I made it to 23,000 words and then phhhffst. It’s not that I ran out of ideas, or time really. But my story was fun for me and of personal interest. I had no real hope that it would be anything anyone else would want to read. I couldn’t keep the old steam engine running my fingers with the thought that not even Daniel would be entertained by the story. That, and I’ve had a lot of Sunday School Stuff to get going this month.
I did create one scene that I found kinda charming. And I thought I’d share it. Just to show that I did write something for the 2008 Nano-season. I gave it a go anyway.
Penelope Darling’s Adventures
with
Pinkwick’s Society for the Advancement of Ladies in Unappreciated Academics
Penelope and Florence Pinkwick sat in quiet with their tea for a little while. The tea was warm and comforting. The room was cozy with ruffled curtains and damask table clothes. Large photos of the town in its pioneer days, framed in rich walnut, hung on the walls, covering much of the deep green floral wallpaper.
Florence had known something was on Penelope’s mind for quite some time now and this afternoon’s lull had offered her an opportunity to visit, just the two of them.
Florence still remembered how difficult it was to be brilliant and young in a world of established scholars. And it was obvious that Penelope was not driven to Scholarship in exactly the same way as the founding women of the society. To Penelope school was a lark, something to do and do well but not apparently the only thing she would be doing with her life. Florence saw nothing wrong with that and she had never intended her society to exclude part time scholars or women with family. And yet it appeared that the other members of their traveling party would like things to be going in that direction.
Florence offered Penelope a scone. “Have you been finding enough time to concentrate on your thesis work?” She asked kindly.
“I have…I have, perhaps, had too much time for my thesis and not enough for the work we are ding as a Society.”
“How so?” Florence poured cream into her tea and waited for the revelation. While Penelope’s choice of The History of Bachelorhood in America had been a promising thesis topic—both for its scope of possibly and its unusual focus for a society lady, Florence had foreseen possible trouble with the primary source material—that is, bachelors.
“Well, you see, I did a great deal of reading before hand and was using some of my time on this trip to pursue the story of the lives of modern rural bachelors. And it seems this interview process has been very…consuming,”
“I have seen you on your blackberry a good deal. Is it part of the trouble?” Florence sipped her tea in innocence.
“Well, yes. It has been. While some of the bachelors, especially those on ranches, are taciturn and loathe to give up their independence even for the space of an interview, some others are rather…well, that is…the bachelors seem to have plenty of time to talk. And most of them are…enthusiastic.”
“Are you having trouble narrowing down your material to useable information?
“In a way, yes. I am inundated with opportunities to sit with my sources and talk about life—over coffee, dinner, at the movies, on picnics. The offers come in with remarkable rapidity.”
“Is there one source you would like to be seeing more of?” There was a twinkle in Florence’s eye. It wasn’t an accusation by any means, merely an invitation for Penelope to be honest with herself.
“I suppose yes, there is.”
There was a particular bachelor who had overwhelmed Penelope’s research. She had follwed through on a lead from her mother’s cousin the Chancellor. Chancellor Dillworth had it in mind to help her relation by introducing her both to a number of career bachelors who would make for interesting case studies, but also to introduce her to some nice young men who weren’t married yet. It had come to Ms. Dillworth’s attention through her cousin (Penelope’s mother) that said mother would so like Penelope to settle down and spend less time with the old ladies of that strange Pinkwick Society.
However, the bachelor that pressed most strongly on Penelope’s mind was not, as it turned out, one of the fine eligible young men that Ms. Dillworth was so happy to introduce to Penelope’s attention.
He was young, relatively speaking. To Penelope’s 22 years he was only 30…and in addition quite shy and academic, working towards a second, or was it third PHD in some obscure mathematical vein. He lived a bachelor’s life in a man cave over some shops in a small college town. The college gave him a very small salary to teach math and he worked on his PHD traveling to his own University as the need arose. He had shown such little interest in girls throughout his younger years that it had always been assumed he was gay. He didn’t mind the thought since he was a modern man, and never put any effort into changing the opinion. It saved him time not being set up with girls. He was, however, very interested in someday meeting a girl who could possibly keep up with him intellectually. In fact, since Ms. Dillworth assumed he was gay and knew he was a great egoist and supremely shy she had thought he would make a great anecdote about a young man who would be a lifelong bachelor.
And then Penelope met him for coffee. And at this point it is not a bad time to say that Penelope was a little on the tall side, she had a curvy figure that made some of the ladies doubt she could be serious about her studies. She wore her hair long and pulled up, stuck through with a pencil. Her hair was very dark, and glossy of course. If her face wasn’t traditionally pretty it was at least animated and intelligent. She even had a deep crease between her eyes from overwork at the computer. Her fingernails were short and plain because it was easier to dig through books and type quickly that way and she always wore sensible shoes. She was not every man’s cup of tea though she was attractive in her own way and a far more flirtatious girl than those illustrious Society ladies liked to see.
And she walked into the coffee shop where Walter Schpultz was waiting for her. He never wated time and so sat with his laptop open and his coffee on the table waiting for her. When she walked in, as she was the only stranger in the small town Starbucks, he knew who she was. She had seen his picture on the College faculty web site and knew him as well.
He looked at her, she looked at him. Something sparked. She knew he wasn’t gay and he quickly closed his lap top and found himself smiling at her. Something he hadn’t particularly intended to do.
