It’s always fun to write stories for The First Line, following their four prompts a year. The first of my attempts they published was the rather unique “Checking Out,” back in September 2020 (Vol. 22, Issue 3), beginning “The Simmons Public Library was a melting pot of the haves and have-nots, a mixture of homeless people and the wealthy older residents of the nearby neighborhood.”
I have just had a second story published by them, in Vol. 25, Issue 1. This, “Ambiguous Figures,” begins with the line “I am the second Mrs. Roberts.” And continues:
No one seems to know except for Perry's sister Jane; his otherwise-absorbed students and colleagues haven't noticed any change. The neighbors to our south are half an acre and luxuriant hedges away, and to the north an impersonal major intersection cuts us off from one-on-one contact. In this hectic, clamorous world, who pays attention to the introverts, the chronically depressed, those who would rather pass unseen?
"Dulcie," the academics say to me, indifferently polite, over the Brie and dry baguette slices at the Art History dos—thinking they recognize me by the wavy bob, the half-glasses, the frumpy clothes. The fading-into-the-woodwork faculty wife demeanor: nothing to stand out. Jane's face shows disbelief when she sees me accept their assumption, but it hasn't seemed worth the trouble explaining that I am Johanna, instead; how my own clothes burned up with house and everything I once was, in the terrible Caldor Fire last fall.
It includes, variously, Salvador Dalí, two older Golden Retrievers, Stanford’s Festival of Lessons and Carols, a bunch of academics, some shrimp remoulade (my mother’s recipe), an illicit kiss, and a wayward Nunuma bush buffalo colored by red ochre and black resin.
image: Salvador Dalí, The Hallucinogenic Troubador
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