience and I totally plan to do it again next time.  

Two great things came out of this little adventure.  

The first was the opportunity to receive feedback from and to communicate with a plethora of talented writers from all over the world.  

The second is now I have two new short, unique and diverse writing samples that I didn't have two months ago. As they say, I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday!  

.

Cancer In My Spare Time

This past August I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.  Yeah, if anyone is wondering why I haven't been posting regularly since then, it's because I got cancer.  It's treatable and my prognosis is very, very good.  However I am currently in chemotherapy and will be for the next four months. 

For those of you who are interested, I've set up a separate blog, Cancer In My Spare Time to chronicle (hopefully somewhat humorously) my journey through this temporary darkness. 

For those of you wondering why I wasn't posting regularly before this August, I was ill with symptoms since February, but I didn't know what I had.

For those of you wondering why I wasn't posting regularly before February, well, I have absolutely no excuse.  

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge Story 2

Update on my first Flash Fiction challenge over at NYC Midnight.  My first story captured me a whopping 3 points!  Considering there's about thirty people in my group, and the fact that almost half of them received zero points, I'm pretty pleased with my score.  Even better, we were able to share our stories on the forum over at NYC Midnight, so I was able not only to get constructive feedback on my own work, but also had the pleasure of reading and commenting on submissions from many other talented authors.  

Just days after we got our scores back for story one, it was time to write our second story.  

Once again, we were given a surprise genre, location and object and had 48 hours to write, edit and submit a 1000 word or less story that fits that genre, is predominately set in that given location and mentions the object.  They'll total the points from the two stories and the top five in each group will go on to the next round.  I'm fairly certain my score will not be high enough to move me forward, but I still consider this experience a super-win.  

This time my Genre/Location/Object was: 

Drama/Dog Park/Pistol

Here's my submission for Story 2:

Dogs Don't Make Plans

A man on the brink of achieving his lifelong goal is deterred by an unexpected encounter at a dog park. The experience leads him to the discovery of purpose. 

John had owned the pistol for seven years.  He didn't purchase the used, forty-five caliber Ruger for personal security or target practice.  He wasn't a die-hard gun rights activist or a member of the NRA.  He just wanted to ensure he had access to a gun when he finally worked up the courage to shoot himself.

Seven years, and today was the first time he loaded it. Monica's leaving had been the catalyst, but she wasn't to blame. He'd been wanting this long before their marriage dissolved, long before their relationship had begun. He'd wanted this as long as he could remember.

The weight of the gun in his waistband, solid against the small of his back, comforted him as he walked. Its presence gave him strength. The sure-footed energy of youth that had abandoned him years before returned under the influence of the pistol's unyielding pressure. Today would be the day.

The street ended at the park. John walked in, defying the rapidly setting sun.

“Park closes at dusk,” the security guard barked at him. John recognized the lack of intention in her undertone, familiar as his own face, and ignored her veiled warning.

His footsteps didn't slow until he reached the small dog park. The enclosure was deserted in the chilly twilight. He let himself in through the double gates, making sure the first closed before he opened the second, observing the protocol, though he had no dog.

John headed for his usual spot, the solitary bench beneath the bank of trees near the fence. He spent many afternoons there, eyeing the dog owners who gathered in the center. He detested the way they pretended to like each other while the dogs they were too embarrassed to admit they regretted obtaining ran off the energy that would otherwise be spent destroying carpets and clawing furniture.

John deplored the transience of it. The transience and the waste. People waddling back and forth to jobs that accomplished nothing, breeding children they spoiled, wasting what little the Earth had left, sucking up everything natural and turning it into plastic. All for what? Five minutes of distraction gift wrapped as pleasure, ultimately creating nothing but torn paper and flattened ribbon. More waste.

He sensed the beginning of a spiral. Therapy had taught him to recognize the onset of his obsessive thought patterns. They took control of his mind, rendering him bedridden and useless for hours, sometimes days. They left only once they'd ravaged him fully, the hole inside him that much bigger, his goal that much further away. Aware of the pattern, he stopped it from progressing.

