Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#3)

First, they exchanged glances, then, after a polite enough amount of time, smiles. She was sitting alone in the booth, a glass of white wine, a Kindle, and an iPhone on the table in front of her. He liked how her dark hair spread over her shoulders; it made her seem composed and confident. In the room to the side of them both was a bachelorette party--subdued giggling, some hand-clapping, chocolate penises occasionally raised over young heads. He sat alone, too, and she watched him scribble things in a notebook, his left ring finger as encumbered as her own.

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The night of the party, I worked because Maggie was sick. The party turned out to be smaller than  expected, so I spent most of the evening watching the man at the table and the woman in the booth. They never said a word but kept looking at each other, smiling when the party girls got loud or said something racy. I gave them both a free glass of wine so they'd stay longer because I hoped they'd get closer, maybe start speaking. They seemed meant for each other. I was sadder than they were when they each left alone.

Swan

I saw many things while in Amsterdam last year, including this swan in a canal in the Red Light district one night. I like how the orange color in the swan's beak comes close (to my eye) to matching light reflected in the water.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#2)

Larry Hamlin walked like a duck, and was fat. At least, he was fat when he arrived in California from Texas and an apparent shopping trip to Sears. Larry was crude in a down-home sort of way, a characteristic he never lost even after learning to dress as sharply as the rest of the executive staff, who helped him lose weight. But he brought with him professional connections to an entire grid of electric utilities, a collection of clients the firm would provide consulting services to for many years. And, in the pejorative sense, Larry Hamlin was also a prick.

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I met Hamlin in Austin. The consulting firm I'd started was growing, and he knew the electric utility business in the South and Southwest as well as anyone. And though he sweated a lot and dressed like an idiot, I hired him anyway. I learned later that he'd walk around the office every afternoon to see who'd left early, and he'd berate his underlings in ways even I hadn't thought of. The engineers who reported to him were unhappy because they worked sixty hours a week, but I didn't care. Hamlin brought in the business, and that's all that mattered.

Call and Response: Viewpoints in 100 Words (#1)

When she was asleep, he would stare at the soft spot just above her left clavicle and watch the pulse. Now and then he would touch the soft skin there and let his forefinger rise and fall with her skin. One night she sat up and turned toward him, but he lay there motionless. "You must have had a bad dream," he said the next morning when she told him she'd looked down at him and for a moment he was someone else. "Someone else?" he asked. "What does that mean?" He could not say anything for hours after that.

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The apartment had been his before it became theirs, and even after six months she still was not used to the sounds. She was not sure why she woke up that night. There was something there--not quite a dream, not quite a memory. She'd looked at him, how the alarm clock's glow made him appear different. When she told him about it the next morning, she found something else she was not used to: silence. She had always told him everything she felt and thought, but this time she knew that, somehow, she would have to be more careful.