Congratulations !
You have been awarded points.
Thank you for !
- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Relationships
- Published: 04/02/2015
When Your Spirits Climb - Part One
Born 1969, M, from Herten, NRW, GermanyWHEN YOUR SPIRITS CLIMB
A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton
(The picture posted with this story is of Charles E.J. Moulton as he looked when he sang Joe Cocker's "Summer in the City" in the Theater Fest in Germany back in 2013.)
© 2010 Charles E.J. Moulton
FROM JACK’S POINT OF VIEW
I remember that day vividly.
I had just arrived at the lab for the third time, having forgotten my book at my laboratory counter.
Noble prize winner Dr. Yalal Kirvin’s book about the science of cloning had become my most valued. I was devouring the volume page by page, seeking to find every fragment of information I could get my hands on.
The theme had always been my cup of tea, even before it was something that anyone could really remotely relate to. The idea of actually being able to make a replica of another being fascinated me. Moreover, actually being able to control the biology of nature really drove me more than just cloning a being.
What I found out over the course of the next few years was that I really wanted to control myself.
That is the story I have to tell here.
What we had in the lab was more a form of scientific analysis of pharmacy and so my interest in cloning was more a hobby than anything else. I would not have left the book laying there over night if I could help it, but only if I could help it.
I was a bit preoccupied. A colleague of mine had caught my eye and I was doing my best to ignore it. I couldn’t. This girl was alluring.
Companies sent medicine to us and we tried them on laboratory rats, analyzed the remedy in test tubes and tried to break down the individual ingredients to see what they would do and how they could be improved. Most of what we did to the rats was harmless.
We were a pretty dull place and so I spent my time trying to come up with fun stuff to analyze in my breaks – like this book. Could I clone a rat? A bug? A person? Could I isolate a hormone and break it apart? Could I divide hormones and isolate their effects on man?
Was this a Jekyll and Hyde problem?
How was it that you could create a complete different being by feeding it off another source? Was it right or wrong? However, as I devoured the book I also had this small thought at the edge of my subconscious telling me that I was lying to myself. I was interested in cloning, yes, but my mind would rather have people be replaceable by copies than having to deal with people on a personal level of responsibility. My history as a Casanova, a life style I had long ago left, shoved into a corner, forgotten and classified, had been replaced with responsibility.
I had never touched philandering for years, but my mind was clearly very keen on letting this subject pop up again and again. I was falling deeply in love and my MCP, male chauvinist pig to the layman, was not really having any of it.
I carried the book in question in a leather cover around everywhere, until I forgot it one day at the lab by a deliberate mistake, which was the start of a very nice relationship that forced me to face this old unsolved task: sex.
I had been at Robert Grobe Laboratories from nine until five that sunny august day and then left due to exhaustion. As the evening lingered on, I would forget this fatigue. About half way home to my flat, my boss, whose name graced the gilded backslapping inscription on the wall outside, called me and said I had forgotten to take home the package he had prepared.
I responded “What package?” and he alleged he had put together some books his medical publisher had an overload of copies of. I could have them. They were books on cloning.
So, I returned to pick up the parcel of extra material. Returning home, I leafed through them, positioning myself in front of the TV, surprised at my own disinterest in my favourite subject.
I had some left-over pasta in the fridge and all the time I shifted in my sofa, feeling like there was something left for me to do. I then realized I had forgotten my book at the lab and that made me happy for it gave me something to accomplish and I returned there promptly, now for third time that day. I thought I was crazy fleeing to work so often. Maybe it was fate that lured me there again and again, although traffic down lower Manhattan was heavy at this hour. I figured that I had nothing better to do at home that I might as well take a trip back to work. It gave me an opportunity to move about.
I had expected to be alone, I told myself, when I arrived back in that sterile hole of analysis, but I wasn’t.
Carrie, the cutest and most humble of all the girls in the staff, was still there and she was working late. Her exquisite brown and curly hair hanging down across the elevation of her countenance. She was looking at a plastically sealed test sample and trying to open it as I walked down the narrow stairs into the germ-free, neon-lit room.
She looked up as I entered the basement of a space and as she did I noticed that she blushed.
The room was as unwelcome as ever with its’ three long white rows of laboratory workbenches, but Carrie was a welcome sight: temperate, sexy with a bosom of honey melon sized éclairs and delightfully bashful in an open sort of way. She was a mixture between Paula Abdul, Mona Lisa and Velasquez’ Venus and I loved it. I would’ve jumped at her then and there and she knew it.