John sat on the bench. It was time to reach for the gun, but he couldn't force his traitorous hands to move. Fear! Stupid fake emotion that always blocked him from getting what he wanted, what he deserved!

No matter. He had planned for this. He popped in his ear buds, reached in his pocket and hit play.

“All you desire is waiting for you,” the soothing voice of David Waters, self-help guru and award-winning life coach reminded John, “just beyond the veil that fear is holding before your eyes. You have the power to take control of your life. That black mass of terror is just a paper screen. Reach out and rip it down. Tear it away! Do it. Do it now!”

The recorded words freed John's hands. He pulled out the gun and took off the safety. His heart sped up in his chest. A tingle went through him, a long-forgotten spark of life. This was it. It was finally going to happen.

“In this thirty seconds of silence, imagine achieving your goal,” David Waters' voice droned on. “Open all your senses, feel the texture of the objects you touch, listen to the sounds they make, visualize every detail.”

John closed his eyes, felt the weight of the gun in his hands, ran his thumb over the grooves of the grip panel.

A whimper interrupted the silence.

Squeezing his eyes shut tighter against the sound, John lifted the gun.

The noise continued, louder and incessant.

“Dammit!” John dropped the gun and jumped to his feet, jerking the buds out of his ears as he stood. The whimper stopped, replaced by a futile thrashing sound.

John walked toward the noise and gasped.

Wedged between a slender birch and the chain link fence was a wriggling mass of fur, shivers and mud. The little mutt, whose haphazard, lop-eared dimensions could define it as nothing else, was trapped. Its fluffy tail and one stubby back leg were entangled in a thorny vine.

John looked around the park. Still empty. No anxiously searching owner, no tear-streaked kid looking for his pet. Just the two of them, a man desperate to die and a puppy desperate to live.

“Aw, what the hell,” John stooped down and untangled the vine. Delighted to be free, the little dog bounded away from the fence in tiny, joyous circles.

John was no match for such celebratory antics. He walked to the entrance gate, half-smiling.

“Come on,” he called, “you'll be better off out there.”

The dog ran halfway toward John and stopped short.

“Come on.”

The stubborn thing wouldn't budge.

With a sigh, John walked back. As he reached for the dog, the setting sun slashed free of the treeline and lit up its eyes. These were not the beady, solid brown orbs of most dogs. These had depth; they swirled with dozens of colors, imperfectly mixed into clusters of dark and light like the nebula of distant stars.

“I saw the universe in them,” he would tell the story years afterward to his grandchildren. “It's not the world that's pointless, just our silly plans. The thing about dogs is, they don't make plans.”

But John did. He tied his headphones into a makeshift leash and slipped it over the dog's head. “Come on, then, Galaxy. Let's go home.”

Galaxy trotted after him without hesitation, lop-ear bouncing, fluffy tail wagging.

  

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2015

Though for the past two years I have been focusing on my novel, this summer I entered my first Flash Fiction challenge over at NYC Midnight.  I had two main motivations.

1) To see if I had anything else in me besides this one story I've been working on for so long.

2) It looked like loads of fun!

Well it certainly was a lot of fun and I did manage to come up with a story.  

The first round consists of two stories, one of which has been submitted, and another which we'll write in September.  I say we because it looks like about 1500 people from all over the world have entered.  We're divided into groups of about 30 and each group gets its own prompt with a genre, location and object.  That's right - you don't get to pick your own genre!  Then we have 48 hours to write, edit and submit a 1000 word or less story that fits that genre, is predominately set in that given location and mentions the object.

My Genre/Location/Object was: 

Mystery/Homeless Shelter/Shovel

Here's what I came up with for the first story of Round 1:

Urban Treasure

All I wanted was a bed, but this was one of those places where they try to get involved. I regretted not accepting Jayden's offer. He'd only ask for my body; these people wanted my soul.

