Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 29.1: May 9th, 2010
"Caramel Kisses" is an unfinished novel I began to write back in 2009 and stopped working on in 2010. The two main characters - Adriana Maguire Reynard and Emma Burking - would ultimately be revised for my later completed novella, "The Liffey Is Half-Asleep," in 2011. Several elements of "Liffey" can be found in their original forms in "Caramel Kisses," such as the characters' names, the haiku scene, and Adriana's penchant for writing.
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Fifteen
by Belinda Roddie
September trudged lazily by, leaving warm imprints on my psyche as I sweated literally and figuratively over my play’s production. Hudd was doing an excellent job; that much was true. He had done wonderfully in terms of casting, with fresh-faced youths straight out of drama programs in San Francisco universities playing the lead roles. He had gotten a few washed out TV stars to play the older parts, but despite their disappearance from the public radar they were quite capable of holding their own onstage. The play also looked great, with the extravagant media set-up that Hudd had mentioned to me over our several meetings together. While the sculpture idea hadn’t quite worked on, the mix of audio and video with renaissance-esque paintings worked wonders for the story, as well as the actors’ awareness of where they were and how they could adapt to it.
I guessed that my main anxiety stemmed from my assumed reception of my play. I was beginning to go through my typical stage of doubt, that awkward step between bloated confidence and acceptance over what was to come. Unlike the stuffed feeling or the former and the stability of the latter, this doubt was a warm, pulsing feeling, almost as if even the occasional fog combating the September heat over the city couldn’t fully cool me off. I even found myself discussing specific scenes with Hudd, asking or even demanding a chance to rewrite them. But he wouldn’t have it.
“I’ll make it better,” I protested. “The lines are all wrong. They don’t sound natural. I’ll have a new draft by tomorrow, I swear it.” But he shook his head, his dark curls bouncing on his brown forehead and across his thick eyebrows.
“No chance,” he said. “Your play is perfect the way it is. Why do you think I chose to direct it?”
It was no use quarreling with the man. Once he liked something, it was as good as gold. And any attempt to polish it up with only tarnish the gleam or turn it to brass like some bizarre form of alchemy.
I talked about my anxieties with Emma, who had laid off on the questions about my career choices as of late so I could focus on the upcoming festival. She was very sweet when it came to listening to me, even bringing home boxes of chocolate-covered caramels for me to chew on while I lamented my sorry psychological state.
“I just don’t know how to handle this sort of worrying,” I said with my lips sticky with sugar, as Emma sat beside me and kept her cool fingers on my warm knuckles. “I mean, I feel like everything is off. The whole set-up of the thing isn’t right. I’m worried the whole story of the play just won’t be felt. I mean, that’s what’s most important, right?”
Emma giggled and took the half-empty box from me before I could eat all the candy. “The trouble with you, Adriana Maguire Reynard,” she said, “is that you think too much like a playwright.”
The déjà vu kicked in like a full glass of Amaretto. I let my chin meet with the counter as I groaned at the reference back to my own ramblings.
But Emma was right, and she normally was right except for the very rare occasion in which she read something wrong in a manual or measured something improperly. Leave it to her intelligence or just her sense of logic to get myself balanced again. She wanted me to think like an audience member, to have the expectations of a viewer. The play would drown in its own words if I wanted it to be perfect and telling of some grand message that the prophets would shout from the rooftops. It’d be fine, just fine. The audience would love the mechanics of the thing, the acting, the wit; all of it. It’d be perfect to them, a great story to watch unfold. And who didn’t love a simple good story?
October came with autumn wind and colored leaves sweeping around the pavements like streamers celebrating the arrival of a nobler time. I went to the rehearsals with more frequency, and Hudd would look at me as I laughed at the funny parts and contemplated the more philosophical scenes. His eyes read confusion and approval at the same time, and it seemed to do wonders to the actors’ confidence. The young woman who was playing the lead female role thanked me for my presence and how refreshing it was to have some sort of audience before the big performance.
“I’m really honored to be a part of this debut,” she told me, and my cheeks grew red only momentarily before Emma’s face settled the warmth in my face. “You’re really a great writer.”
