Thursday, January 24, 2008

Sarah's prompt: She was levitating

Every day it was the same. Gordon came in with the cell phone stuck to his head and the paper under his arm. He would drop it on the table and half heartedly look through a stack of mail. Gordon never opened a bill; he knew she would take care of it. He would on occasion open the odd junk mail letter that came or pick up a catalog from here or there but that was the extent of it.
After he got off the phone, Gordon would take a shower, get dressed in something comfortable and stroll into the living room. “What’s for dinner?” was usually the first thing he said to her, right before he turned on this game or that.
They usually ate in front of the TV and it was a rare night when he paid much attention at all to her. Every now and again he would mention that she looked different, had she gotten her hair done or something.
She had tried all the usual things, sexy lingerie, new hairdo, trying to pretend she was somehow interested in the football game on the tube, but to know avail. She had told her girlfriends that she could take a lover and he would never notice. They laughed at that but they all had they same issue going on at home and knew it was true.
Gordon insisted he was paying attention, whenever she would call him on it he would say I do pay attention but couldn’t remember any detail related to anything in the last 15 years of their lives together.
And of course that night was no different, he hadn’t even asked her the hair question. He’d just watched the game and mumbled in her direction as she told Gordon about the guy from the nursery who had helped her carry all the flowers and bags of soil to the car. He barely nodded when she said that guy had really been such a gentleman and has seemed very concerned about how she was going to unload it all when she got home.
Gordon hadn’t really noticed anything but you would have thought, perhaps this one time he might. Considering the sparkle in her eyes, the glow on her cheeks, the excited tone to her voice, and of course the fact that she was levitating.

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