“Oh, Hi, Jack,” she grinned, still fiddling with the lid of her tube. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
I walked up to my table, grinning.
“Forgot this!” I said and took the brown leather covered book in my hand. “My bible!”
She looked at it from above.
“Ah,” she said, her face attaining this bewildered gaze that I found so winning. “Can I ask you something, big guy?” she asked me, setting this plastic tablet holder aside.
“Sure,” I nodded.
She leaned with her right hand on the counter and crossed her legs, putting her head to the side. “Why d’ya leather cover your books? I mean, it’s real elegant, but I’ve never seen it before.”
I laughed. “I only do this with certain books.” I nodded again. “Special books” I alleged, lifting the one I held in my hand. “I received this leather cover when I was five and it has changed host three times. All books that it has covered were the same size. My first bible, a real one, graced the inside of the cover first. Grandma gave it to me. Then my beloved copy of Treasure Island and ... this.”
“Okay” she chirped. “That explains a lot.”
Then I added: “Yalal Kirvin is a genius.”
She lifted the plastic holder and looked at it. “That’s the only geneticist I have actually not read enough about” she responded and then looked up. “Maybe you can tell me about him some day.”
”Be glad to.” I looked at her hands fiddling. “Trouble?”
She smiled.
“Yeah. The samples they send must be sealed with superglue.”
I then put the book aside, walked up to her and said:
“Want me to do it?”
She chuckled. “Oh, thanks, yeah.” She gave me the sample, put
her hands on her hips and sighed.
“I’ve been trying to get that thing open for ten minutes.”
While I tried, making my nails bleed, I asked her:
“What is this?”
“The genome of an industrial organism,” she smiled. “Streptomyces Avermitilis. Funny stuff.”
“Rogers from Iowa sent this?”
”Rogers sends all the stuff Iovine Pharmaceuticals feel have been laying too long on their shelf, but I just thought I would come here and do their microscopic reading for them. Tried to cool down with some 1996 Gallo Cabernet and some tortilla cheese dip in front of Ally McBeal Reruns, but I was just too jittery, I guess.”
She watched me struggle.
“Can’t you get it up?”
I stopped and looked at her, giving me a mischievous look.
Carrie smiled, blushing. “I meant ... get it open. Geez. I’m sorry.” She put her hands in front of her face.
“Don’t worry, Carrie,” I chuckled. “I’d like to get it up for you.”
She gave me a playful slap on my wrist.
I laughed. “Actually I’m a gentleman,” I said and this was followed by the familiar plop from the can which had three compartments with three different antibiotics inside them.
“Ah,” I laughed. “The glorious finish.”
I felt victorious. This proved my point. I was not a Male Chauvinist Pig, I helped her get it unfastened. “There you go, voila.”
“Merci” she said and smiled, sitting down on the leather covered stool. It sighed, the air fizzing out of it gently as she sat down on it with her appealing tush. She put the antibiotic in the analytical scanner and let the machine warm up, before she turned away from me again and smiled. “You are a gentleman.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Oh, well. I think that I am some of the
time. Not always, but more often than usual.”
She grinned at me.
There was a long pause, while I wondered if I should leave her to her work or offer her my help. I had just planned a quiet evening on the couch hoping to find out something about this duality theory of Kirvin’s over a glass of Chianti and plop into bed. Now, it seemed more interesting to stay here with this gorgeous girl and help her get her pills together. What was I talking about, man? I had to stay here. This girl was much more than I one night stand. She was a miracle.
“Can I help you?” she said and turned to me, looking up from her lens. I looked up from the book I was pretending to read and smiled.
“Oh, no. I’m just dawdling.”
She cocked her head and returned to her microscope. “My father always used to say ‘Don’t dawdle.’ ” She looked up at me, cocking her head. “But if you like dawdling, I enjoy your company. Dawdle if you like.”
“Okay” I responded. “Couldn’t think of better company to dawdle with.”
There was a long pause before I gathered enough courage to ask her this. “How long since your father died?”
“Six months,” she said. “I loved him, still do very much. He is around me all the time. It’s like he supports me even more now that he is ...” She paused and thought for a moment. “Now that he is somewhere else. Not in his body, I mean.” She resumed working and continued speaking as she did. “He was the best doctor I knew. All the singers went to him. All my professionalism comes from him. But I miss him so. I really do.”
“How old was he?”
“Seventy-seven.”
There was a long silence.
Finally I said: “You can count on me for comfort.”
