Lessons in leadership

A workplace fable. Resemblance to actual individuals is purely coincidental

The new boss called his senior administrative staff together for a meeting.

Someone should have brought a recorder. The meeting begins at 3:00 and for a solid hour he talks at the six people sitting around the conference table. Motivational seminar clichés pour out as though from a fire-hose.

Christmas Eve Story

This is a repeat posting of a Christmas Eve short story, inspired by one of my favorite Christmas songs. The song is "A Fairy Tale of New York," sung by Shane MacGowan and the Pogues, with the late Kirsty MacColl.



It's a song set in the '80s, during the period when young Irish men and women immigrated to New York City to find their fortunes. I mean the 1980s - the Irish recession of 1980 - 1985 spurred a new wave of immigrants. These migrants were educated professionals - accountants, medical technicians, doctors and engineers, unable to find work in the bad economy at home.

The song is a duet between two lovers who've been defeated by life's hardships, yet remember the exhilaration of being young and in love in New York at Christmas time.

Shane: "I could have been someone"

Kirsty: "Well, so could anyone. You took my dreams from me when I first found you."

Shane: "I kept them with me babe, I packed them with my own. Can't make it out alone, I built my dreams around you."

It has one of the best opening lines of any Christmas song. If you haven't already played it, go listen.

There's another line, though, that for me holds a lot of meaning. It reminds me of another Christmas Eve in New York City, around that same time. The line goes:

"We kissed on the corner and danced through the night."

It's one of the reasons I love this song. I wrote a short story about two lovers in New York, at Christmas Eve, during the 1970s.

The office was closing early, because it was Christmas Eve. She'd called Arthur at work, and he said come over. He got off at 6:00, so she'd have to hang out, but that would be OK.

Everyone in the office wished one another a Merry Christmas. The two company patriarchs, Mr. Hodges and Mr. Sweeters, had passed out Christmas treats; tins of butter cookies for the ladies, and tall cardboard boxes holding bottles of whiskey for the men. Ruthie the bookkeeper had given Jen and Doris handmade brooches she'd made of glittery yarn, crocheted in the shapes of wreathes. Jen had waited, a little breathlessly, to say "Merry Christmas" to young Mr. Hodges. "So, congratulations on your first Christmas in the big city," he'd said, and had given her a hug, briefly pressing his cheek to hers before releasing her.

Jen ducked a kiss on the cheek from Eddie, whose shiny mouth smelled of the whiskey from the boxes. She rode the elevator down to Fifth Avenue, where a light grainy snow was beginning to fall, making the sidewalk slick.

The bar where Arthur worked was over near Pennsylvania Station. She got there at 4:30, which meant that by the time he clocked out at 6:00, she had already had two drinks, sitting at the bar. She loved watching him talk to the customers, Midtown regulars, the way he looked at their faces as if he cared about them. The corner of his eyes crinkled. Did he look the same way to others when he talked to her?

When Ralph, the manager, came out of the kitchen, Jen made a point of placing a ten dollar bill on the bar in front of her cocktail napkin - Ralph had warned Arthur about buying her drinks before. She gave him an insincere smile in return for his glare.

As they stepped onto 33rd Street, Arthur slipped the ten back into her coat pocket, and they both laughed. "Where to now?" she asked.

He wore a navy peacoat over his jeans and sweater, and a battered pair of boots. The snow looked like little bright beads in his hair - full and wavy, though it was going grey. He was 37, he'd told her. They had met while working on a play in the East Village, he in the cast and she as the stage manager.

"You hungry?" he said. "Over at Flanagans, they have a happy hour buffet. Not like that cheap bastard Ralph."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He was taller than she, and rangy with wide shoulders and a kind of loping gait. "You walk like a farmer," she'd once said to him. "There's a reason, I guess," he had answered. That was the only clue he'd ever dropped about his past.

They took the short cut through the ground floor of Macy's. She showed Arthur a pair of gloves lined with tartan wool, and a matching scarf. "Winter's just started and you don't have gloves," she said. Then he held a pair of dangly earrings near her cheek, saying, "I'd rather buy you these," as she peered into a mirror. "But now I've spoiled the surprise." As they passed the perfume counter she sprayed Chanel No.5 on one wrist, and Arpege on the other, and held them to his nose. He kissed her in front of the revolving door onto Herald Square, and she tasted Bushmills and tobacco.