“Station twenty-three, second floor.”

The white girl at the desk handed me a blanket with a sweet smile I immediately mistrusted. It had an air of forgiveness, as if she were smiling at her pet cat to reassure it she still loved it after she'd caught it messing on the carpet. She forgot I'm not an animal, that I know what pity looks like.

I stared at her stony-eyed, enjoying the sadness that rolled through her flat, blue eyes. She was disappointed I didn't like her. I fought back a grin, which would have ruined the effect. It was the happiest I had felt all day.

“There's one more thing.” I always waited until after check-in for this part. “I have my little girl with me. She's four. She can sleep with me.”

The volunteer sighed, then nodded, the closest I ever get to approval. “Keep her with you. No running around unattended.”

“Ashante!” I called.

My girl scampered out from behind the entrance column where I had stashed her as I came in. She defiantly chose the long route across the lobby, deliberate revenge for my making her, a great girl of seven, pretend to be a baby. She came to my side sucking on the end of one of her braids, still clutching that red plastic shovel. She'd found it on the beach a few nights ago while I was working and hadn't put the damn thing down since.

It irritated me, her repetitive insistence that she needed it. Needed it! As if that shovel fed her, as if that shovel had walked through Brooklyn in August to find her a place to sleep, as if that shovel had carried her half the way. Ashante didn't need a stupid piece of cheap plastic. She needed her momma. Was gratitude too much to ask?

“I learned my alphabets backwards today,” Ashante announced to the shelter volunteer. “From the Avenue signs—”

I jerked her hand. “That's enough, Ashante.” Like I needed the whole damn city knowing my steps.

“One flight up.” The volunteer smiled again, holding the stairwell door. The smile was different now, but I could still see through it. She begrudged me my baby. My right fist balled up underneath the blanket.

Then I remembered the money. I didn't have time for fighting. I needed to think.

I ain't dumb. I knew I wasn't getting it back. You lose cash in my world, you lose it forever. You deserve to. But, I needed to know how it happened. I had been careful and finally had enough to get us an apartment before the weather changed. We couldn't spend another winter with Jayden. He was too unpredictable and Ashante was getting old enough to comprehend. He'd have her cutting rock by March.

I took Ashante to use the bathroom and shower, then pulled our toothbrushes out of my backpack. Hers had a little blue parrot on the end. “Arr,” she said, heedless of the pasty white bubbles dribbling down her chin, “I'm a pirate.”

I hustled Ashante back to the main room. She was still clutching the shovel.

We found our station. It was an old cot, like I knew it was going to be. Why couldn't that saintly volunteer have just called it what it was? I wouldn't have hated her so much.

I laid down and closed my eyes. Ashante sat at the bottom of the bed, digging a paper and a few broken crayons from her little bag.

I ignored her, thinking about the money. I had it three nights ago, down at Coney. The next morning, gone. Who could have taken it? One of my dates? Why would they? How would they even think to look?

Pride fought to prove theft, but it didn't have a case. My shame knew I must have lost it beneath a motel bed or dropped it out my pocket on the street like some idiot tourist.

But that felt impossible. It was an inside pocket I made myself. I always kept the tiny bag of folded bills there, trading them for higher denominations to keep the bulge from showing through my shirt.

The pocket hadn't been torn; the Velcro opening hadn't been tampered with. Not even Jayden knew about it. Jayden. If someone stole it, he was the obvious choice. Except Jayden would have confronted me. We would have fought and he would have yelled and hit me for holding out. He wouldn't just invite us to stay like nothing had happened. I must have lost it.

I drifted off to sleep, filled with anger and self-loathing.

I woke up alone.

“Ashante! Baby, where you at? Ashante!” I shouted, ignoring the angry protests of sleepy strangers.

I searched the room, the floor, the building. Nothing. Frantic, I returned to our cot, clawed at the blanket, shook it like I expected Ashante to come tumbling out of its folds.