She smiled: “That’s sweet.” There was another pause. “He worries about me as he always did, but he does so because he wants his little girl to do well.”
She took out her note pad and pencil and jotted down some numbers on the paper. She looked back into the microscope, read, concentrated.
“My father was and still is a beautiful soul. I’m happy his spirit is still around.”
She cleared her throat and smiled at me, her eyes clogging up.
“I am happy that I am a spiritual enough to believe that.”
I put my arm around her shoulder and stroked it.
She looked up again and smiled.
“I like that.”
“That’s not the reason why you work overtime is it?”
“What?” Carrie seemed surprised. “My dad?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
She shrugged. “I guess I can’t relax that well, so I work.”
She put her hand against my shoulder and now I felt how warm it was and how wonderful it felt to have her lay a hand on me. She desperately wanted to tell me that it wasn’t bad at all of me to bring the subject up. In fact, she welcomed me caring about what she felt and how she felt.
“I like that you care.” Carrie smiled. “Sweetie.”
She had called me Sweetie, so I smiled and looked down.
“Good,” I mused, somewhat red. “I do.”
She took away her hand and it was obvious to both of us now that we had revealed to each other how we felt.
I went to the left side of her table and leaned against it, looking up at the ceiling while she worked, enjoying the beauty of the comfortable silence.
It was obvious to everyone that we had a crush on each other, but no one knew why two singles like us still hadn’t mated up. I just enjoyed her company.
What really bothered me was that I might take advantage of her difficult situation, I mean with her father being dead and all. I did have my pre history with women. This woman needed me now and, frankly, I needed her. Strangely enough, I realized that first now.
I looked at her again and she threw me a glance and smiled.
There was a pause.
“When you are ready with that we could go have a bit to eat. You know that Italian place we went to at my birthday? What was it called? Luigi’s.”
“Yeah, Luigi’s,” she crooned. “Bit of a walk, isn’t it?”
“It’s a warm night,” I mused.”
“Your treat?”
I smiled. “Let me be the gentleman.”
She smiled. “Be glad my father is not here in person to tell you this, but you are making a pass at me, aren’t you? He would be saying: Her-hrrm, Young lady, are you sure that he is serious about you?”
I smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know.” I looked at her, embarrassed. “Yeah. Maybe. I happen to think you are a very attractive young lady.”
She gave me a half smile.
“Don’t you have plans for the evening?”
“No. Went here on a whim.” I shrugged, looking at the cover.
The passion that I felt for Kirvin was getting burly competition from the only thing that was stronger.
She smiled and looked into her lens again, adjusting it.
“What have you got in mind?” she said, twitching her red lips and lightly flaring her nostrils. I knew what that meant. She liked that I was flirting with her.
I walked up to her with a vast and cutely sappy grin on my countenance. She put her arms around my waist and gave me the longest and most sensual kiss I have ever received.
I don’t know how long we stood there, kissing.
When we were done, we were sweaty.
“Do you still want to go to Luigi’s?” I asked.
“They have the best Caesar’s Salad in the galaxy” she whispered and we both laughed.
“How long are they open?”
I giggled. “Luigi closes when the cooks go on strike.”
She laughed. “And they always put too much garlic into the sauce. Bob’s gonna hate us.”
“He does anyway,” I said. “That leaves us privacy.”
“Just promise me one thing, honey,” she mused with her head toward my forehead and looking into the inside of my soul.
“What?” I asked and kissed her again, feeling like I was flying.
“Brush your teeth when we get to my place,” she giggled.
“I assume you have an extra tooth brush,” I laughed.
“I will even brush them for you,” she sang. “With my own mouth. If you let me brush other parts of you as well.”
“Now that is a promise,” I laughed.
She let go of my clutch and walked a few steps away from me, her derriere swaying to and fro.
She looked up at me, jotted down three numbers on the pad and said softly: “We should make love right here, Jack, and leave a mess for Bob to clean up.”
I jumped toward her and started fondling her.
“You have protection?”
“Maybe,” I answered.
She laughed and pushed me away. “Then wait until after dinner, hombre. Then you have something to look forward to.”
“What about the mess for Bob to clean up?” I joked.
“Bob will fire us,” she swooned as she rubbed my bottom, “and we will get fired and have to live on welfare.”
“More time,” I said, feeling my crotch swell and hearing the table creak. “We will have sex under the bridge until our teeth fall out.”
“Bob’s a great boss, Jack. You just fail to see that.”
