Where the Heart Belongs

Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Tipping her head back, she drained the last bit of  Coca-Cola from the slim green bottle she held in her right hand.  She could picture her mother’s face, grimacing at the sight.  It wasn’t lady like, her mother would chastise her.  That’s what the straw is for, Nora!  But the paper always stuck to her lip.  Wiggling  her toes deeper  into the sand, she took pleasure in the cooler grains buried a few inches beneath the hotter, top layer.  This is the life, she mused.  Stretched out  in the sun on a comfortable barkcloth clad chaise lounge, and dressed daringly in her new strapless orange one piece, she’d spent the last two hours mostly dozing and dreaming, while palm trees and blue waves swayed and danced behind her closed eyes.

Her heart sank.  A breeze was picking up, though trying to be playful.  Kissing her cheeks, and lifting her bangs impishly off of her forehead. Shuffling the pages of the book she’d only half heartedly been reading.   And the sun, as though suddenly gripped by a fit of regret over its own daring attire, was covering itself up with clouds.  She shivered and reached for her polka dotted beach towel, draping its warmth around her shoulders as the first drop of rain splashed off the end of her nose.

Reluctantly vacating the soft cushions of her chair, she stood and gathered her book and empty bottle, and slipped into her sandals.  Facing reality from the roof of her apartment building, she was reminded once again that palm trees and blue waves were a long, long ways away.

Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Just not here.

She pushed the dishpan, full of sand, under the chaise lounge.

Naughty Gertrude

When Gertrude purchased the grass skirt and coconut shell top in the tiny tourist shop on Waikiki, she imagined herself swaying gracefully like the dancers she had watched at the Moana Hotel’s complimentary luau and hula show. What Gertrude did not count on was trying so hard to master the technique that she would throw her back out. 

Later, after she had returned home to Hackensack, she immensely enjoyed the shocked expressions on the faces of her friends when she saucily answered their queries as to whether she’d had a good time in Hawaii.

I spent almost the entire week in bed!

With a wink, no less.

Let them think what they want, she mused.  It might be thrilling, for once, to have a reputation.