The bed was empty, except for a crumpled drawing of a pirate ship, a severely ill-proportioned starfish and something that vaguely resembled a pier.

I dropped the picture and ran out of the shelter. I tore down Bedford Avenue, fueled with a mixture of fear and pride. My heart hammered as I followed the Avenue signs. R, S, T. Yes, my baby knew her letters. I crossed against the light the last few blocks and didn't slow down until I hit the ocean.

I found her under the boardwalk, in the corner where we'd spent the night before last, the red shovel working busily.

“Ashante!”

She beamed up at me. “There you are, Momma. Did you get my treasure map?”

My eyes trailed from her to the hole. Deep inside, one corner of a tiny plastic bag peaked up out of the sand.

***

Well, there you have it.  I posted it here just as it was submitted to the contest.  

Peace & love to all and best of luck to all my fellow Flash Fiction competitors!  

No, God Does Not Get A Vote

Yesterday's historic marriage equity decision affected me with an energy I never felt before; a bizarre hybrid dichotomy of "Finally!" and "I never thought I'd live to see the day."

Of course, amid the celebrations, there are the dissenters.  These too, are allowed and I, for one, welcome them.  As a writer, the last thing I want to give up is my freedom of speech.  Some of those opposed are saying the ruling takes away their freedom of religion.  I don't see it that way.  I see this as adding freedom, fixing a long-overlooked wrong, giving our fellow Americans the same rights that straight (and straight passing) among us have long enjoyed.  To me, the ruling was in alignment with one of our core American beliefs, that all men are created equal.

My favorite dissension comment was the following question which I assume (as I have learned it is most often in my own best interests to do when reading and debating on whether to respond to online comments about any issue) was rhetorical:

"Doesn't God get a vote?"

No.  No he does not.  

Making sure he does not was kind of the whole point of moving across an ocean and starting a brand new country on our own.  In fact, our ancestors apparently felt so strongly on this point they thought nothing of practically wiping out an entire indigenous group of people in order to ensure this goal.  (More on our past failings as a nation in a future post - this one was intended, believe it or not, to be positive.)

Are we that vain as to assume that God even wants a vote?  

Are we that self-centered that we think the creator of space, time and the entire known and unknown universe cares or needs a vote in the pedantic governmental regulations of one fraction of a spec of dust floating in the vastness of infinite eternity?  Assuming for a single moment that He did, are you, a single citizen of that fractal dust spec, so important as to be endowed with the omnipotence required to know what that vote is?

Are you carrying God's proxy?  

What's that?  Oh, oh, you're not.  Neither am I.  None of us mere humans have the capacity to know the motivations, desires or intentions of the master of the universe, let alone His political affiliations.

Assuming He even has time to think of us at all, there's a whole lot of horrible things happening on this planet that I think He'd have a problem with long before he'd have a problem with marriage equity.

Don't get me wrong, I value my freedoms more than anything else.  I've been accused by relationship partners of valuing it even higher than love, so you can rest assured, the second I feel like my freedom of religion is being violated I will be right back here furiously blogging about it.  As far as my reaction should anyone ever threaten my freedom of expression, let me just say this:

They can have my laptop when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

I'm grateful more than almost anything to live in a country where my opinions and thoughts can be openly and legally expressed.  Many of us in the world are not so lucky.  Raif Badawy comes to mind.

One Moment In Time

One Moment In Time
A CWE#11 Story for MCarey

Rated Yellow Star

I cried at Voltaire’s grave.  I could feel Diana looking at me and still I could not stop.  It wasn’t until later that I realized she didn’t want me to.   

She reached out for me, took my hand and we just stood there, the two of us; Miss Diana Lynch and Mr. Martin Belden: so much alike, so completely different.  We’re the insecure ones, her and I; the drama queens, the attention seekers.  The similarity is a blessing and a curse.  We both want the same thing, but we run dangerously close to destroying the beauty we have created together in order to achieve it. Though the essence of our desires is analogous, I fear our intentions for its ultimate manifestation may be worlds apart.