“Please let us make love right here, right now,” I pleaded.
“Oh, what the hell,” she said.
She now took off her white robe and started tearing off her blouse and displaying her breasts. As I nibbled on her body, I continued the conversation.
“I guess” I responded and repeated more softly “I guess. He just seems to push me more than he pushes others.”
After that, clothes were thrown in every direction and we ended up somewhere in the office going at it like to racoons. It must’ve been ten o’clock when we stepped into the shower of the nerve centre and cleaned off. We were like glue on each other and kept on kissing like mad. We marched out of a clean lab and were half way toward Luigi’s a half hour later and continued our conversation about the fact that Bob kept on pushing me more than other guys in the place.
“Jackie” she urged, stretching her head toward me as we walked. “That’s his tactic when he likes someone’s potential.” She looked back onto the sidewalk and tried to smile. “You’ve been here for three years. You should know that he likes your work.”
I nodded. I did know, but he always gave me assignments I didn’t like instead of letting me take care of the research.
She looked up at me again and this time she had read my mind. She stopped where she was on the sidewalk and said:
“You can’t expect him to hand you over to the main research.”
I shook my head.
“Carrie” I said, shocked. “I am overqualified for minor analysis.”
“So am I” she smiled. “But our time will come. Trust me.”
I smiled, touched by this sudden warm trust that seemed to emerge from her soul. She spoke slowly in ‘us’-terms and that made me feel very good. I sighed, raising my hand to her cheek.
I caressed it softly.
“I trust you.”
She looked at me warmly and suddenly the laboratory that she
had been speaking of was not so important any more.
“You’re so sweet,” I said.
She smiled and blushed. There was a lump in her throat, I felt that she was nervous.
Her eyes were as big as tea saucers. I took a step closer to her, my heart beating fast.
“Thanks,” she whispered in a high voice.
Slowly our mouths and tongues met in a kiss again.
We were talking softly about nothing, it seemed, but that nothing was as sweet as honey.
She’d look at me and I would smile. I’d tell her she radiated such
warmth and she would blush. Then our hands would clasp gently tighter and our fingers mould and mingle, figuratively speaking that is.
We walked down the avenue toward the Minskoff Theatre where Alfred Molina was headlining Fiddler on the Roof and then we strolled down the avenue past the Winter Garden, stopping at every corner and kissing.
We took a side street and passed Tout va bien, a French place, after which we came back upon the avenue and walked past Dave Letterman’s Talk Show Theatre, crossed the street past the Broadway Diner and onto the passage that took us to one of my favourite cafés, Café Vienna, where they had the best carrot cake in the world. I can’t even recall what it tasted like that evening.
I felt myself closer to this girl than I ever had in the years I’d known her. I couldn’t think what my colleagues were going to say about it. What mattered was that I was holding her hand and she was holding mine and that I was in love again after being a one night stand philandering single for almost five years.
It felt right. I had no guarantee that it would last, but it was wonderful. Close after stopping by the Café for a cappuccino and a cake, we took a cab to the park and ended up walking the last five minutes that it took us to come to the best pasta in town. We crossed the street and walked for a while next to the park that was safer than before thanks to Giuliani.
There were a few bums lined up on the park benches, the odd hobo walking by and some ladies of the night and I felt what I felt every time I came here from the more posh part of Manhattan that the lab was located in. I wanted to cross the street into the section closer to Luigi’s and get out.
Then she suddenly turned to me on the side street a block away from the restaurant and kissed me. The intensity of the kiss was so enormous that I had to stop three times to catch my breath. It made me forget everything else.
We spent fifteen minutes on the corner.
I was desperate.
We walked into the bistro around midnight and at once Luigi himself greeted us. There were five couples in there, all of them youngish, 30-something lovers like us and it was clear to me once again that his was a sort of secret spot for lover’s to meet.
“He, buon giorno” he sing-songed. “No see you long, Jack-ah?”
“It’s been a while,” I answered, smiling.
“Issabeen a while,” he responded in his hoarse Genova accent.
“Miss Fisher, e vero?”
Carrie grinned, blushing. “You remember!”
Luigi threw his hands to his side and waved. “Your highness, Luigi always remember the lady who sing so beautifully for us lassa month-a. What was it? Everybody dance now?”
She shrugged. “No, I was intoxicated. I only sing when I’m drunk. I’m not very good.”
Luigi twitched his moustache and winked at me. “Your girl is modest. She too good to be modest, I think. She sing-ah O Sole Mio like a real-ah female Pavarotti, eh?” Luigi laughed and his belly shook. We had to laugh with. “Come with me. Top secret table for two, eh?”