Flanagans was warm and dark and not so crowded they couldn't find a table. They ordered a round and filled their plates at the buffet - cheese cubes, crackers, Swedish meatballs in sauce and fried zucchini with marinara sauce for dipping.

"Not too many places have a free buffet anymore, " said Arthur, watching the crowd of office-workers having a drink before they plunged down to the train platforms.

"So did you go to that audition?" asked Jen. "Wasn't that this morning?"

"I went, yeah, I went up there. There were a lot of people, and I got to thinking about it and decided I don't want to do TV," he said. "It's too commercial. I didn't like the way those people looked."

"But you don't know until you - "

"Anyway, Jonathan says the director's a shit. Why would I want to work for someone like that? I already have enough trouble with Ralph."

Jen had come to New York right after college, hoping to work in theatre. She read the trades and sent her resume out for anything she thought she could do - stage managing, lighting, props. She never turned down a job without even checking it out. She looked at Arthur and thought, a real acting job paying real wages is way different than tending bar, then she looked down and decided not to say anything.

Arthur prodded the food on his plate, but didn't eat it. "So when did you tell your folks you'd be home for Christmas?" he asked.

"I said I had a show to work tonight," said Jen. "It's such a drag to take the bus to Jersey now, with all the commuters. I told them I'd come tomorrow morning. It's OK, Mom and Dad haven't done a Christmas tree in years, dinner is the important thing, and that's not till later."

His eyes smiled into hers. "Well, we'll see you off in the morning," he said. He put his hand on her thigh beneath the table.

They took the PATH train down to the Village - the fare was 30 cents, cheaper than the subway, and it stopped at Christopher Street and Hudson, not too far from her apartment on Bleecker. They climbed the stairs and opened the door to the darkened apartment - all theirs, her roommate gone to Connecticut for the holidays.

She took off her coat, and he dropped his coat on the wood floor. He put his hands on her waist and looked her up and down. Her work skirt and sweater, dark tights and heeled shoes. "You look just like someone in a respectable business."

"But I'm not," she said, "you know I'm not." Because she was small and he was large, it was easy for him to pick her up in his arms and carry her into the bedroom.

After, he lay in the bed while she packed her overnight bag. "So are your folks cool about you living in the city?" he asked.

"I haven't asked them about it," she said, "not really. They know what I want to do. My dad left home when he went to college and never came back - so he knows. I suppose they think its OK, it's just good that they live so close to New York I can see them on Christmas."

"You got anything cooking?" he asked.

"Um, yeah, a couple of things. I'm lighting a play by Eugene O'Neil, down in SoHo next month. This off-off Broadway rep company," she said. "What about you? You don't want to do TV - is there anything else casting?"

"I don't know, I'm actually thinking about looking for another job. Ralph said he would give me more hours but he went back on his word."

"I don't like working in the office," she said, "but it pays the rent, and I can still do shows at night and on weekends."

"You got more energy than me." He rolled to sit up and reached for his jeans. "Hey, Jonathan's gone skiing in Vermont with some girl he met. Let's go to my place, we can light the fireplace. You got your bag?"

On the way to the subway, they went past Village Liquors on 7th Avenue to buy something to drink. It was just before 11:00, closing time. Inside the store, a green parrot on a perch in a cage said "Ho ho ho!" every time the door opened and the bell rang.

When they came up the stairs at Borough Hall in Brooklyn, the snow was falling heavier and it was fluffy now, not gritty sleet as before. It came whirling down past the street lights, and lay soft on the wrought iron fences and railings in front of the brownstone houses. "Look!" said Jen. "It's like magic." The snow dusted the sidewalk, and their footprints showed where they walked.

There was a Christmas tree lot on the corner, and - amazingly - the lights were on and the seller was there. "You're still selling trees?" said Arthur. "Who buys Christmas trees now?"

The guy shrugged. "Maybe there's someone who doesn't have one yet," he said.

In the A & P they bought some bread, some cheese and some green apples. "You want anything else? How about some twinkle lights?" Jen laughed as Arthur held them up. "Candy canes? Half price."

When they came out, the lights were still on in the tree lot. "Look," said Arthur. "It's almost midnight. What do you want for that tree there?" He pointed.

"Five dollars," said the guy.

"What, at midnight? Two seconds and it's not worth anything. C'mon, what about it?"

"Go on, take it," said the guy.