Miss Diana Lynch and Mr. Martin Belden request the pleasure of your company at… probably nothing.  I battled the dream away.  I didn’t want to dream it; not then, not in the middle of this one real dream we had made together, not in Paris.  I have fought for her love for so long.  Even then, standing in the Pantheon with her hand in mine, after sleeping alone with her an ocean away from home, I was not sure if I had it.  

Maybe Dan’s right.  Maybe I try too hard.  “It is not enough to conquer;” one of the myriad Voltaire quotations I know by heart echoed throughout the chamber from somewhere beyond his grave, “one must learn to seduce.”   In the stillness of the burial vault, I could almost hear my idol snicker at me from inside his shiny sepulchre.  Despite their conflicting religious views, Voltaire and Dan would have been great friends.

The problem isn’t that I don’t know what to do; it’s that I don’t know how to do it.  Di makes it beyond obvious when she is presented with an eventuality she does not want, yet she is equally adroit at obviating, either intentionally or unintentionally, what it is she does want.  Of all the intrigues my intrepid sister has dragged me into over the years, Diana Lynch is by far my favorite mystery.  She is also the one most impossible to solve.  

            I took her to Notre Dame.  It is free and easy to go into the cathedral.  You walk in the front door, wander around and stay as long as you like.  Diana stayed much longer than I would have liked.  She loved it.  I, well, it was a church.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I have a problem with God; it’s just that I never seem to find him in a church.  I’ve run into the guy out in the woods, dancing though our laughter in the Crabapple Farm living room and in the sunset sinking behind the Hudson.  But anytime I’m in a church, I don’t see him; he doesn’t speak to me.  Maybe he’s too busy then, talking to the others.  

Watching her walk through that magnificent cathedral I was, to be totally honest, a little jealous.  She was so comfortable there, knew just what to do.  Touched the water, crossed herself, made little curtseys, she even stopped at one of the shrines, put some money in and lit a candle, whispered a prayer.  I just sort of trailed after her, afraid to touch anything.  

It is neither free nor easy to go up into the belfry and tour the rooftops.  There is also a line; a long, slow line that trails along the side of the cathedral and completely around the block.  The one saving grace is the delightful crepe stand just across the street.  The brilliant entrepreneur who opened that place must be the richest man in France.  He’s pretty much got us held captive there, intoxicated by the mouth-watering smell of fresh pastry, his charming little red awning flapping in the breeze, the large cooler of ice cold drinks taunting us as we stand motionless in the city summer sun.  Di held our place in line as I crossed the street in quest of refreshments.  Call me a sucker tourist, I don’t care.  It was lunchtime.  

Waiting for the food, we looked up from opposite sides of the street at the intricately carved gargoyles and intimidating Gothic spikes that speared up out of the roof of Notre Dame.  I watched the pigeons fluttering among the spires. They were eying the crepe stand for scraps, completely oblivious to the fact that they were standing atop the third most recognizable building in France and one of the world’s most revered cathedrals.  

The line had actually moved by the time I returned with our crepes.  I passed one to Di and had just leaned in to enjoy my first delicious bite of strawberry-Nutella filled goodness when it was revealed to me, in a gut-wrenching moment of ironic cruelty that it still hurts to talk about, that those birds were doing more up there than just standing and fluttering.

Stupid pigeons.  Stupid overhanging gargoyles.  Stupid laughing swarm of international tourists.  Stupid Victor Hugo for writing that damn novel that made everyone want to tour the Notre Dame belfry.  They do know the story is fiction, right?  Quasimodo and Esmeralda were not real people.  Then again, since Hugo wrote the novel to renew interest in Gothic architecture, I suppose he deserves the last laugh.

