Sometimes, a scene arrives in my head without a story to accompany it. Or, occasionally, a scene is discarded from a story where it doesn’t quite belong.
“That’s–”
“Don’t say it,” Dan interrupted.
Trixie glared at him. “Don’t say what?”
He rolled his eyes. “The M word.”
Next to him, Mart snorted with laughter.
Trixie shook her head. “I was going to say ‘so cool.’ But if you want to think it’s mysterious, well, that’s just fine by me.”
“What does it say?” Honey asked, trying to get closer. “I think I can make out an F, or is it a T? Then an A.”
“Oh! I think it’s an old advertising sign.” Di took a step back. “The part Honey’s reading says ‘Tailor’ and up there is the person’s name, but I can’t quite make it out.”
“No. Just no,” the man behind the counter pronounced when he saw the letter in Trixie’s hand and before she’d said a word.
“I just have a couple of questions,” she told him.
“It’s not anything to do with us,” he answered. “Next, please.”
Trixie looked over her shoulder at the completely empty space. “That would be me, I think.”
“Well, I don’t have anything to say to you.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t even know what I’m asking.”
“I’m not answering any questions about ghosts, or vengeful spirits, or anything like that.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Have people been asking about that?”
“Incessantly! All day!”
She stared at him some more. “Exactly how many people?”
He hesitated. “Well, only two. But they were very insistent.”
Inspired by a photo of a wall with faded sign-writing on it.
A discard from a story. It didn’t quite fit, but I liked it enough to keep.
I would like, if I may, to impart a small piece of advice. A recommendation, if you will, to avoid a certain situation. You’re going to wonder why I want to share this precept of mine, not to mention how I came to codify this simple concept for the betterment of my fellow humans. No doubt, you will wish to interrogate me on its derivation; query me on its application; quiz me on the quandary which caused me, quaking and queasy, to quote this quip.
Okay, so perhaps that was a flight of fancy too far. But the truth is, I don’t want to tell why I think this is a good rule for life. I want you to just trust me when I say: don’t trust Dan when he says ‘definitely’.
There. I said it. And the only polysyllabic word I used was the one that I got from Dan himself, who is not a polysyllabic kind of guy, for the most part. Not that he’s stupid, of course. It’s more that he has the whole strong, silent type thing going. Girls love that (I say, rolling my eyes in the disgruntled manner of the inveterate prattler that I am – I could never pull that off; those around me would assume I had laryngitis or something).
At this juncture, I should backtrack a little and clarify one exceedingly important point. The particular word is of the highest importance. Dan is to be trusted when he uses fine, or okay, or yeah. He is not to be doubted if he says, ‘of course’, or sure. But that particular word ‘definitely’ is another matter altogether. You might, if you were for example my sister, call it a clue.
And I suppose, if I am completely fair, I should offer something of a clue as to why this particular word is so dangerous in the mouth of Mangan. You might say that I drew this conclusion from bitter experience. I, of course, would choose a more elaborate set of verbiage, especially should my aforementioned sibling of what is often referred to as the fairer sex be within earshot.
But, suffice to say, on more than one occasion I have fallen victim to this particular foible of my otherwise reliable friend. And my advice to you is that you do not follow in my footsteps. Your dignity may depend on it. Did mine suffer in the procurement of this particular piece of wisdom? Definitely.
“You’re not going to tell me there’s a local legend about this lake, are you?” Matthew Wheeler asked Mr. Maypenny, as the pair sat on the shore and enjoyed the breeze coming off the water after a hard slog through the Preserve. “No missing local teenagers, whose bodies are still in a submerged car, or anything of that sort?”
The older man chuckled. “No, no. Nothing of that sort.” He pointed a gnarled finger at the opposite bank. “That stream over there runs dry when we don’t get enough rain and the water level drops a few feet. You’d know, then, if there was anything of that kind underwater.”
“Then, what?”
“Thing I’m thinking of is an entirely different kind of legend.” He cast his employer a sideways glance. “If there were any truth in it, I’d be mindful of that daughter of yours spending time down here.”
Matt groaned. “I have enough worries already, thank you very much.”
“Yes; I’d noticed.”
“What’s the legend?” Matt prompted, when Maypenny didn’t go on.
“The old folks around here used to talk about this lake as a place where you’d see your true love reflected in the water. There were lots of details of what you were supposed to do, with the light of the full moon and flower petals and such, but that’s the general idea.”
Matt groaned even more deeply than before. “Honey’s never coming here again.”
“What did I do to deserve this?” Trixie asked, of no one in particular.
Her brother Mart scowled at her, opened his mouth to comment, then firmly shut it again as Honey, beside him, gave him a sharp poke.
“I meant the scheduling conflict, which I am completely incapable of sorting out,” she clarified, with a glare in Mart’s direction. “Not the thing that you were about to so rudely comment on, which, as you probably already know, I am perfectly aware of how it came about.”
“We don’t need you to draw us a picture, Trixie,” Brian put in, with a sharp glance at Jim.
“Boys!” Diana chided, with a roll of her eyes. “Keep your minds on the task at hand and not on how Trixie got into her current condition.”
“I don’t think keeping our minds on the task is going to help,” Honey put in, “on account of how Trixie has already figured out that it’s an impossible problem to figure out a solution for, in which case we should stop trying to do the impossible and just start on figuring out what to do instead.”
“Well said,” Di agreed. “I, for one, am in favour of just making two dates and everyone coming when they can. And if some people come twice, that’s all the better.”
“Agreed,” Honey answered.
“All in favour?” Trixie asked.
After a certain amount of grumbling under their collective breath from the male half of the club, the motion was carried.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Dan noted, with a mischievous look at his fellow club members. “I thought, for a minute there, that Trixie was going to have to explain how it was that this happened to her.”
“No, no!” Mart shook his head. “My esteemed elder kinsman is wholly correct in that we do not require further illumination on that topic.”
“As if I wanted to tell you that!” she replied.
Just a few words from Mart.
What could Mr. Maypenny tell, if he chose to?
In case it’s not obvious enough, Trixie is pregnant and her brothers are unimpressed.
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