“Thanks,” I replied, smiling courteously. And the actress left with Hudd to get her acting notes and I sighed with relief as the sudden lustful instincts burning like lactic acid within my chest and shoulders and left me with a strange soreness. I was happier than ever to see Emma that night, kissing her until she got sick of the lovey-dovey antics because she made the fatigue dissipate like the city fog.
Eventually, in the final stages of the production, I decided to leave Hudd alone to work on the intricate details of the piece. I had done my fair share of hovering over him like a guardian angel or a supervisor, the latter making more sense realistically even though I didn’t want to put a negative spin on my involvement. The night before the show, I celebrated privately with Emma in our apartment, cracking open a bottle of Pinot Noir and filling up tall, thin glasses that I had bought from the cheapest retail store. We clinked glasses and sipped and talked with our arms tucked into each other, deep within the folds of the couch. Emma wanted to watch a movie, and I popped a comedy in, but we ultimately set the thing to mute because we both knew we weren’t paying attention to the screen.
“Imagine,” Emma said. “Your show will be performed tomorrow.”
I nodded. “We’ll be in the front row.”
“I’m sure it’ll be the best in festival,” Emma added, and I almost wondered if she was doing that just to please me. Then again, she was never the kind of girl to add as much sugar to her words as she did to her baking. “Imagine the reviews.”
“Let’s not get too big.”
“ ‘A Rising Star: Adriana Maguire Reynard Revives the Theater.’” Emma grinned as she announced it, enunciating each syllable as if she were really reading the boxy text of a Datebook headline. “ ‘Reynard is the Epitome of 21st Century Playwriting.”
“Stop it,” I said, feeling the warmth swell in my chest.
“ ‘When asked about how she did it, Reynard sat back in her chair, sighing with pleasure at the idea of expressing it to the world,’” continued Emma, and I pinched her and she squealed before looking at me intently. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, how would you answer the question?”
I felt my eyebrows crease at the concept. I had never been interviewed for anything except for jobs, and I smirked as my resume automatically coursed through my mind like an unprecedented gush of water. But then I thought I’d join in this game and coiled my fingers around Emma’s shoulder blades, pulling her toward me.
“Well,” I say in a pompous voice, as if speaking directly to the imaginary interviewer, staring at me expectantly with his clipboard and sports coat, “to me, it’s all about inspiration. You need to have that specific spark to really get something going. And none of that ‘my life was radically changed’ bullshit, but something significant enough to get my engine revving again.”
She was blushing. I fought back the urge to laugh. I was being more serious than I thought I would be.
“You see,” I went on, and my purposely overly confident tone was being to have a sort of teasing drawl to it as I pulled on each word like it was an elastic band, “there is someone in my life who has been able to light the coals under my feet. Get me jumping about again, you know? And she’s been my girlfriend for almost a year now, and I can’t help but think that…”
“And you acted like I was being too flattering,” Emma interjected, but I kept going and she giggled at my determination.
“I can’t help but think that this play would never be written if it weren’t for her,” I said. Then I drew closer to Emma, letting my breath dissipate in the cold air. I whispered now. “My Elven queen.”
Emma smiled. “Does that make you my king?” she asked.
I shrugged and replied, “Sure, why not.”
Then I moved away momentarily to grab a glass, fill it to the brim with Pinot Noir. I brought it over to Emma, tipped it between her lips. She drank deeply, moving her hands across my chest, feeling the flesh beneath the tattered T-shirt.
“Here is your ambrosia, my queen,” I said, grinning. “Now I shall make you a crown of laurels.”
When she emptied the glass, I drew it away and let the lips make contact once again. I tasted wine and spice on her mouth, a bite to her flesh, something that chilled me and heated my bones simultaneously. It seemed that it had affected Emma, too, almost like the bite of the cold, and she sprang up and pulled me toward her by the collar, drinking me in like wine, like ambrosia.
“My king,” she whispered, and her voice was thin and strained but powerful and I felt my heart rattle against my ribs like it was trying to burst out of its cage and run free from its prison. “Oh, how I love my king. I love her. I love her.”