"Arthur," said Jen, "You're not serious, are you? What are we going to do with it?"

"Don't you worry. Here, I got it if you take your bag. Can you get the groceries too? It's not far." He hoisted the tree somehow on his shoulder. As he walked ahead of her, she followed the cross of rough new boards, nailed to the tree's base, shining in the street light.

His place was just a half block down on Henry Street. He stumbled up the flight of stairs ahead of her, the snow from his boots melting on the linoleum steps, the scent of pine close in the narrow hallway. The living room was darkened, but the blinds were open, and beyond the wide windows the lights of the bridge and the city beyond gleamed in the dark, as the snow fell past them.

Jen looked out at the lights. The faint glimmering buildings of Manhattan looked so near and so far at the same time.

Arthur set the tree in front of the window. "How's that? We don't need decorations. It's pretty nice just like this."

He built a fire in the small fireplace, and then brought the cushions from the couch to the hearth, the pillows from his bed, and a quilt. He got two glasses from the kitchen, and cracked the seal on the whiskey bottle. He slipped a pen-knife from his pocket and wiped the blade on his jeans. He held out a slice of apple with a paring of cheese to her.

"C'mon now. It's good."

It was 1:00 a.m. They drank whiskey by the light of the fire. In the morning she would be on the bus to New Jersey, but for now, the scent of pine filled the room and the snow fell outside the window.

PROMPTuesday

Our PROMPTuesday prompt is a photo taken by our PROMPTuesday coach, Sandiegomomma, and as she describes it, "I recall taking the picture of the man below waiting at the bus stop, and he never once looked up as I surveyed his angles and released my noisy shutter over and over just feet from his face. I still think of him often, photoaging him in my mind to imagine what he looks like now, to place him in a happier place; and I return to this picture again and again to analyze his inscrutability."

Write a story about this guy. Or a poem. Or a rumination. Give him some background, some context.

Here's my story:

His sister called him Uncle Willie, the way her boys did. He liked being an Uncle and living in the downstairs bedroom at her house now that their Mother had died. The little boy James was quick to hug and quick to run away. The older one Charles was quieter, but Willie remembered the day long ago when he was born and his sister showed him the little face in the bundle of flannel. He had been surprised, amazed that such a warm, alive creature had come from her swelled tummy.

Charles was bigger now and sometimes let him play basketball when his friends came over, as they threw the ball at the hoop over the garage door. He was taller than they and could make foul shots from the line, but when the boys ran so quickly around him, he couldn't hold onto the ball.

Charles and his friends sometimes played tricks on him - keep-away with the ball or taking his hat. He once got mad and told Charles he wouldn't play with him anymore. He didn't mean to break the screen door but their laughter hurt his ears.

His sister told him to come inside and watch "The Jetsons" with James. She gave them chips and a coke, then went out to the driveway and he heard her voice talking sternly to Charles.

"It isn't fair to tease Uncle Willie," she said. "Charles, you should know better than that. I'm disappointed in you."

The boys' voices rose and fell and laughed and Willie's sister's voice clamored higher, scolding them, and then the screen door slammed and she came back into the kitchen. She inspected the split screen, lifting the drooping rubber string that his fist had forced from the track, and she sighed.

"Ah come on guys, let's get outa here. This is lame, playing with a retard," a voice rose beyond from the driveway. Willie ate a dorito while George Jetson ran on the treadmill. Petey was his name, the one who'd pulled his Dodgers cap off and thrown it under the car.

"Don't call him that," said Charles. "Anyway, you're not so smart, you can't even do that math homework unless I help."

"I don't need your help, smartass. Jeez, you got them eyebrows, like Frankenstein, just like your Uncle."

"Fuck you, Petey, get outa here!" Charles' voice shrilled now. "Go on home, get your sister to help you with your math. Get your dad, if you think he's so smart."

"I'm going, I'm going. Frankenstein." Laughter.

The door slapped again. Charles' footsteps thumped as he ran fast up the carpeted stairs, and the bedroom door slammed.

Willie's sister said, "Charles, have you done your geometry yet? Charles?" She started to climb the stairs.

Willie wondered if Charles were crying. He had heard Charles cry sometimes before, when the door to his room was closed. He waited for his sister to come back.

"Look, Uncle Willie," said James, nudging him. "I can bite my Dorito into a star! See?" He held it up. "Can you?"