He stood up, he pushed a chair out for her, he offered to order her coffee. He all but gushed. The barista blushed for him and thought, “Maybe Walter does like girls!”
His heart beat so quickly and so hard that he wondered about his beats per minute and what the likely increase had been. And he wondered what percentage redder his face must be as he bumbled about in front of this girl. Penelope Darling. The name, oh the name. Penelope Darling. She looked up at him, met his eye and smiled brightly. He flushed all over again realizing he had said her name aloud. She held out her hand and he took it.
“Walter Schpultz.” She said warmly and squeezed his hand in hers, rather than shaking it. She sat down and reached into her handbag. She pulled out a card and handed it to him. It was the fateful card with her contact information. That card that connected the blackberry of hers to the greater world. Her email.
“Please let me get you a coffee,” He said, still standing.
“Yes, of course, black coffee please, just…americano.”
He ordered the coffee and stood with his back to her waiting for the barista to hand him the cup. His mind was going, he figured, ten thousand words minute as he contemplated what was before him. A serious girl. A pretty girl. A girl that was meeting him for a purpose that had nothing to do with his mother wanting him to find a nice girl and settle down. She just wanted a coffee and some information, he told himself. Calm down deceitful heart, he cautioned himself. She is here for her work, not for you. His fingers clenched and unclenched convulsively at his side. And then, before he was ready the coffee was in his hand and he was passing it to her.
Her feelings were equally mixed, on the one hand she had compassion for all of her bachelors, men who for many reasons were not interested in the company of women but had somehow found themselves in her company for unknown hours. She had an easy business like manner that made them feel like they were ordering fuel for the farm rather than talking about feelings. She wanted to use those skills now to set Walter at ease, but then, totally unexpected to her, her heart didn’t want him to be at ease. The idea that he might be at ease and feel no different than if he was talking to his oil man made her heart skip and jump. Feel differently! Feel differently! She willed him.
And he did feel differently, she needn’t have worried. As he looked at her (though gazed was a more accurate word) his mind wandered to their honeymoon in France where they visited the great universities together and then to the day care on campus where they had lunch between classes with their kids. And mysteriously at the end of it a charming scene with a Christmas tree surrounded by many adoring grandkids. Thus far did his mind travel in those moments before she began speaking again.
‘Thank you for meeting me here. I find that the American Bachelor is a misunderstood character in our mythology and I intend to record in my work what his significance and role in making our country is. I’m very grateful you had time to meet with me.”
“The pleasure is all mine, I’m sure.” He said. Did he purr? He wondered to himself, please say I didn’t’ purr.
“I have a series of questions that I have been asking—they give me an equal foundation to base my examination of each individual on. They aren’t particularly personal, would you mind if we talked about them now?”
“Not at all.” How he wished he could respond cleverly and not sound like such a schmuck!
“First, How old are you?”
“30.”
“Second, what is your occupation?”
“Mathematician.”
“Third, are you doing what you want to be doing with your life?” this was a bit of a diversion from her actual third question, but his deep brown eyes were pulling her in and she wanted to know, really wanted to know if he was content with things as they are.
‘Not anymore.” He said. He was shocked that it had come out. He had thought it of course, but this Penelope, this was the second time his thoughts spilled out in front of her in less than ten minutes.
“No?” She said with a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp, if she would have admitted it.
“No.”
“What is missing?”
“Penelope Darling.” He turned red this time, deep red from the tips of his fingers to his scalp. He had only thought to say Penelope Darling and not intended to say it. But there it was, said.
“Oh!”
“I-I’m in the middle of another PHD and…I guess I wish I hadn’t really begun it. Too much in the books right now.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” She said. Maybe he hadn’t meant that she was missing maybe he was just trying to remember her name.
“What are you working on right now?”
“Oh, who knows. Some math thing.”
“Do you live alone?” She moved on to another question, or at least she thought it was a question she had asked before.
“Yes.”
“Are you ever lonely?”
“I really wasn’t. No, I’d say I didn’t use to be lonely.” He was leaning forward, locking eyes with her and talking quietly, to her alone now. It was intense, he didn’t know where the courage was coming from or what was driving him to it, but suddenly he didn’t want to stop. He wanted her to know him.
She was blushing now, he noticed, her eyes were sparkling still and she was leaning in intimately, a lap top and two café americano’s all that separated them.
“Should we leave?” she asked
“Very much so.” And he stood up and gathered his things with rather more grace than usual. She left her coffee on the table and they went outside. They wandered the streets of the town, him telling her about the town and about the college and about mathematics and her asking him about it all and telling him about travel and how so very much she found herself liking his particular town.
And following their breathless introduction were future visits, visits to his university and his apartment and the cemetery (merely because it was the thing she hadn’t seen and it was rather old.) And lengthy phone conversations and constant text messaging. Text messaging that interfered with his lectures and her interviews and their sleep. But nothing had been said much to a point, being the modern era. They barely knew each other and eventually she left town with her society to further their research. The calls emails and texts didn’t diminish and she began to think of nothing but getting back to that town to see Walter and of course, he thought of nothing but the same.
So tea with Florence was at once a nice diversion—a time when she didn’t have to try to force herself to think of something else, to concentrate on work for example, and at the same time a relief to admit her feelings and mull over what her future could be with her mentor and advisor.
