Draft 2
When writing in stages, I like to review and edit my previous work. This puts me back in the mindset of the story, plus continously improves my writing. I'm showing corrections with strikethroughs. If added text isn't obvious, it's underlined. Oh, and rereading this, I'm not convinced it's any good. But, maybe something will come of it.
On June 12th, Jason McCabe left a note for his wife saying "Won't be home for a couple of days. Sorry, can't explain. When I get back, ask me all about the paper midnight."
When After she read the note, Gloria immediately called Jason's office, trying to find him. He'd been acting strangely the last week. Their marriage was solid, so she didn't believe he was having an affair. But she knew something was wrong, especially when he wouldn't talk about
it what was bothering him. He'd just say "
There's It's nothing to do with you. But I may have some news in a little while."
He wasn't at the office, and no one knew where
he was to find him. He'd left early that day,
not telling his secretary where to find him that's all they knew. Jason hated cell phones, and, despite some agitated meetings with the CEO, wasn't required to carry one.
<added paragraph break>
On TV, they used to say a person had to be missing twenty-four hours before he could be reported. She called anyway. The police officer was courteous, told her that, no there is no mandatory wait time before filing a report. However, the person has to be absent from where he is supposed to be, and the absense has to be involuntary.
There were other conditions, but none applied, and she understood The office explained that having a note saying he would return, while unusual, certainly didn't make
his her husband's absense involuntary. But, if he was gone too long, they would look into it.
How long would "too long" be? She decided it would be two days, just like the note said. And, she'd call everyone she knew, including a detective agency if that's what it took. They had the money.
Ultimately, Gloria McCabe did call detectives, and the police, and waited six months for her husband's return before moving on with her life. She remarried several years later, having moved to another city.
But years later, she'd wonder if she'd sometime see Jason Sometimes she'd daydream about seeing Jason, maybe he'd be in the post office or a deli. What would she say
if that happened?
She kept a copy of his note (the police kept the original). In their first year of marriage, her
new husband,
Paul, would wake up and hear her sobbing. He'd hold her, saying nothing, not even to ask what she meant by "the paper midnight".
* * *
Rachael didn't believe it was possible, and if it were possible then it couldn't be happening to her.
"Wait a minute. Maybe you didn't hear me. I said a regular cake doughnut with chocolate frosting and sprinkles."
The counterman, who had been there each day she'd ordered doughnuts for the last six months, said "Sorry. We're out. Get you something else?"
"But how can you be out? You've always had them."
The man gazed at her from forty-odd years of big city downtown food service experience, clearly not convinced that he should be answering philosophical questions at 7:35 in the morning.
"We've got chocoloate frosting no sprinkles, and vanilla with sprinkles, and twenty-three other varieties. I'll give you time to choose." And with that, he moved on to the next customer.
Rachael left, not exactly in a huff, but taken aback. Was there another doughnut shop nearby? Could she find it? Would its plain cake with chocolate and sprinkles provide the same nirvana that she'd enjoyed from Pauley's Pastries, the same bedrock of sameness and sanity she'd come to depend on to overcome a crappy year in which she'd left an awful job and worse boyfriend, had changed cities and states, and had put herself ten thousand dollars in credit card debt to recover from all of it? She might call in sick ("Yeah, I know that grant proposal for the new lab is due today, but
I can't work without my doughnut!"), take this as one of those prophetic omens that are cheerfully ignored in the movies. But, on balance, she realized that she'd be better off treating this as a test, another step in her continous self-improvement that had included three weeks in February without peperoni pizza and Klondike bars.
Thus resolved, she walked to the Palmero Building and up three flights of steps (no elevator for her, though she was again ordering pizza with whatever meat item was available, including, memorably, a deep dish with ostrich sausage), then sat in her cubicle and promptly yelled "Michael! What the hell is this?"
A blonde man with a face that looked like a cross between an elf and a Viking came around the corner. Despite what should have been a gift of genetics, he was merely "cute" or "interesting", at least to the women Rachael knew. He had a girlfriend, anyway.
"What?" he asked. "Did you just prove that Mendel was wrong all those years? That won't go over well upstairs."
"Where did you get this?" she pointed at a pastry on her desk. It was, in fact, the very variety of doughnut she'd been prepared to sacrifice a day's income for.
"Pauley's. Duh."
"No. No, Michael. You're answering my words, not my question. You've got to learn the difference otherwise you're relationship with your girlfriend--"
"Wilma--"
"
Wilma--"
"Named after the Flintstones cartoon character, but she doesn't like people to know that."
"
In any case. It won't last if you don't understand that women ask questions within their words, not with them. Now, what did I ask?"
Michael assumed the air of a beginning piano student. "You asked, 'Where did you get this?'"
"Yes. Very good. Now, what was my question?"
"Your question was, 'How did you know my day would have been ruined without this, and how can I ever repay you without sexual favors?"
"Excellent. . . . Well?"
"Oh, it was the last one and I knew you liked them. Wilma says I need to work on being considerate and perceptive. Well, gotta go. Good luck on the grant. The microscopes are depending on you."
He left, whistling, and Rachael sat, logged in to her computer, then sighed at her first bite of what she now officially dubbed Chocolate Nirvana.
Draft 1 |
Draft 3