After a look at The Lovely Pines last week, I’d like to return to puffery, please. Appropriate, since the little story that follows involves clouds.
*****
 |
| Courtesy of Pixabay |
DANNY AND SOPHIE
“Danny?”
“Yes, Sophie.”
“Do you love me?”
She in her backless pink and white sun dress and he in his khaki walking shorts lay on their backs in the grass at a city park allowing the early spring sun to warm them. For the last half-hour, they’d studied the clouds and remarked on funny shapes and patterns.
Danny paused to consider her question as the aroma of lilacs wafted in from somewhere to tickle his nose.
“You’re taking way too long to answer,” she said.
He propped his long torso up on one elbow and looked down at her. “It was a serious question, wasn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Then it deserves a serious answer, so I was giving it serious consideration.”
The lines around her soft mouth tightened. “It ought to be automatic.”
“Love is automatic?”
“Your answer, dodo.”
“I should give an automatic answer to a serious question? Okay. Then yes, I do.”
She sat up and reached around to brush debris from her back. Danny automatically did it for her, noticing the weird pattern of red marks the grass left on her skin. Oh well, they’d disappear soon… automatically.
Sophie slapped his bare leg so hard it stung. “That wasn’t a sincere answer. That was a smart aleck answer.”
“How can you tell?”
She huffed a little. “Way you said it.”
“Do you even know what a smart aleck is? It’s an obnoxious conceited individual who pretends to be clever.”
“Appropriate.”
Danny gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
“Whatever you think I mean.”
“So you think I’m a smart-ass because I tried to give your perfectly serious question a perfectly serious answer?”
“No, I think you’re a smart-ass because you gave my perfectly serious question a smart aleck answer.”
“That’s redundant.”
“What’s redundant?
“Smart-ass and smart aleck are the same things. In the dictionary, I mean.”
“Oh, you and your precious dictionary. Go make love to it. I’m going home.”
“Oh come on! I said it, didn’t I? I love you. Danny loves Sophie. Sophie loves Danny. All’s right with the world.”
Sophie stood and slipped her feet into pink sandals. “Sophie thought she loved Danny. Now she’s not so sure.” With that pronouncement, she flounced away.
“Wait!” he cried, but she ignored him. Danny flopped onto his back and sighed. The truth was that he did love her. Or thought he did, anyway. No, he knew he did, just like any eighteen-year-old stud would know. But she was just so easy to tease that he couldn’t resist it. She’d get over her snit eventually.
As he stared up into a blue sky studied with gray-bellied white clouds, a little puff separated itself from a bigger mass of vapor and floated free in the high altitude wind. As if kneaded by a deliberate hand, the little cloud morphed, a neck and head appearing here and four stubby legs there.
He laughed aloud. “A donkey,” he exclaimed in delight. “Hey, Sophie!” he called to the retreating figure. “Look at the cloud. A donkey!”
Without pausing, she yelled back. “No… an ass!”
*****
Stir up any memories for those Dannys and Sophies out there? I hope it kicked off memories—preferably those that ended up being pleasant ones.
Let me know if you enjoyed this little story.
The following are some links to me and my writing and to DSP Publications (my publisher):
Blog: dontravis.com
Email: dontravis21@gmail.com
Facebook: dontravis
Twitter: @dontravis3
DSP Pub paperback: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-bisti-business-by-don-travis-31-b
Barnes & Noble: http://ww.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bisti-business-don-travis/1113760492?ean=2940157409005
As always, thank for being a reader.
Don
New blogs are posted at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment