WORKS OF ART: Water, Lily’s Morning
WORKS OF ART is an exercise in serial flash fiction, as part of Declaration Editing’s Super-Short Summer Serial Challenge (S4C). Part two, Water, Lily’s Morning, is below.
“Water, Lily’s Morning”
The campus clock gonged midnight. Lily liked to think of getting off work as the start of a new day rather than the end of an old one, and so took a deep breath of what she called first morning.
She walked the side street that ran north of Pen. A number of vendors were still open, despite the drizzle, and people waited around for food. Two bodies staggered toward her – Syl, the evening hostess at Shorty’s, and Blo, a line cook. They were both married and didn’t do a good job of hiding their affair.
Blo said something in Spanish. Lily didn’t understand. He repeated in English.
“The days run into one another until they unravel.”
“Neruda?”
“I try.”
“You were close this time.”
Syl lit a cigarette under her coat, then smiled.
“Come to The Din with us,” she said. That was the bar beneath Shorty’s. The same people owned both places. “We’ll fix you up with a boy,” she continued.
“I have a reading,” Lily said. Syl sneered. At some point she’d wanted to be a writer. Now she was saddled with a mortgage and middle age.
“And then what?”
“Then first morning will become early morning,” Lily answered.
Syl rolled her eyes. She and Blo continued on. Lily walked to her place, a three-story house she shared with seven other people. A half-block away, she heard the familiar sounds of a party – loud, bass heavy music, high-pitched laughter, someone cursing. Her throat seized. She asked her roommates not to have a party, yet the place was lit from top to bottom. About 20 people huddled on the porch in the proximity of a keg.
She stood in the drizzle for a while – maybe it was a rain now. When did drizzle turn into rain? Lily figured she’d stand in it until she had an answer. The morning she wanted was gone. The first person to see her pondering the weather was one of her roommates, a tall blond named Tess. She ran down the porch steps with a cup of beer.
“What the hell is this?” Lily asked. She took the cup and gulped at it.
Tess belched. “It’s a poetry party.”
“Bullshit.”
“OK, it’s a party. But it’s a reading too. People are waiting for you.”
“Where?”
“Up stairs. Come on. You’re covered in water.”
“I’m wet.”
“I can see that.”
“I don’t want people here.”
“Who would you read to if no one was here?”
“Just poets.”
“Maybe everyone’s a poet.”
Lily groaned.
“I have a surprise,” Tess said. She asked Lily to open her hand and close her eyes. When Lily looked down, there was a pill sitting between her heart and lifeline.
“Nice and clean,” Tess said.
“That’s what you always say.”
Lil put it in her mouth and swallowed.
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Tags: Declaration Editing, flash fiction, S4C, serial fiction, short fiction, Works of Art
