Sunday, November 15, 2009

Where's Bruce Springsteen when you need him?

As I pulled up round the corner from the late-night supermarket, they were standing across the road in a little car park. Both in their twenties with dark hair, her with a pixie haircut and a dark brown pencil skirt to the knee.

He was leaning in towards her and holding her gently in his arms with his hands on her shoulderblades. She was standing straight, with her hands clasped low behind her back.

The natural thing would have been for her to embrace him back, but she wasn't. She was exactly the right height to rest her chin on his shoulder, but she wasn't.

When I came out of the supermarket ten minutes later they were still standing in the car park in exactly the same positions they had been in before. I turned on the ignition and let out the handbrake and as I looked up to check the traffic I saw him back away from her, take a handkerchief out of his pocket, wipe his eyes and blow his nose. She wasn't saying anything.

Round the corner and down the street, the white wedding-cake Palais building on the foreshore was lit up with electric blue. On the beach and in the park you could have barely moved for grateful bodies, out in the cool change, eating ice-creams and chips. Norfolk Island pines and wheeling chip-scrounging seagulls were silhouetted against the sky. Kids in bathers begged to be allowed another funfair ride and bad little boys tried to climb over the barrier blocking off the storm-wrecked jetty. Shreds of pale pink in the sky showed where the sun had sunk into the sea; they looked like faint reflections of the red tail-lights lined up along the esplanade. It was just light enough to see, but not to read, the signs in the sand dunes that warn the unwary beachgoer of snakes.

11 comments:

Elisabeth said...

Brilliant writing here. I love it. It's so poignant, with all the characteristics of a short short story.

Hooray for this short story. Because of you, I think all the time of the poor Adelaideians suffering with the heat.

Itrt has not been so bad in Melbourne beyond the first few days.

Tatyana Larina said...

So, this beautiful vignette was whipped up, just like that, after a late supermarket visit! I also enjoyed the intellectual contrast with the previous, equally absorbing, post.

fifi said...

oh, thank you.
Like a wonderful short film, with which I am starting my day.

Bernice said...

Sometimes, I read a piece of writing and I am jealous. Then saddened that I wont write it.

I don't think we need Bruce.

naomi said...

that's beautiful Pav

fxh said...

Thanks Pav.

I know Bruce's New Jersey is universal and local but until now I hadn't thought of Adelaide as New Jersey.

"..girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors.."

still one of the most powerful lines for me

Unknown said...

Oh sad. Do you think she'd broken up with him?

lucy tartan said...

I can picture it.

skepticlawyer said...

When's the novel/short story collection coming out? Enquiring minds want to know.

Ampersand Duck said...

Beautifully rendered. And wot fxh said.

Anonymous said...

That was fine PC, tho from the news i gather that you might rather have Paul Kelly right now, "and the clock in the sky says 11 degrees"
Good luck
Dylwah