Willie reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of chips and crunched them loudly. The taste of salt filled his mouth.

Short Story - Fairy tale of New York

One of my favorite Christmas songs is "A Fairy Tale of New York," sung by Shane MacGowan and the Pogues, with the late Kirsty MacColl.



It's a song set in the '80s, during the period when young Irish men and women immigrated to New York City to find their fortunes. I mean the 1980s - the Irish recession of 1980 - 1985 spurred a new wave of immigrants to the United States. These migrants were educated professionals - accountants, medical technicians, doctors and engineers, unable to find work in the bad economy at home.

The song is a duet between two lovers who've been defeated by life's hardships, yet remember the exhilaration of being young and in love in New York at Christmas time.

Shane: "I could have been someone"

Kirsty: "Well, so could anyone. You took my dreams from me when I first found you."

Shane: "I kept them with me babe, I packed them with my own. Can't make it out alone, I built my dreams around you."

It has one of the best opening lines of any Christmas song. If you haven't already played it, go listen.

There's another line, though, that for me holds a lot of meaning. It reminds me of another Christmas Eve in New York City, around that same time. The line goes:

"We kissed on the corner and danced through the night."

It's one of the reasons I love this song. I wrote a short story about two lovers in New York, at Christmas Eve, during the 1970s.

PROMPTuesday

Today's Prompt:
So think back to when you were 15. Let the year play itself back to you. Pick one memory — even if it’s just a mere moment that stands out — and write about it.

Deb and I had joined Thespians in sophomore year when we were 15. I liked being backstage, and she ended up running the box office. We had been best friends since we met in junior high, me a newly arrived kid from Chicago, a shy bookish girl with glasses and pimples, and she a smart math whiz, also with glasses.

We shared almost everything, but I think she was the leader and I the follower. I joined the band because she did - she was first chair flute, while I read music only well enough to play the glockenspiel and march.

So that morning when I got off the schoolbus, I looked around for her, as always. She rode in with her brother Harry, a senior, in his car.

C'mon," she said holding her stack of books clutched tightly to her chest. "I don't want to go to first period. Let's hide in the box office."

We went in, then started walking faster past the lockers, down the corridor to the auditorium. The school had been built in the 20's but the new classroom wing had been added, including a new auditorium with a big full stage.

Deb pulled a red-marked key out of her pocket, and opened the narrow door hidden in the lobby wall. We slipped into the tiny, darkened room. The window with the round hole in the glass was covered on the outside by a rolled shutter.

There were two tall stools, a tall wooden rack for holding tickets, and a quilted pad used for moving furniture. She flipped on the lights and then, startled at the brightness, flipped it off again. A pale greyish light came from under the door, and we looked at one another.

"I don't feel good," she said. "I just want to sleep." She put her books down and sat on the floor, and pulled the furniture pad around her shoulders.

Deb's older brother was a bright and funny guy, popular not for looks or athleticism, but for his brains and wit. He was going to State to major in Engineering - just like his Dad, who proudly told everyone. Her younger brother was still in elementary school, and she called him a pest. He bothered her, took her stuff, catcalled her friends.

Deb's mother was a quiet, kind woman I barely knew. She had some kind of illness, and when I went to Deb's house - which was rare - she was often in bed. Sometimes Deb had to go home after school, because her mom was sick and Deb had to do the cleaning and make dinner. Those afternoons, she rode my bus, because Harry had science lab, or golf-team practise, or All-State band practice at another school across town.

"So what are you going to major in at college?" I asked her once.

"I'm not going to college," she said. "Dad doesn't think girls need to."

That morning in the box office, we sat in the dark until we heard the bell ring to start First Period. After the halls had quieted, I turned on the light and unscrewed one of the light bulbs so there was just enough dim light to read by. And I pulled out a novel and read, while Deb turned her face into the furniture pad and fell asleep.

I don't know why Deb skipped school that day. I didn't ask her, and she never told me anything. She had the key - she may have hidden in the box office before. But she chose to take me with her that morning.

I was not a very sharing kid; I had moved too many times and was shy, not quick to make friends. I didn't have sisters, so I wasn't much for hugging and whispered giggles and intimacies. Frankly, I was a selfish and self-absorbed teenager. But that morning I knew without being told that Deb needed me there as she curled up to sleep in a tiny dark room, away from class, away from home.

