Hi,
Thanks to everyone who has written me asking me where I've gone. It seems I've lost my muse and without him it's been hard to find the desire to write.
Maybe the healing has now begun?
Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoy bringing Rachel and Phillip to life.
JG
*
The grey sky hung low, Winter's chill evident with each breath Rachel took. She pulled the threadbare woolen shawl around her shoulders tightly. Each booted foot crunched along the hardened frozen earth as she stepped towards the barn.
Reluctant to give up even a minimal bit of warmth by unfolding her arms, Rachel shouldered the heavy barn door and it slowly gave way to creak open. The smell of hay mixed with the heady scent of burning wood as the warmth of a kindled potbellied stove enveloped her. There he was, standing on the far side, by the stove, at his bench, banging away at something. He was always fixing something, repairing something, making something out of nothing.
They worked well together. He did the building and the mending, and the tiling and the cutting and the chopping and the lugging. She did the cleaning and the washing, the cooking and the growing and the sewing. She would help him as much as she could, but his strength and stamina was immeasurable to hers. They would work together in the fields, tend the animals together. Then, as sunset gave way to evening, she would join him out on the front porch cradling the last of the days coffee in a tin mug. Sip by sip they would share the brew and watch the sun go down.
This one night she came to him while he was lost deep in thought, as he plied the metal. He barely hesitated as the door pulled closed with a soft thud of wood against wood. Finally, she whispered, hesitant to disturb his concentration. "You think 'twill snow?"
"Aye."
It was cold and she wanted to go to bed. With him.
She watched him hammer and pull at a piece of old tin.
"Canna that wait til morn?" Though her voice was little more than a whisper, he replied. "Nay."
He always replied, regardless of how soft her request. Sometimes it seemed she barely spoke the words and his reply would come. Sometimes she could just think the thought, and he would respond.
Likewise with her and his thoughts and words.
"What is it you're making?"
"Woman, shush now."
With a deep sigh, she reluctantly turned to leave.
"Where are you going?"
"Back into the house by the fire. 'Tis cold."
"Warm yourself there." He nodded off to the side while he worked a corner of the tin until it was rounded.
"Verra well." She sat in the chair by the fire, eventually falling asleep to the sound of her man plying the piece of wellworn tin, the fire crackling, and the wind outside picking up and howling around the barn rafters.
This dream was different. There was no sex, but the longing was just as powerful. Her readers wanted sex. Of course, Rachel knew this, so she sat there, staring at the white document, trying to imagine what the Phillip and Rachel of her dreams would do.
The announcement of an email broke her train of thought, so she hid the word processing program and brought her email program to the foreground. Feedback. She always enjoyed feedback.
"You write well. Where do you come up with your story lines? I get mine from dreams." It was signed journo1130.
Well. She wrote back to the faceless, nameless, sexless reader. "I, too get my ideas from dreams. So you write as well?" She sent it off and focused again on Phillip and Rachel.
No sooner had Rachel gotten the couple out of the barn and into their bed when the email alert sounded once again. Yes, journo1130 was back.
"Do I write as well? No. Not as well as you do. But I manage. What else do you write?"
This went on for most of the night, with Rachel caught up in the game of conversing through email. It felt safe enough. And unless he was lying, Journo was a professional writer, such as herself, in his mid-30's- such as herself- married to his career. Again, such as herself.
And he lived within 45 minutes of her. She had not told him where she lived, but when he answered her question as to where he lived, as promptly as email could allow he gave the name of a town which Rachel knew to be fairly close. She smiled.
Journo had distracted her enough to keep her from finishing the story. When at last her bedtime came she dejectedly emailed him one last note, "Good night. Bedtime for me." She waited a few minutes and sure enough, he wrote back, "Sweet dreams."
* * * * *
"I don't know, Carrie. There's like some kind of attraction. I can't explain it." Rachel updated her co-worker and best friend the following morning waiting on the deli line in the shop across the street from work.
"But you don't even know his name." Carrie said before ordering "two coffee's black, one sugar."
"Thanks." Rachel put her money away and nodded to her friend. "I know. Names didn't come up."
"If he's reading your stuff on that website he's got to be a perv."
"So what's wrong with that?" Rachel laughed. "I'm a perv and you like me."
"You're a normal perv!" She took the stryofoam lidded coffee cups and handed one to Rachel. As they left the deli, Carrie tried to rephrase her concerns. "Look. You don't know him at all. He didn't offer his name. He reads your stuff- I'm sure you're not the only writer he's contacted. Does he write for the same site you do? can you check his profile?"
Rachel shook her head and burnt the tip of her tongue as she impatiently tried the coffee she knew would be too hot to consume for the moment. "He didn't say."
"Why didn't you ask?"
"Well. I did sorta."
