an orphan (one in a sporadic series)

From time to time, ideas come to me...lines, snippets of dialogue, even whole scenes...that have nothing to do with whatever I'm working on at the time. Sometimes these random writings are incorporated into full-blown pieces...and sometimes they remain as orphans, tantalizing teasers from the fickle muse that have no home. This then is one of the orphans which has been languishing in a file since it was born. This was the first draft of the opening scene of a story that eventually came to be called "First Day". The story was completed but the opening scene was completely rewritten for its final draft. This, the original opening, has languished in limbo ever since.

******

She shut off the engine of her car and sat looking, with both trepidation and unabashed joy, at the house . . . at his house. His directions had been perfect and she knew that this was indeed the place where her journey ended. She swallowed hard and glanced at the clock on the dashboard . . . she was on time . . . a few minutes early in fact . . . and she lingered, trying to allow her heart time to slow its beating to a calmer pace. She laughed nervously at herself, realizing that that was not going to happen. She took hold of her purse and opened the door and stepped out.

They had talked about this day for weeks . . . planned for it . . . made time for it . . . found its nuances haunting their dreams and coloring their workaday worlds...and now it was here and she felt as nervous as a new bride.

She chuckled again, realizing that the analogy wasn't too far off the mark.

The area was quiet and still...the stately houses set close enough to give the feel of a neighborhood, far enough to keep everyone's boundaries inviolate; vague whispers of coffee and chlorine and roses and wood smoke giving weight to the clear morning air; the idle song of a satisfied bird soothing from somewhere near. She locked the car door and went and opened the trunk. She struggled to get her suitcase out and slammed it shut, the sound echoing lazily through the stillness.

She put her keys into her purse and shut it tight and put it over her shoulder. She walked the suitcase up the walkway to the front door. The house was sturdy and solid, all of its drapes drawn giving it a vaguely forbidding aspect. The lawn was neatly trimmed and a well-tended bed of rosebushes stretched from the front off to the right all the way to the fence line. Masculine...strong but not ostentatiously so... forbidding and welcoming in the same instant...much like the man himself, she thought with pride and love bubbling freely through her.

She put the suitcase down and fussed with her clothes. Then she rang the bell and picked up the suitcase and waited.

He took a deep breath and opened wide the great wooden door. She was waiting, her eyes bright with anxiety and anticipation, her lips dry, a suitcase clutched with both hands in front of her ample, womanly body and a large black pocketbook slung under her right arm. She was wearing a simple but elegant black skirt that clung to the sweet curve of her hips and a cool white blouse that fell in haphazard and alluring folds around her breasts and her belly.

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