My friend had this idea to send some of her best found photographs to her writer friends and have them write, within a relatively short period, stories based on what the pictures said to them. (Go here to read more picture-inspired very short stories she's collected.) She sent me this picture.
 |
| Say what? |
Part of the idea of the exercise, I think, is to preserve the writer's early impressions, and so the stories don't go through any editing after she gets them. Reading this story again now, there are some things that I want to change... Oh well. We (said friend and I) have made this into a weekly writing exercise where we send pictures to each other and get stories back, so I'll have more (hopefully better) Talking Photos stories to share. Here goes #1.
Marco
The man beside Lorraine is snoring gently, and it’s pissing
the hell out of her. She has never been able to sleep during flights, however
long. This is a short flight: 55 minutes. She would be sufficiently occupied with
this two-year-old issue of Why Not,
borrowed from her sister-in-law, except for the man’s snoring. Her current
novel is set in Brazil, which she hopes to be able to visit soon, and so when
she’d seen this article on Brazilian culture while idly flipping through the
magazine at her brother’s house she’d asked his wife Jennifer if she could keep
it. “Sure,” Jennifer said. “And if you win some huge prize one day for your
Brazilian novel, you could mention me in your acceptance speech.” Jennifer
laughed at her own half-joke and Lorraine had resisted the urge to point out
that setting the novel in Brazil would make it just as Brazilian as Lorraine, a
Canadian, would be if she visited Brazil. Lorraine tries to concentrate on the
words.
“Any trash, please?”
She looks up, at the steward walking down the aisle with his
open trash bag. She considers the bits and pieces of waste matter as they fall
into the white depths of the bag and thinks maybe she does have ADHD. The plane
has many dead passengers – or at least they look dead in their sleep – and so
the steward is making fast progress toward her. When he’s a few feet away Lorraine
becomes sure she knows this man. His name tag says Keith. Common enough name;
she doesn’t know any Keiths, though. But she does know this man. Not ‘know’ like she knows his voice or how he
likes his coffee; just a vague kind of know. Like she’s seen the face before,
in passing maybe.
She marks the page of the Brazil article with her fingers and
flips back the magazine’s pages furiously. There! That’s him smiling out from
the page, a woman beside him, a little boy cradled between them. The feature is
called ‘Everyday Heroes’. She skims. ‘Keith’ is Samuel Pepperwood, 31, of
Arlington, NJ. A fireman. Driving home one evening he’d had a “strange urge” to
stop by at the Colemans’, five houses down from his. He’d taken down an armed
man and saved the Colemans – all four of them.
“Any trash, please?”
Lorraine looks at his face, turns to the page with his
picture.
“Is this you?” she says quietly, raising the magazine while
keeping her eyes on his.
She sees his lips part in a soundless gasp, and his pupils
dilate. His cheeks turn a light pink. Then he blinks and she could have
imagined it all. His is the face of a steward again; polite, with that ever
present almost-smile.
“Do you have any trash, ma’am?” his voice is steady.
“No. But this is
you?”
“Excuse me,” he says, and with a slight bow he moves on to
the next row of seats.
Lorraine stares at his picture, turns to look at his back.
Samuel-Keith. Keith-Samuel. Brazil can wait. She has a story to find.
P.S.: Just for fun, what do you think Keith-Samuel Pepperwood's story is? I have no idea.
;-)