You know who didn’t deserve the last laugh?  The three German tourists in front of us in line who were apparently of the opinion that a starving and footsore American having his lunch defecated on en route to his mouth by a deranged Parisian pigeon was the highest form of comedy.  

Where do these avian terrorists get off, anyway?  I’m a Bob-White for goodness sake, practically an honorary bird.  Pooping on his food is no way to treat a brother, even if he is a foreigner.    

“This sort of thing would never happen to Dan,” I muttered out loud, after I managed to clean myself up as much as humanly possible without the aid of running water.  

Di curled an arm around my freshly Purell-ed neck.  “That thing that happened in our hotel shower last night,” she whispered seductively in my ear, “that didn’t happen to Dan either.”  

I gulped.  “Yeah, well, I think I’m going to need another shower.”  For at least one reason, two if she kept on talking like that.  

“That can be arranged,” she informed me, then proceeded to traipse unbidden across the street to replace my humiliatingly soiled crepe.  

Have I mentioned how much I love this woman?

It’s embarrassing to admit how much I look at Di.  I never knew how often until we got on top of that cathedral and almost fell off.  I remember the exact moment when I realized I had a problem; it was just as I had taken a third gargoyle to the spleen.  If I had a camera following me around, I bet it would show that a solid seventy-eight percent of the time, I’m doing nothing but checking out Di.  The rate would be higher except I do try not to straight up stare.  I used to do that a lot and she kept catching me.  Obviously, it made her uncomfortable.  So now my eyes flick back and forth between her and everything else, the street, the view, the church spires, the crepe stand, and then back to her.  People probably think I have some sort of an eye disorder.  I can’t help it.  She’s just so damned beautiful.  

I’ve also mastered the subtle art of looking at her sideways, through what de Maurier, and others probably, describe so poetically as ‘the tail of my eye’.  Diana and I read Rebecca together on the plane on the way over.  This was not planned.  I had packed a new book, a sci-fi adventure story I’d wanted to read for ages.  It disappeared not-so-very-mysteriously from my bag at the little going away party we had at the farm the night before we left.  

Dan took it.  I know he did.  I saw his eyes perk up when Di talked about the book over supper.  Dan and his classic chick lit.  I wonder which member of his ‘book club’ he was seducing when he read that one.  What a conniver.  He wanted me to read Rebecca with Di, so he stole my book.  I can’t prove it, of course.  He didn’t have anything noticeably concealed about his person when he left the house, but the man is a pro.  I’m glad he did it.  There is a lesson in that book that both Di and I need to learn.  

You don’t know how many times I’ve thanked my lucky stars that Dan’s on my side.  If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have a chance.

“So, I thought next we could go to la Sainte-Chapelle.” Di said as we exited the Notre Dame rooftop tour.  “It’s right nearby and it has the most beautiful stained glass windows of any cathedral I’ve ever heard of.  I’d love to see them in person.  Are you up for it?”

Yay.  Another church.  I could barely contain my excitement.  All I wanted to do was go back to the hotel, take off my pigeon excrement covered clothes, find a place to safely burn them if possible, and take a long, hot, soapy shower, preferably one Diana would join me in half way through.  But all I said out loud was, “Of course!”  

You see?  You see how much I love this woman?

            I am the luckiest man alive.  

It’s hard to even believe this is real.  I’m walking down the Champs-Elysees in the world’s most beautiful city with the world’s most beautiful girl.  

We just spent forty-five minutes just staring at the Arc de Triomphe.  It felt like five.  The carvings: men, women, horses; they jump right out of the marble as if they were alive.  

Before that I took her to Angelina for hot chocolate.  I am not even kidding you; it is hot chocolate.  Not warm chocolate flavored water, not heated up chocolate milk.  I mean an entire cup full of melted chocolate which it is culturally appropriate to just drink.  Man, I love this city.  I love this girl.   

Paris is everything we dreamed it would be.