We spent the entire day in the box office, hearing the bells ring each period. I snuck out once to the vending machines and brought us back cartons of milk and packets of cheese crackers. We crept into the dressing rooms backstage to pee. I turned off the light when the drama class met in the auditorium, as our classmates' footsteps and voices passed the tiny door. And I listened to Deb's soft breathing in the dark.

PROMPTuesday

Our PROMPTuesday assignment is: So where were you when history was laid down? Was the TV playing Nixon in the background while you ate an innocuous chicken dinner? Were you born the day Kennedy was shot? Did you watch the falling Challenger from a classroom full of fifth grade students like you?

The first thing that popped into my mind when I read that was a memory that troubles me. I'm almost ashamed to publish this - but dammit, it's the first thing that occurred to me when I read the prompt. Race in America is still a complicated thing, and intolerance or insensitivity can bubble beneath the surface. We teach children things we don't realize. Let's do our best to cut off the secret tendrils of hatred that may root in our hearts.

This is a history-making day. I am so joyful that our nation has elected Barack Obama to be our President.

My father was born in the south, and his feelings about race were complicated. He respected people who worked with their hands, and like many Southerners, he was a courteous man. Unlike many of his peers, corporate businesspeople he worked with where we lived in the Northeast, my father cared to learn the names of the custodians, the laborers, and the people in coveralls who served the people in suits at his company.

Yet my father was politically conservative, and throughout my childhood in the 1960's he raged at the television; at the protests, the freedom marches, the unrest in our country. His rage became a regular feature of our pre-dinner hour, in the family room, as I sat on the marigold-colored Naugahyde couch, watching the pictures move on the TV screen.

The protesters were presumptuous. They wanted handouts. They didn't believe in hard work - as he did. The activists who came down South from the North were troublemakers. When Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared on TV, my Dad fumed. Dr. King was stirring things up in our country that should be left alone. I heard this kind of talk day in and day out

It was spring - April. When Dad came home, he took the martini Mom made for him, and sat down in his chair in the family room, and turned on the news.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot, and killed.

I turned to my Dad and started to say something - I don't remember what. But it was something about how wasn't it a good thing the man he hated so much was now dead?

My father looked at me. His face was stricken. I felt the smile shrivel on my face, mirroring the chill on his. "No, sweetie," he said. "No. This is a terrible thing. Killing a person is wrong. No one should ever kill another person." Suddenly I felt ashamed. I threw myself into his lap and started to cry, and he put his arms around me.

My father did not experience a life-changing epiphany after that. He remained a complicated and sometimes angry man, and in my teenage years we both sniped at one another, I sassed him and he shouted back at me, up and down the stairs of our home, about race in America, about politics, about Vietnam, about everything.

But I will never forget his look on that evening - the sense of disgust at what I'd said, and the sense of shame knowing he was responsible for it. And I think he took that shame, and owned it, and showed me how wrong it was, while still loving me.

I forgive him for planting - unawares - the seed of hatred in me. I'm grateful to him for pulling the seedling out before it fully took root. But like bindweed, noxious roots can sometimes sprout anew from the tiniest fiber or snip that remains in the soil. Give me the grace to cultivate something nourishing and good instead.

PROMPTuesday

Today's PROMPTuesday:

Write about a trip or an excursion that left you changed in some way.

The train was scheduled to leave at 11:00 p.m., but by the time it pulled into the downtown Amtrak station from Cincinnati, it was already ten past midnight. The platform was crowded, and Jen moved with the crowd toward the doors - stepping up on the conductor's wooden box and then onto the metal steps.

All the seats were full, and she followed the others into the next car. And the next. Weary passengers slept, heads leaning against windows, or looked apprehensively at the new arrivals, mostly students, heading home for the holidays. As Jen made her way along the aisle, car after car, she could see ahead as the seats filled, and the line kept moving.

Suddenly the line stopped. The message fluttered back. Seats available. Go the other way. The line joggled, turned, and retreated through the cars.

Through a sliding door onto a platform, a door and - tables, benches, linens - "It's the dining car!"

The train lurched. "Whoa!" The guy in front of her grabbed the back of a seat and slid into the bench. Behind her someone pushed, so she slid in next to him. "Hi. I'm Jen. Where are you going?"

"Kev. This is crazy. I just decided to go to New York this morning." He looked around the car. "Who takes the train? This your first time?"

