Yesteryou Chapter 17

Good morning.  If you're new to this blog, it just occurred to me that it is unfortunate that, if you were to want to follow the adventurous/oversentimental tale of Yesteryou, a novella I wrote, the first chapter you'd be seeing (mixed in w/ my musings, photos of my crafts, film reviews, etc) right now is chapter 17.  So just a note on that:  I'm serializing the chapters (like I did last year with my novel Planes of Sunday) so if you wanted to start at the beginning, you just have to click in the lower right hand corner of "older posts" til you got to chapter 1, and then voila.  or perhaps you could also type "yesteryou" in the search bar to bring up all the chapters.  Anyway, it's minorly inconvenient but I don't think it's so bad.  in the olden days people would wait with  baited breath for issues of periodicals to come out that'd contain the next installment of a story by oh I don't know charles dickens or mark twain (i think these are historical facts but they might just sound true), so when I decided to serialize Yesteryou, it was based on that concept, but it's a little more confusing than just having a periodical come out in real-time and to be like "oh boy, it's chapter 17!"  W/ a blog, it just sort of seems backwards.  

Anyway though have a great weekend if I don't sign in again before then.

oxo robin

17.

So nervous she was afraid of throwing up, Molly knocked on the girl's red apartment door, telling Richard "Okay, just remember not to hold me accountable for how awful these people might be.  The girl with the pot-- I don't even know her name.  She seems really cool, but--"

The red door opened and inside was revealed the favorite home Molly’d ever seen before or since this night.  The walls were covered with thin, velour rugs depicting picturesque nature scenes.  Lined up in front of the rugs of the short hallway that led from the living room to the bed and bathrooms, a row of feminine mannequins stood frozen in languorous 1950's hostess poses.  Each statue wore a vintage apron over their otherwise nude plastic bodies, and each apron was made from a fabric printed with a design that incorporated the animal depicted on the rug the mannequin stood in front of.  There was one wearing an apron with little brown bears poised on their hind legs and dancing in pairs, and the rug behind this bear-apron mannequin was of a Kodiak bear frozen mid-growl.  Also, there were sheets stapled at their corners to the ceilings, creating billows like ship sails along the ceiling’s surface, making the rooms feel like giant mattresses under a canopy bed or like a dwelling under the surreal shelter of a homemade parachute.  She fell a little in love with the girl, absorbing the girl's careful arrangement of these objects, and so did Richard.  When the girl made a quick visual survey of the apartment, her glance landed on them and she ambled over to them.  "Oh no," she smiled, "I told you there'd be fireworks, but they've already happened.  Sorry about that!  Is this your dad?" 

“Yes, I am.  It's nice to meet you.  Those earrings are beautiful, by the way, they really compliment the green of your eyes."  He couldn't help but compliment women's looks when he felt warmly towards them; he knew he ran the risk of making them feel objectified, though, and consequently he delivered his compliments as though willingly putting himself in danger.

Feeling embarrassed for him, though he was handsome enough to pull off such flirtation (it's just that there was something fragile about him) the girl ignored his compliment and continued, "You said you're from L.A., right?"  Molly nodded.  "Funny, the woman who brought all these fireworks is from L.A.  That's kind of a striking coincidence, huh?  Here, let me go get you the pot.  Could you give me some money for it, after all?  I ended up spending a lot on booze.  Just give me whatever you think is fair."