My Cardboard Balcony

The Paleolithic Age by Belinda Roddie Below the setting sun, you'll find two fathers sharing wine beside a campsite, where the tents glow white and near translucent in the light. One father thinks about his son, the other pondering over his wandering daughter, not realizing that behind the trees, the two youths have made their rendezvous in leaves and shrubbery that's shrunk from drought - standard abuse from the early summer, which extends its fingers long enough to force the older men to wipe the offending sweat from their protruding, Neanderthal brows.

Two women sit in dark red dresses at the small French restaurant where the roses grow in pots and the violin music is sharp and whining. They attempt to influence one another with their words, with their mantras, with their spells. One of them wields the power of academics, while the other simply has the siren's tongue. She practically sings as she speaks, and every poor sailor on the shore swims to her.