"Nah," said Jen. "Millions of times. I hate flying." She wondered if he believed her. "My folks live in Jersey. I get off in Philly."

The tables in the dining car filled. "Hey is the bar open?" said someone.

Soon the train was rocking through the Ohio darkness. Someone put a cassette in a tape deck, punched PLAY.

A deck of cards appeared - a game began, in the bright pool of light from the reading lights clicked on overhead, the car otherwise dim all around.

Eyes met across the tables and aisles. You at State? No, I'm at Antioch, took the bus to meet the train. Graduate school? What's your major? Getting out in Pittsburgh... Charleston... Newark... Do you know....?

Laughter, changing seats. Some couples made out in the darkened rows. Walk the lurching aisle to the bathroom - the smell of marijuana from this end of the car.

Someone swapped seats - can I sit here? I'm Jen. Cool. Want to share my bag of chips? Aren't you in my math class?

Three a.m.

The door banged, a conductor walked into the car. "OK, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for your patience, the holidays are always overcrowded but we're glad we could accommodate you guys and get you home for Christmas. Now we need to prepare the dining car for breakfast, though. There are some seats available - please follow me." Back in the direction they'd arrived from.

Another conductor. "OK," he said, "You - you - you - and you!" He pointed to Jen and about a dozen others, "follow me."

To the back and out, and another car - curtains lining the aisle. "Hardly anyone pays for a sleeper," he said, "Take a berth for the rest of the night - just be sure you're up and out by Harrisburg when the next shift comes on."

Jen climbed a narrow ladder three steps and parted the curtain. A tightly made bunk, a pillow, a maroon, logo-stamped blanket. She closed the curtains to the aisle. There were curtains at the back of the bunk too - she turned off the little sconce light and drew these apart.

Outside the night landscape hurtled past. Crossing gates, cars with headlights. Deserted factory yards. The backs of houses beyond fences. Stone walls. The shapes of trees against the moon.

She thought of home. "Mom," she'd said on the phone, "don't worry about the plane ticket. I know they cost too much, now Dad's laid off. I'll arrange something for the break. I have a friend who's driving to New York. I'll be perfectly safe." There was no friend with a car, but she'd set aside her tips from the restaurant and they were just enough for the train fare.

Home for Christmas. She was traveling all on her own for the first time in her life. Her head fell back on the small pillow. She looked out the window, the train rocking gently, cradled in the upper berth. She was all right. She fell asleep.

A Story

The first time she fell it was a Thursday morning. It was so silly. It could have happened to anyone. She stepped off the threshold between the kitchen and the garage - a mere one inch drop - turned her ankle, and went down like a sack of potatoes.

It was such a surprise and shock to find herself with her face against the cold concrete and her breath knocked from her chest. She had been walking to her car, keys in hand, purse on her arm - and suddenly there she was on the floor. It seemed absurd.

Later after she crawled into the house, and pulled herself into her chair, she sat for a long time and tried to make sense of it.

Her ankle swelled, and darkened blue. To ease the ache, she propped it on a pillow when she slept at night, and took an aspirin.

The second time was more embarrassing. She forgot to put the bin out Sunday night, so she hurried when she heard the truck at the end of the street Monday morning. The plastic wheels rumbled against the pavement, the weight pulling inexorably down the sloped driveway to the curb. Rolling - faster - suddenly her feet went out from beneath her and the bin rattled down the hill away as she lay, scraped, bleeding, stinging on the pavement. The truck rumbled closer, and she heard the high-pitched shriek of its brakes, halting.

His hands lifted her, held her against his navy coverall, her cheek pressed into the embroidered patch over his heart that said James. She could smell him, soap and cigar beneath the sweet pong of garbage. "Oh, shit, lady, oh please!" His hands shook as he set her down gently on the grass. "Are you okay?"

Tracey from next door was suddenly there, holding a cool damp cloth on her face. "I called 911," she said, "you'll be okay." When Tracey's arms closed around her, she suddenly wept with relief, weak as a child.

The third time, it was nothing. She slipped her feet into her sandals, and the strap snagged on her heel. She bent to pull it round. Suddenly she lost her bearings and she was on the floor, her head ringing from where she'd banged it on the counter.

She wasn't sure how long she was out.