Then we both stood up, dragged ourselves to our bedroom, hearing the surprised squeak of Milo beside us as we toppled onto the bed. And I felt the sparks fly again and my inspiration soar as the interviewer faded from my imagination and I was alone on a bed of fire, alone in a castle where the walls turned crimson and my love left bits of jewelry on my face and neck wherever she kissed me.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since May 9th, 2010.
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Fifteen
by Belinda Roddie
September trudged lazily by, leaving warm imprints on my psyche as I sweated literally and figuratively over my play’s production. Hudd was doing an excellent job; that much was true. He had done wonderfully in terms of casting, with fresh-faced youths straight out of drama programs in San Francisco universities playing the lead roles. He had gotten a few washed out TV stars to play the older parts, but despite their disappearance from the public radar they were quite capable of holding their own onstage. The play also looked great, with the extravagant media set-up that Hudd had mentioned to me over our several meetings together. While the sculpture idea hadn’t quite worked on, the mix of audio and video with renaissance-esque paintings worked wonders for the story, as well as the actors’ awareness of where they were and how they could adapt to it.
I guessed that my main anxiety stemmed from my assumed reception of my play. I was beginning to go through my typical stage of doubt, that awkward step between bloated confidence and acceptance over what was to come. Unlike the stuffed feeling or the former and the stability of the latter, this doubt was a warm, pulsing feeling, almost as if even the occasional fog combating the September heat over the city couldn’t fully cool me off. I even found myself discussing specific scenes with Hudd, asking or even demanding a chance to rewrite them. But he wouldn’t have it.
“I’ll make it better,” I protested. “The lines are all wrong. They don’t sound natural. I’ll have a new draft by tomorrow, I swear it.” But he shook his head, his dark curls bouncing on his brown forehead and across his thick eyebrows.
“No chance,” he said. “Your play is perfect the way it is. Why do you think I chose to direct it?”
It was no use quarreling with the man. Once he liked something, it was as good as gold. And any attempt to polish it up with only tarnish the gleam or turn it to brass like some bizarre form of alchemy.
I talked about my anxieties with Emma, who had laid off on the questions about my career choices as of late so I could focus on the upcoming festival. She was very sweet when it came to listening to me, even bringing home boxes of chocolate-covered caramels for me to chew on while I lamented my sorry psychological state.
“I just don’t know how to handle this sort of worrying,” I said with my lips sticky with sugar, as Emma sat beside me and kept her cool fingers on my warm knuckles. “I mean, I feel like everything is off. The whole set-up of the thing isn’t right. I’m worried the whole story of the play just won’t be felt. I mean, that’s what’s most important, right?”
Emma giggled and took the half-empty box from me before I could eat all the candy. “The trouble with you, Adriana Maguire Reynard,” she said, “is that you think too much like a playwright.”
The déjà vu kicked in like a full glass of Amaretto. I let my chin meet with the counter as I groaned at the reference back to my own ramblings.
But Emma was right, and she normally was right except for the very rare occasion in which she read something wrong in a manual or measured something improperly. Leave it to her intelligence or just her sense of logic to get myself balanced again. She wanted me to think like an audience member, to have the expectations of a viewer. The play would drown in its own words if I wanted it to be perfect and telling of some grand message that the prophets would shout from the rooftops. It’d be fine, just fine. The audience would love the mechanics of the thing, the acting, the wit; all of it. It’d be perfect to them, a great story to watch unfold. And who didn’t love a simple good story?
October came with autumn wind and colored leaves sweeping around the pavements like streamers celebrating the arrival of a nobler time. I went to the rehearsals with more frequency, and Hudd would look at me as I laughed at the funny parts and contemplated the more philosophical scenes. His eyes read confusion and approval at the same time, and it seemed to do wonders to the actors’ confidence. The young woman who was playing the lead female role thanked me for my presence and how refreshing it was to have some sort of audience before the big performance.
“I’m really honored to be a part of this debut,” she told me, and my cheeks grew red only momentarily before Emma’s face settled the warmth in my face. “You’re really a great writer.”
“Thanks,” I replied, smiling courteously. And the actress left with Hudd to get her acting notes and I sighed with relief as the sudden lustful instincts burning like lactic acid within my chest and shoulders and left me with a strange soreness. I was happier than ever to see Emma that night, kissing her until she got sick of the lovey-dovey antics because she made the fatigue dissipate like the city fog.
