That tie again, eggplant purple and yellow like a bruise. The woman walks to the window, seeking salvation in the bland endless fields, the wheat that goes on and on, brandishing and sun-tipped in the wind.
“Look at me,” he says, jiggling his drink, tinkling ice against crystal in that insistent way of his. She turns but avoids his eye. His cuff link, silver with an inlay of mother-of-pearl, catches the light, flashes helix-like on the deep mahogany paneling, then skips across the dusty binding of his books—Prosser on Torts, Chemirinsky on Constitutional Law, another, as nameless as it is dull, involving contracts. They seem to reproduce, swell, with each sunset.
“It’s too hot,” she says, tossing back what remains of the white Russian she made herself just moments before. She likes the way the silky cream coats her tongue and slides languidly down her throat. She slips off her shoes, runs her bare feet, angular with bunions, through the thick pile of the Persian carpet.
“God, I hate this room, all these books,” she says, craning her neck to see the top of the highest shelf. It’s an unflattering pose for her, looking up this way, revealing dark creases at her temples and behind her ears, her most recent plastic surgery having been less than a triumph. “I dream sometimes of being crushed by them, Paul, of being pinned flat as they tumble from their grand height.”
Writing Prompt, John Dufresne: Imagine a man and a woman in a room in Selina, Kansas. He wears cuff links, a white shirt, a silk tie. She is pre-occupied and holds a glass in her hand. Construct a story from the point of view of one character or the other. Include the words salvation and light.
