Friends Only

2005-10-20T23:45:34Z

This livejournal is friend's only. If you're not already friended, and you would like to be, please comment here. If I don't know you from my other LJ, pepperlandgirl4, please let me know how you found this LJ and why you'd like to be added.

The Man Behind the Desk--Revised

2003-12-04T23:52:04Z

She picks the berries lazily, staining her fingers and lips bright red, laughingly brushing away the flies and ignoring the bees. Her green eyes sparkle, and her cheeks, red from the sun and youth, glow with health. He keeps an eye on her as he scribbles in his notebook, struggling vainly to capture the scene in a poem, manipulating the word to fit the pattern.

~*~

A lifetime later it sits on his ancient desk, the paper yellowed with age and still sticky from her curious fingers. He can’t stand to read it, though it’s finished.

~*~

There is no form in the way she moves, no strict pattern to the berries she picks and the ones she ignores. There is no established melody from the sparrows and humming bees. The leaves of the bush are not a uniform green, and they grow haphazardly towards the sun.

~*~

The words are flat and ashy. The moment he wanted so badly to hold forever was two dimensional, without feeling, locked in a rhythm too fast and a rhyme scheme without sense.

~*~

“Can I see?” She asks between bites, licking the juice from her dirty fingertips.

“No, your hands are all sticky.”

”Read it to me.”

~*~

Hidden in the back of the bottom drawer is a letter he wrote to her. There is no structure no polite greeting or even punctuation. The world was caught between the lines his fear and love torn open and bleeding on the page staining it raspberry red. It’s addressed to her and sealed and he thinks maybe somebody will find it after he dies and think to mail it to her.

~*~

He shakes his head without looking up, his face twists in a frown of concentration. “It’s not finished.”

“I won’t laugh,” she says, with laughter in her voice.

~*~

He wants to burn the poem and with it, his stained and sticky past.

Original Fic---Laura

2003-11-02T02:12:29Z

Title: Laura
Summary: Laura Waters is a writer, messed up, and her life is a disastor area. Justin Black is an actor, "retired", and equally messed up...together, they're all kinds of fucked up.

Chapter 1

She stared at the computer screen silently, counting the number of times the cursor blinked. 146, 147, 148…She lost count more than once and had to start over. She wondered if it would always blink at a constant rate, or if sometimes it sped up or slowed down. She considered getting a timer so she could find out once and for all, but dismissed the idea when she realized it would mean getting up and actually find the timer. The only thing that saved her from reaching a thousand was the loud, intrusive peal of the telephone.

She picked it up on the third ring, and as soon as she answered, cursed herself for not checking the caller id.

“Laura? Laura, are you there?”

“Hi mom.”

“What are you doing?”

“Writing.” It wasn’t technically true, but it wasn’t a lie either. She wandered into the kitchen, casually kicking the clothes and trash on the floor out of her way as she walked. Her cat stared up at her with curious green eyes, but lost interest when he realized that she wasn’t going to feed him.

“When are you going to get a real job?”

“I have a real job. I write.”

“When is the last time you wrote anything?”

Laura sighed and fought the urge to hang up the phone. She knew the steps to this dance, and it didn’t faze her anymore. Her mother would criticize everything about her life, ask intrusive questions, gossip about family that Laura had never met, complain about her arthritis and hang up, and she wouldn’t have to do anything but listen.

“Five minutes ago.”

She dug the left over chicken out of the fridge and munched on it absently as her mother chatted. Is it too early to start drinking? If I was on the east coast, it would be just the right time for drinking. I want a cigarette.

Laura unconsciously looked at the second drawer, next to the stove. It was wear she hid her stash of cigs, and her old lucky lighter. It occurred to her that it would be easier to quit if she didn’t keep cigarettes in her house, but she didn’t really want to quit. She was just…cutting back.

“Are you lighting a cigarette?” Her mother demanded in the middle of a diatribe out her cousin Lucille’s stomach cancer.
“No.” The smoke wafted around her head like a halo.

“I thought you said you quit.”

“I’m not smoking.” The nicotine went straight to her head and made her dizzy. The hot smoke curled in her lungs and burned her throat and tasted heavy on her tongue. She missed it.

“Well, you know that’s how Lucille got cancer.”

“I know, Ma.”

“Have you even called her?”

“I planned to tonight after dinner.” She didn’t know if that was a lie or not.

“Well, don’t wait too long. She goes to bed early these days.”

“Right, I’ll do it before dinner.” Ok, she knew that was a lie. She began rummaging through the cupboards, looking for Bacardi. She didn’t have any, which meant a run to the grocery store. Or I could just forego the alcohol tonight…Not an option.

“I have to go, I’m meeting Patti tonight for drinks.”

“You don’t drink, Ma.”

“Well, she does. I’ll call you tomorrow and catch you up.”

“I won’t be home,” she said quickly, desperately.

“Why not? You’re always home.”

Laura grimaced. While that was true, her mother didn’t need to point it out. “Well, I’m going out tomorrow. There’s a…a thing…a thing I said I’d go to.”

“Well, have fun dear. Call me when you get home.”

“Ok. Tell Patti hi for me.”

“Put out that cigarette, honey.”

Laura ground it out in the sink without thought as she hung up the phone. Rolling her eyes, she reached for the pack, only to find it empty. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.”

Now she would have to venture out to the store. Sighing, she pulled on her last clean shirt. It was long and holey and looked like it should have been made into a rag years ago. But it was better than the other shirts, covered in food and ink, and at least one had drops of blood from an unexplained nosebleed. Maybe she’d get quarters too.