She called her daughter-in-law and told her what happened. Not the boys. Not her daughter - she was always busy, always out, never home. But Emily was a nurse and always said the right things. Emily's voice over the phone lines made sense. She clung to that voice, trusted it, talked to it, even though it was a thousand miles away. She was frightened. What would happen to her next?

Dear readers: I am trying to understand another person's experience by remembering my own. Ten years ago, I rolled my garbage can down my steep driveway and let it pull me down. A couple years ago, I fell on my face on a crowded sidewalk in Manhattan. More recently, I slipped on a puddle of water in a parking garage and fell down - ridiculously, wearing a business suit and heels. This is a made up story, with made up characters, but I wrote it because I want to understand how someone I love feels right now.

PROMPTuesday

San Diego Momma has a fun thing going. It's PROMPTuesdays. It's about making writing fun again. Every Tuesday, she posts a “PROMPTuesday” entry, where she introduces a writing prompt and ask interested folks to write on it.
So here are the “rules:”

• Try to write your entry in 10 minutes. This encourages top-of-mind, primal thinking before the ego and judgmental brain kick in. Just set a timer, make your kid count to 600 slowly, whatever. It’s an honor system. And I trust you.

• Aim for 250 words or less.


• Please have fun. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Together, let’s rediscover the simple joy in the writing process.


• Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.
  

Need to learn more? Go here.

This is Tuesday's prompt:

This PROMPTuesday, I thought it’d be cool if you described a lovely (or horrible, if you run that way) drink you shared with a lover/friend/enemy/etc.

Tin Palace interior, Photo by Andy Schwartz, 1977

When the rehearsal ended, the company always left the theatre together. Most nights, Bridget left the auditorium during the last scene, to put away her supplies and notions and lock her sewing machine into the manager's office, where it would be safe. The theatre was on East Fourth Street, and the nearest subway stop was Astor Place. The neighborhood was rough, and no one wanted to walk down the block alone. But although the company left together, they walked in groups according to their own personal relationships and loyalties.

Bridget walked alongside Tom, the director, but she was acutely aware of Teresa, Vivian, and Heather, walking together down the sidewalk, their dance bags slung over their shoulders, their hips swaying as they strode in their heeled shoes. Earlier that evening, Teresa had thrown a fit about the dress Bridget had chosen for her character. Bridget saw Teresa raise her chin in the air, laughing, and the others joined in. She didn't know what they were laughing about, but she wondered, fleetingly, if they were laughing about her.

By the time Bridget and Tom turned into the entry of the Tin Palace, the three dancers were already installed in a booth by the window. A waiter laid napkins on the table and set three multi-colored glasses before them, orange slices and cherry stems jauntily arching above the brim. Bridget took a stool at the bar and slung her bag over the back of the chair. "Scotch on the rocks," she said to the bartender - "and a water back."

There was a ball game on the TV over the bar. She sipped her drink and watched the baseball wrap-ups. Tom took his beer and sidled over to the dancers' booth, greeting them. Bridget watched him go, and stayed where she was. Sure, he had to keep on their good side, she thought. It made sense. He had to keep the ensemble working together. She watched Teresa kiss his cheek. Bitch, she thought.

The newscaster segued into a story about a crisis in Asia. She thought about her apartment on Bank Street. I should just go home, she thought. Get the fuck out of here, get away from this negative energy. Take a cab.

She felt a presence at her shoulder. "Can I buy you another drink?" It was Arthur. He smiled. She could smell bourbon on him, but his smile was charming, and his grey eyes looked into hers. She felt her own lips curve into a smile that first felt unwilling, but then became genuine. "Why not?" she said. She looked at his hand on the bar. It looked strong and capable. "So, when did you get here?"

"My last scene is 15 minutes before curtain. John and I came over here as soon as we got off stage. You want to join us over there?"

Bridget followed his gesture to a booth farther down the barroom. John, who had a one-line walk-on in Act One, and helped change the scenery at intermission, waved at her and grinned. He looked earnestly dorky. Her eye drifted toward the booth where the dancers sat. As she watched, Vivian reached her hand out to Tom's shoulder and touched it, and threw her head back, laughing. Terese leaned forward, breasts grazing Tom's arm, and blew a plume of smoke up toward the gaudy Tiffany lampshade, her eyes flashing. As Bridget watched, Tom smiled down into Terese's eyes.

"Sure," said Bridget. She unhooked her bag from the chair back. As she walked with Arthur past Terese's booth, she took his hand and smiled up into his face.