A Short Story with an Unconventional Plot / Narrative

In this example we can see a more experimental approach to story-telling


A WALTZ IN THE E MINOR MORNING


ONE
Sunlight bounced back off the bright blue door and the early morning heat bored into the back of my neck as I grasped the heavy brass knocker above the letterbox. The door, however, swung smoothly open with a sort of namaskar and I stepped over the threshold having completely forgotten why I had come to Lomax's house at such an hour. I was there, nevertheless, and made my way without hesitation or thought into the small dining room to my left.

Nothing struck me as unusual in the appearance of the room. It was spacious and empty. The windowless walls gleamed brilliantly white and the marble floor was cool to the touch of my bare feet. I entered by the only door and noted the absence of any form of lighting. The entire space shone with a silver luminosity.

Closing the door behind me, I walked two-thirds the length of the room and stopped, alert to any sound. There was none. I turned and sat on the floor, tucked my feet beneath me and spread out my skirt like a bird's wing. The room was cool and fresh and peaceful and exquisitely white (or shades of white) in colour. Even the powder-blue silk of my shirt and my sea-blue skirt seemed no more than further notes on the scale of white.

I waited. My quiet hand on the marble floor was a starfish on a beach of sleeping sand, my pale eyes rockpools for which it longed.

I sensed the movement of the opening door and lifted my head to smile at Lomax who came towards me smiling in his turn. He wore a floor-length kimono of midnight blue and his feet were visible only as he walked. In his hands he held a silver tray on which a glass jug of iced water stood beside a crystal tumbler. He slowly sank to the floor an arm's length from where I waited and our eyes met in silence. He continued to smile as he reached for the water. He stretched out one graceful hand as soft and slender as a seagull and lifted the jug by its handle. Tilted above the tumbler the cool blue liquid poured like piano music from one container to the other, poured with a clarity and precision which suspended my breathing. I had never seen such purity, never witnessed such perfection. Lomax poured slowly in a minutely measured flow, concentrating solely on the essence of his action. The water, laughing and sparkling, rose in the tumbler until the level neared the rim, until the level grew above the rim and flowed like birdsong over the rim and down the sides of the tumbler. Still Lomax poured at the same heartbeat rate. The water flowed down the sides of the tumbler and onto the floor and over the floor, spreading like a breeze on the air. I watched as the pool grew in size, coming closer to my knees, as the limitless jug added to the tumbler, as the cool water spread towards my knees.

I reached out my fingers to touch the seeping liquid and as they dipped beneath the surface so the water disappeared and I looked and saw the tumbler disappear and I looked and saw the jug disappear and I looked and saw the silver tray disappear leaving Lomax and me open-mouthed.

"Lomax -" I said.

And Lomax

disappeared.



TWO

He had no right to say it - any of it - and I was furious. I ran up the five stone steps to his front door hearing the angry tattoo of my shoes like someone rapping on a window with a coin: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. I raised my fist to pound against the flaking blue paint but saw that the door stood open so I let myself in. Even better, I thought, I'll surprise him while he sleeps. I took the stairs two at a time without thinking about why the door would be open because I was too busy rehearsing what I would say to him when he woke to find me fuming above him.

And who could blame me for fuming? Telephoning in the middle of the night like that!

"Karin? I hope I didn't wake you?" It was after midnight but he gave me no chance to reply. "Look, why don't you come over? I've got some foie gras and a bottle of Asbach. We can have them in bed."

I couldn't believe it. I thought, maybe I'm still asleep, maybe I'm dreaming.

"Hurry," he said. "Grab a cab and come to bed."

"Lomax," I said, "are you drunk? Because whether you are or not, you're not very funny."

"Oh god, Karin," soft despair at the other end of the line, "how long are you going to be a stiff-kneed little virgin?"

The 'phone went dead and I just stood there looking at it not quite trusting my ears. I went back to bed but tossed and turned until six when I got up again having decided to have it out with him before I went to work. He had no right, as I've said. After all, he was more a friend of friends than a bona fide friend of mine.

Perhaps a little melodramatically I threw open his bedroom door and stood on the threshold, hands on hips and breathing hard from the stairs, but ready to deliver my half-prepared speech.

"Listen, Lomax," I was going to say, "your disgusting suggestion that I share your bed..." and so on.

But I said nothing.

The bedroom was spacious and empty. The windowless walls gleamed brilliantly white and the marble floor was cool to the touch of my bare feet. I entered by the only door and noted the absence of any form of lighting. The entire space shone with a silver luminosity.

I waited. My filleted feet on the icebed marble white fish gleamed. Shoes lost and forgotten, my pale eyes...



THREE

Beneath the warm surface a pink plastic lozenge floats in the morning, a green perspex shadow alive in the morning while inside the wombcab (alone in the darkness) the others sit talking. Laughing and talking.

When we arrived the front door was open and Lomax was waiting, waiting to greet us. He moved in the hallway with patience, quite gracefully, speaking with clarity as he asked whether we thought he should put rugs on the floor. The floor was white marble.

['you'll like him"
"you'll love him"

they laughed in the silence, wetblack and shining though lit for an instant

"because he's so kind"

"- but not patronising"

"so gentle and quiet"

"- but not moody or limp"]

Lomax ushered us into his small but delightfully furnighed dining room, urging us to sit down while he poured the champagne. Above our perfect heads hung a crystal chandelier which sang a thousand tiny notes of fire.

He served foie gras with twelve years old brandy and brought a cut glass jug of iced water to the table.

[they said he was rich (though only by our standards)

they said sensitive (without being neurotic)

they said he's unmarried (and looked out of the window)

they said he's so kind (and laughed to remember)]

The movement was soothing and the talk reassuring as we slid through the evening beneath that warm surface. Yet there remained a slight nagging, unfocused and shapeless, but somehow unnerving. The prisms of colour which fragmented the blackness offered distraction though not for long: pink and green lozenge and perspex and plastic aren't much of talisman, even today.

So I admitted their laughter again and again, heard all their chatter ward off my misgivings. But I needn't have worried, there on that journey, because when they told me all my fears vanished, my doubts melted away.

They said he liked dancing and I smiled.

"Good," I said. Because I like dancing, too.