Laura had been holed up in her apartment for so long, with only the fake light from the computer screen and the dimmed life from the television that she had to blink several times and hold her hand over her face when she stepped outside. She felt assaulted by the bright sun and the kids that were playing tag in the common area. Wincing, she ducked her head and hurried to her car. It was a short walk to the store, but she longed for the quiet and relative safety of her car.

Her car was as dirty and old as the rest of her life. She turned a blind eye to the new dents, to the chipped paint, and the layer of dust that was at least an inch thick. It would get her to the store and back, and when she needed, as far as the library on the other side of town. When it stopped doing that, she’d start being concerned.

Laura glanced in the rearview mirror and winced again when she saw her reflection. Her hair hung in limp curls around her face, broken and lifeless. It looked like she hadn’t washed it in days, but she had just showered…Laura frowned and counted on her fingers. It was hard to keep track of time, but it had been days since she washed her hair. Her eyes had large, dark bags and she knew it had been days since she had slept for more than an hour or two. Her face was too pale, and she had lost a substantial amount of weight. Her cheekbones were high and prominent, her chin too sharp.

Not that it mattered. She wasn’t out to impress anybody, even if she was a bit lonely at times. But she had her cat for company and her vibrator for other needs, so it wasn’t all bad.

It took three attempts to start her car, and before she had even made it out of the garage, it had stalled once. After a quick mental calculation, she decided she didn’t have enough money to make the piece of crap into a decent mechanic, so she cursed and yelled and pounded the steering wheel until she was breathless. “Come on, you fucking pigwhore, I don’t have the time or the money to fix you. So just go, bitch!”

It worked. The car lurched into life, and she rolled onto the street, puttering along at a steady 35 mph. Cars roared by her, horns blaring. She flipped them off and honked her own horn. “I’m in the right fucking lane you motherfuckers!” It made her feel better.

Not many things did these days, so she took her pleasure where she could get it. She wouldn’t say she was depressed. It would never occur to Laura to label herself like that. She just had the vague idea that she hadn’t found her happiness yet, so she came looking for it in a place called Happiness and thought it would be an easy thing to find. She’d write her book and make it big and possibly fall in love because that’s what you did when you moved to a new town to write a book.

The man she would meet was clear in her head. He’d be tall with broad shoulders and gray eyes. His hair would be salt and pepper, and he’d have a stubble and smell like pine needles. He’d fashion delightful sculptures and designs out of wood and on weekends would go fishing with the boy down the road who didn’t have a father. It would be perfect.

Laura slammed on her breaks, pulled out of her reverie by the bright brake lights in front of her. Her old Geo skidded to a halt, and she realized she had driven right past the store. “What the hell is up with all this traffic?”

It boxed her in, large SUVs on all side of her, swallowing her little car. She couldn’t get around them, and nobody would let her over. She was forced to just relax and go with the flow of the traffic, though now her hand danced across the horn nervously and her feet started to tap. She needed something to put into her mouth, but she didn’t even have any gum left.

It wasn’t until she was actually pushed into a parking lot that she realized where the traffic was headed. The old theater that had been closed as long as Laura had lived there was having its Grand Opening with the production of some play she had never heard of before. That made her feel rather inadequate, so she had decided she wouldn’t bother buying tickets for the show. Not that she didn’t want to go, it was just…she didn’t want to leave the house.

“Well, I’m here now.”

Except she was still in her ratty I’m-out-of-clothes clothes, and they probably had some sort of dress code. They wouldn’t let her smoke inside. They probably didn’t have a bar. It would probably be a shitty play full of shitty actors and it would just piss her off because she had paid her a portion of what little money she had left for the privilege of sitting through the supposed brilliance of some small town director who was just one step away from being a high school drama coach.

Laura parked her car and grabbed her purse. She had a few twenties left in her purse, and there was no way her ticket would cost more than that. This wasn’t Broadway, after all. There were a lot of older couples making their way slowly up the large flight of stairs, and Laura figured they were all their to see their grandkids. She wished that one of her friends had come with her…she wished that she had friends…they could mock the play together.

The middle-aged woman with thick spectacles at the box office looked Laura over critically. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like one ticket please.”

“It’s reserved seating.”

“That’s fine. Are you sold out?”

“No, we happen to have one seat in the first row…if you want it.”

“I just asked for a ticket, didn’t I?”

“You might want to come back tomorrow night.”

“Is there a problem?”

She sighed—a long-suffering sigh of disgust and rolled her eyes. Laura resisted the temptation to stick out her tongue. She was above such childish things. At least, while the old hag was looking. She passed the ticket through the small hole in the glass. “The show starts in thirty minutes. There is a fifteen minute intermission between the second and third acts.”

“Thanks!” Brightly, then under her breath, “ya old bitch.”

Once inside the lobby, she thought she should feel self-conscious. Everybody was dressed up in fancy new dresses and suits, their hair carefully done, bathed in perfume and cologne. They stood in small groups, laughing and gossiping, and pointedly ignoring her as she found her way through the crowds and into the theater. She handed the usher her ticket, and to his credit, he didn’t give her a second glance.

She settled in her seat—front row, far left. It actually wasn’t that great, and the angle to the stage was weird. She already knew it would suck. Thirty minutes later, the lights dimmed, the seats were full, and she was fidgeting. She could smell cigar smoke on the coat of the man next to her, and it made her mouth water. But she was caught in her seat and so she would have to deal with it. It was her own stupid fault for buying the ticket anyway.

Laura was dozing fifteen minutes into the first act. She would have continued to sleep comfortably, but the harsh shock of his deep voice pulled her out of her slumber. She gasped and sat at the edge of the seat, suddenly alert and eager to catch every second on the stage.

She had never met him. Didn’t know him personally. Hadn’t seen him in years, but she would recognize him anywhere.

Pepper

Friends Only

The Man Behind the Desk--Revised

Original Fic---Laura