Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Fiction (Part V)

The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey (Part V)
(For Part IV click here)

It wasn’t sadness; it was worse than that.  It was the utter futility of normal.  They had left each other at the airport.  Lisa had a connecting flight, so there was no time for any real goodbyes — just a few inane remarks, a long tired hug, and Lisa holding Lacey’s hands together and pulling them to her lips.

“I had such a wonderful time,” she said, smiling and warm, and kissed Lacey’s fingers.  The two women stood for a few seconds, wordless.

lisa and lacey1

“Au revoir,” Lisa said in a whisper and turned and walked away.  Lacey watched her go, saw her change, almost immediately, from a casual strolling tourist to a clip-stepped deliberate professional. And then she simply melted away into the crowd.  That was the first alone, standing on the edge of Europe, unable to step off — the heavy Versace bag Lisa had bought her, keeping her from floating into the air.  And the strange thing was she would have willingly floated away because the other alternative was — what now?  And she honestly hadn’t thought about that.  She hadn’t ever considered that Lisa and Lacey would eventually end.  So she just stood there.

“I should go home,” she thought.  But … she didn’t even know where to get her suitcase — Shannon’s suitcase.  Shannon?  A faraway friend that Lacey vaguely remembered.

“I should probably go home.”

And she did go home, instinctively, moving through time and space until the taxi stopped somewhere familiar — and her key fit the lock, and she closed the door behind her, exhaled and left her suitcase in the hall.  She sat down in the living room, under the windows on the same brown sofa.  She slid the Versace bag Lisa had bought her off her shoulder onto the floor and lay down.  She  hugged the throw pillow to her head with both hands, and after a few minutes she fell asleep.

Days, weeks, even months later, things hadn’t changed.  She’d got her job back at the coffee shop when she showed up in a too-tight t-shirt and offered Tony a bag of dead grandma guilt for firing her.  She eventually went back to school, and even though her exams were difficult, they weren’t impossible.  Her GPA suffered, but she passed.  After the final final, she met Shannon and a few others for drinks. Too much tequila and she started to cry.

“You must miss your grandma a lot,” Shannon said.  It didn’t help, and Lacey went home. She called the parents.  Talked to her brothers.  Telephoned an ex-boyfriend, but that ended badly with her screening her phone calls and anxiously counting the days until her period.  After that, she mostly just went to work and came home.

She felt tired, used up — as if she’d been washed too many times and now she was gray and dull and shapeless — like some discarded dishcloth tucked in the elbow of the pipes under the sink.

After resisting the urge for several weeks, she googled Lisa and found her, smiling and warm, at a Farmer’s Market in Milwaukee.  The website was Radisson River, a family-owned food processing company in Wisconsin, and Lisa was the majority owner and CEO.  She was married with two children, and the company made a variety of condiments and sold them in Japan.  And after that, Lacey didn’t care anymore.

She tried texting but couldn’t figure out what to say, so she just said “hi” a couple of times, but that didn’t get a response.  Finally, she telephoned and a very nice woman said Ms. Anderson was out of the office but she could leave a message and Ms. Anderson would return her call — “Who could she say was calling, please?”  It was all too confusing for Lacey.  She didn’t want to talk to Ms. Anderson; she wanted to talk to Lisa, and she couldn’t say who was calling because she didn’t know who she was supposed to be.

“What is this concerning?”

“That’s fine.  I’ll call back, thank you.”

But she didn’t call back; it was too difficult.  So she went to work and came home and usually watched TV most of the night.  She ate mac and cheese and frozen pizza and leftovers from the coffee shop.  She got angry with Lisa, angry with herself, and half cleaned the apartment several times.  She went clubbing for awhile and found another ex-boyfriend, but that didn’t last.  She decided this was stupid and she needed to get on with her life — but that didn’t last either.  And by the end of the summer, she’d fallen into sleeping late and doing nothing, unconsciously caught in the slow leak of her life, watching the endless tick of minutes accumulating — until it was time to sleep again.

Hell-o Spring

Spring
View of my street

Okay, Spring! Winter and I have been living together for months now; don’t think you can come along and just break us up.  I’ll always love Winter: we’re cuddling and cozy, and she’s my soulmate.  You think you’re something special, but you’re still only the third best season.  You might be better than Summer, but that ain’t sayin’ much.

It’s common knowledge that, ever since our Cro-Magnon ancestors decided to take up home decorating in the south of France, Spring has been working overtime to convince us that she is the best season on the calendar.  Crap!  I like Spring as well as the next guy, but here are a couple of little items that prove she’s wrong.

First of all, Spring is sneaky.  She tempts us with sunshine and warm weather, saying things like, “Come out and play!” and “You don’t need a jacket.”  Then, the minute we get 10 metres out the door, she hits us with rain, wind, hail — that’s big enough to hurt — and that frozen sleety stuff that can actually tear your clothes.  How many times have you gone to work on a gorgeous spring morning and come home that night, soaked through to your underwear with your shoes full of mud?  In my country, I’ve seen beautiful April days turn into debilitating snowstorms in less than hour and more than a few crops of innocent little vegetables murdered overnight by a killer frost in May.  Spring is the original Femme Fatale.

Second, Spring means work.  Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Spring’s always talking about what a wonderful time she has with love and sex and “The Birds And The Bees.”  But good luck with that.  Once things start blooming, the only al fresco activity anybody with a back garden ever gets is “Work Your Ass Off!”  And we better do it, too, or Spring will turn our homes into overgrown holiday camps for badgers, wolves and crack addicts.  So, we plant, we water, we weed, we water some more — oh, yeah, and cut the grass.  Then there’s more weeding.  Cut the grass, again.  And WTF, it’s time to repaint the fence or rebuild the garden wall.  By the time there is a moonlight evening worth sitting under, most of us are too exhausted to do anything but snore.  Spring could give lessons to Lady Macbeth.

And finally …. Wait a minute!  What’s that smell?  OMG, that’s incredible!  I didn’t know air could smell that good.  And listen to the birds!  It’s like a symphony.  And there’s daffodils!  Crocuses!  I don’t even know what those pretty little pink things are.  Fantastic!  Feel that sun!  My God, it’s great to be alive!

“Well, hi there Spring.  How ya doin?  No, Winter and I’ve decided to give each other some space.  Uh — ya think maybe you and I could hang out for a while….?”