For a long time, a dream was all I thought it would ever be.  Since the day I turned fifteen, Diana had talked about this trip.  She gave me a book that year, a compilation of some of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions with actual photographs of the pages of his Codex Atlanticus.  It was just as I was beginning to discover what a genius he was, how he was so much more than just the guy who painted the Mona Lisa.  A chance comment from a teacher, a random history assignment, an available biography in the school library and next thing you know, I’m immersed.  He’s a painter, yes, and a sculptor, a mathematician, an engineer, an inventor, an architect, a botanist, a writer, a musician, a geologist and several other things even I can’t remember.  

I mentioned the assignment to Diana, rambling like an idiot about his art, his inventions, his multitudinous talent.  She had already known.   A thirteen year old expert on so many different things, ranging from European Renaissance art to early nineteenth century architecture wandering around like a lovely feather in our midst and we barely even noticed.  How were we to know? The only glimpses of her depth came when she spoke up to help solve a mystery, but even those were rare. Unless it was obviously necessary that she show she knew the difference between a seventeenth century French desk, a faithful reproduction and a downright fake, she would never say a word.  See what I mean?  We’re so similar.  The difference is when I know something, I go around telling everyone and anyone I can find who is willing to listen and sometimes even a few that aren't.

The day she gave me that book was the first time Diana told me she wanted to go to Paris.  “We can go together,” she said, “and see the Mona Lisa. I’m going to start saving up money, right this very minute, and the summer I graduate from college, we’ll go to Paris together.”

I started saving immediately, socking away all my birthday money. I consistently kept it up, just on the off chance that she was being serious.  She had already been saving, because, unbeknownst to me, she really had meant it.  This was right around the time I was starting to discover what a genius she was, too.  

Now, here we stand; her with her Architecture and Fine Arts degree, and me with my Bachelors in Environmental Engineering and my English Minor strolling down the streets of Paris heading for the Louvre, about to really go see the masterpiece of magnificence known as the Mona Lisa, the crown jewel of our mutual hero’s accomplishments.  Diana, like the painting, just as beautiful and mysterious as she has always been; me, still as insecure and as uncertain about the future.  

Yet there is something in the air here, here in this city of light.  I feel it in the breeze as we enter the Tuileries Gardens, something telling me that maybe the future isn’t what's important right now.  The same thing that told her yes, we should stop for an espresso and sip it while looking at the butterflies and laughing at our fellow tourists as they try to pronounce Tuileries.  

She sits down at a tiny table by the outdoor cafe.  I join her and she smiles.  “Tu et moi ici.  C’est une moment.”

 “Le moment est tout.”  I speak very little French.  The words came more from the garden than from me.  I think it’s interesting that the French word tout means both all and everything.  Why do Americans say ‘That’s all?’ when we’re disappointed with how much we get of something?  Why do we think everything is not enough?

“Pourquoi cherchons-nous pour plus?” Diana asks, in response to my comment.  

“Je ne sais pas.  Merci.”  I raise my tiny coffee as the waiter sets it down and shrug elaborately, then raised it in a toast.  “C’est la vie!”

Her face lights up and her eyes dance as she laughs with me.  She laughs so hard her sunglasses slide backward off the top of her head.  She has to reach back to untangle them from her hair, still laughing.  She raises her coffee then, too, meeting my salute and we clink our cups together.  

I really don’t know.  I don’t know a lot of things about her, about me, about us.  I don’t know what she wants to do when we get home.  I don’t know if she wants to marry me.  I don’t know if she wants to have my children.  I only know what I just learned, that not knowing the future shouldn’t preclude me from enjoying this moment.  This moment, on a bench in a Paris garden, with roses and butterflies and coffee and her, this moment is enough.  Violet-blue eyes dancing in the sun, her hair in the wind, one dark strand caught in her lips, drifting into her espresso as she laughingly pulls it away.  This moment is beautiful.  Why would I ever need another one?

Tout ce que vous avez est le moment.

