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Pastimes : Muffy's Story: A Short Story Game for Would Be Authors -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TEDennis who wrote (321)	12/16/1998 2:45:00 PM
From: Hoatzin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 766

He awoke with a start. Looking around, he realized with a mixture of relief and disappointment that he was at home, in the greasy familiarity of his broken-down armchair. The weak December daylight was gone, and the apartment was cold. Downstairs a couple argued in Spanish. What a dream! Awake, he often thought about those few wild days with the mystery girl from long ago. In his dreams, the real wildness became mixed with all those stories she had told him, fantastic stories, unbelievable stories about the things she had done before they met. At first he suspected narcotic use, or perhaps some delusional disorder, but as the days passed he decided that she had an honest and absolute belief that all those things had really happened to her. And man oh man, was she a hot one. If he really tried hard, he could just about drag back a tiny part of how good it felt, drag it back like some precious drop of water in his cupped hands, across twenty years of drought. Yet there were some flaws in those three weeks of "perfect time" that lived in his memory. He could still see the way the waiters leered at her at the hotel in Monaco, still remember the playful look in her eyes as they sniffed around the table like dogs in heat. And the sick feeling he had when she went to powder her nose and was gone for an hour. When their adventure began, she brought along no attachment to whoever had been before him. Nothing dishonest or evil about it, as far as he could tell, that was simply the way she was. The past was just the past, sometimes useful if you needed a funny story, but nothing that should prevent a girl from enjoying the present moment. And he was sure that any feelings for him had been instantly and completely discarded, the moment she jumped into that stranger's car and left him at the gas station in Nevada, while he was inside paying. Most of his savings had been spent, and neither his wife nor his job would take him back. Many times in the months "After Her" he put his hand on the phone, ready to beg forgiveness from one or the other. But he already had that stubborn old bastard streak, even in his thirties, and never made the call. And then his wife's lawyers grabbed him by the ankles and shook him so hard he had to borrow just to keep up with the child support. Now his daughter was grown, and married to a teacher at some college several states away. They never saw each other, but this year's Christmas card lay on the carpet at his feet, full of the mundane details of her year just passed, and a photo of his granddaughter that made him cry. The glass by his side held a dried residue of cheap red at the bottom. He picked up the bottle, hoping for a refill, but it was empty.