Eventually, in the final stages of the production, I decided to leave Hudd alone to work on the intricate details of the piece. I had done my fair share of hovering over him like a guardian angel or a supervisor, the latter making more sense realistically even though I didn’t want to put a negative spin on my involvement. The night before the show, I celebrated privately with Emma in our apartment, cracking open a bottle of Pinot Noir and filling up tall, thin glasses that I had bought from the cheapest retail store. We clinked glasses and sipped and talked with our arms tucked into each other, deep within the folds of the couch. Emma wanted to watch a movie, and I popped a comedy in, but we ultimately set the thing to mute because we both knew we weren’t paying attention to the screen.
“Imagine,” Emma said. “Your show will be performed tomorrow.”
I nodded. “We’ll be in the front row.”
“I’m sure it’ll be the best in festival,” Emma added, and I almost wondered if she was doing that just to please me. Then again, she was never the kind of girl to add as much sugar to her words as she did to her baking. “Imagine the reviews.”
“Let’s not get too big.”
“ ‘A Rising Star: Adriana Maguire Reynard Revives the Theater.’” Emma grinned as she announced it, enunciating each syllable as if she were really reading the boxy text of a Datebook headline. “ ‘Reynard is the Epitome of 21st Century Playwriting.”
“Stop it,” I said, feeling the warmth swell in my chest.
“ ‘When asked about how she did it, Reynard sat back in her chair, sighing with pleasure at the idea of expressing it to the world,’” continued Emma, and I pinched her and she squealed before looking at me intently. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, how would you answer the question?”
I felt my eyebrows crease at the concept. I had never been interviewed for anything except for jobs, and I smirked as my resume automatically coursed through my mind like an unprecedented gush of water. But then I thought I’d join in this game and coiled my fingers around Emma’s shoulder blades, pulling her toward me.
“Well,” I say in a pompous voice, as if speaking directly to the imaginary interviewer, staring at me expectantly with his clipboard and sports coat, “to me, it’s all about inspiration. You need to have that specific spark to really get something going. And none of that ‘my life was radically changed’ bullshit, but something significant enough to get my engine revving again.”
She was blushing. I fought back the urge to laugh. I was being more serious than I thought I would be.
“You see,” I went on, and my purposely overly confident tone was being to have a sort of teasing drawl to it as I pulled on each word like it was an elastic band, “there is someone in my life who has been able to light the coals under my feet. Get me jumping about again, you know? And she’s been my girlfriend for almost a year now, and I can’t help but think that…”
“And you acted like I was being too flattering,” Emma interjected, but I kept going and she giggled at my determination.
“I can’t help but think that this play would never be written if it weren’t for her,” I said. Then I drew closer to Emma, letting my breath dissipate in the cold air. I whispered now. “My Elven queen.”
Emma smiled. “Does that make you my king?” she asked.
I shrugged and replied, “Sure, why not.”
Then I moved away momentarily to grab a glass, fill it to the brim with Pinot Noir. I brought it over to Emma, tipped it between her lips. She drank deeply, moving her hands across my chest, feeling the flesh beneath the tattered T-shirt.
“Here is your ambrosia, my queen,” I said, grinning. “Now I shall make you a crown of laurels.”
When she emptied the glass, I drew it away and let the lips make contact once again. I tasted wine and spice on her mouth, a bite to her flesh, something that chilled me and heated my bones simultaneously. It seemed that it had affected Emma, too, almost like the bite of the cold, and she sprang up and pulled me toward her by the collar, drinking me in like wine, like ambrosia.
“My king,” she whispered, and her voice was thin and strained but powerful and I felt my heart rattle against my ribs like it was trying to burst out of its cage and run free from its prison. “Oh, how I love my king. I love her. I love her.”
Then we both stood up, dragged ourselves to our bedroom, hearing the surprised squeak of Milo beside us as we toppled onto the bed. And I felt the sparks fly again and my inspiration soar as the interviewer faded from my imagination and I was alone on a bed of fire, alone in a castle where the walls turned crimson and my love left bits of jewelry on my face and neck wherever she kissed me.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since May 9th, 2010.
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