Author's Notes:

This story is my contribution to CWE #11 - Mary’s Marvy Mart Month and is dedicated to the memory of MCarey, our beloved fellow Jixer, author and friend who was taken from us far too soon.   I can not claim to have known Mary well, but she was a presence on the boards, she had read and responded to some of my work and I enjoyed all of her writing.  Many times in the course of reading her stories I would find myself smiling, often downright laughing.  That’s what I’ll remember most about Mary, her humor.  The gift of laughter is one of the world’s most precious.  Mart has always represented laughter to me, and Mary’s Mart was quintessentially funny.  

The sadness and the suddenness of Mary's passing was a reminder to me that life is a series of moments and that we should be grateful for every one, the happy, the sad and the in-between because we really don’t know how many we’re going to get.  This story is an attempt to capture that idea.  It is neither a tale of woe nor is it a fairy tale.  Rather, it is a series of moments, a portion of a mysterious whole that life's moments offer us a glimpse of for a little while.  

MCarey’s stories and her interactions on the boards have provided us all with many wonderful moments.  While I am sad that she is gone, I am happy and grateful for each one of those moments. Though I fall far short of MCarey’s incomparable hilarity, I did try to incorporate some humor because I think she’d like it better that way.  

French translations:

Tu et moi ici.  C’est une moment. = You and me here.  This is a moment.

Le moment est tout.  = The moment is all/everything.

Pourquoi cherchons-nous pour plus? = Why do we search for more?

Je ne sais pas.  Merci…. C’est la vie!  = I don’t know.  Thanks…. That’s life!

Tout ce que vous avez est le moment. = All we ever have is the moment.  

Voltaire (1694-1778) was a French writer and philosopher known for his wit, his skepticism of the Catholic Church and his advocacy of freedom.  “It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.” is one of his well known quotations.

The Paris Pantheon is a secular mausoleum (formerly a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris) that contains the remains of French citizens of distinction, including Voltaire. A rough translation of the text on his tomb is as follows: He combats the atheists and the fanatics. He inspires tolerance. He reclaims the rights of man from the servitude of feudalism.

Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris) is a Catholic cathedral in downtown Paris, completed in 1345 in French Gothic architecture.  

The characters Quasimodo and Esmeralda are from Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, written in 1829-1831.  

The crepe stand in the photo is directly across the street from the Notre-Dame belfry line.  I was there on my honeymoon and can fully attest from actual experience to the sacrilegious behavior of Notre Dame’s pigeons.  

Rebecca is an novel published in 1938 by Daphne du Maurier, a strong theme of which (in my interpretation at least) is to beware of your own insecurity as it has a tendency of blinding you to the truth.   

Sainte Chapelle (Holy Chapel) is a Gothic chapel located in Paris near Notre Dame, completed in the year 1248.  The chapel is gorgeous, known especially for its collection of original stained glass windows.  I highly recommend visiting this if you are ever in Paris, (I stopped in, pigeon soiled backside and all.)  A google image search will give you a good idea (of the chapel’s windows, not my pigeon soiled backside - I hope.)   

The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile (Arch of Triumph of the Star) stands at the Western End of the Champs-Elysees in Paris to commemorate those who died in the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.

Angelina is a tea room in Paris serving pastries and hot chocolate since 1903.  Drool worthy photos and information available on their website.  

        

Thanks:

To Kellykath for editing for me once again on short notice and in the middle of baseball season.  

To the CWE team at Jix for setting up this “Marvy” challenge, a perfectly-perfect tribute to an unforgettable Jixer.  

Disclaimer:

The characters Mart, Diana, Trixie and Dan are the property of Random House Publishing and were used without permission.  I am not making any money off the use of any of these.  The rest of the story is my own work.

Photo Credits:

All photos were taken by myself on my honeymoon in Paris in April 2009, which explains their mediocre quality and dubious composition.  Please ask for permission before reusing these stellar examples of modern photography.  

Date of Completion:

June 13, 2015