Luigi took striding steps to a very nice rising around the right corner grabbing to menus on the way. It was a round table surrounded by leaves and flowers and half circle of wooden columns on a balcony ledge with a picture of a bay in the back. A big sign was posted above
the painting, obviously put there by Luigi himself. It said NAPOLI in big letters. He pulled the table away a foot and then let Carrie sit down on the one end of the couch. Then he gestured for me to sit, bowed, gave us the menus, said.
“Take your time, we no hurry here. Cook live in kitchen. He no leave or he fired,” and left. “Buona fortuna.” He screamed something to the bartender in intense Italian. “Ehi, Adalfieri. Dare a questi due amanti affascinanti giovani alcuni dei nostri Amaretto.” He turned to us. “You like Amaretto?”
We nodded.
“In here it is a welcome for young lovers before dinner,” Luigi said. “I give you free.”
“Thank you,” we responded.
He bowed and left, screaming again at someone else.
“Ora cerchiamo di essere tranquillo qui intorno. Le coppie fanno l'amore. Una pizza Suzanna e tre Farfarello Gnocchi e bravo presto.”
I giggled. “What did I tell you?”
She picked up the menu. “I’ve only been here twice, but he always makes me chuckle.”
I smiled and took her hand. “I’m so in love with you.”
She looked down on my hand and she took it.
“This is butterfly time.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “Butterfly time?”
“My mother used to say that when someone was in love.”
I sighed and sank into those big brown eyes. I caressed her hand and kissed it. I finally broke the silence. “You must sing for me one day.”
“I’m not a good singer.” She protested. She shook her head, looking to the other end of the room where another couple were holding hands. “I was here with my Aunt Cecile and her family last month. Luigi had a star spangled banner pizza made for that day.”
“Oh, really?” I responded. “What was on it?”
” Salami, Pineapple, Artichokes, Peas, Mushrooms, Pepperoni.”
She raised her eyebrows and pointed to her flat stomach.
“I had to go on a diet for a week after that. I ended up dancing to older south Italian hits. Actually, I think it was the Grappa. Or the three bottles of Chianti.”
“Three bottles?” I laughed. “Sound like fun.”
“I’m not always so organized and predictable as in the lab, you
know. I can be quite crazy.”
“I like that,” I said, surprised at my own corny comment.
Luigi occasionally arrived to ask if everything was all right. At times we were doing more than cuddling, but it seemed to bother no one, so we kept it up.
We were on our second bottle of wine and feeling great.
“Are you strong enough to labour your way through a hangover in seven hours?”
I nodded: “I am if you are.”
She told me about her father and mother, their summer house in Upstate New York, that was now being auctioned out and how she had hit her toe against a stone wall at three years of age and that it had given her a crooked toe. The topics of conversation ranged from the sacred to the profane and there really wasn’t an organization in which order the subjects arrived. What really mattered was the trust. She had told me that her name had brought a lot of people to raise their eyebrows:
“Your name is Carrie Fisher? Isn’t that like Princess Leia in Star Wars?”
She had wondered why no one rarely asked her about that in the lab. Maybe they weren’t Star Wars fans. I answered that they probably were, only they were polite about asking about it. Carrie thought they were dry. I am was the only one with a sense of fun.
Trust is trust, so I told her about me.
I told her about my childhood in North Dakota and how I’d received a scholarship for the NYU and how that had brought me to study genetics and medicine. I also told her that it eventually led me to the lab. So I sat there and I gave her the full story about my first chemistry kit at age five and how my mother had to pull me away from the kit to go to bed.
From then on I was lost. The day my teacher told me about genetic engineering, I felt compelled to read more and more about the genes, as the only jeans I still knew were the kind you wear sitting on a saddle. My father was a good rider and used to have his riding jeans. These genes, however, gave me goose bumps and so I spent years trying to find more about them and what they did and how they functioned.
I told her about my dog Freddy that was my best friend until he passed away at age fifteen. My story of how I wanted him to be buried in the garden of our house really touched Carrie and how he finally ended up being buried in the local pet cemetery made her cry. How I used to put a new flower there every week on a Sunday made her smile. I had a feeling about her, this was more than just a fling.
Slightly tipsy and very happy, we walked out onto the sidewalk around half past two, knowing that we would be zombies in seven hours. We strolled the street down to the park again and realized there that we needed to be alive at labour in fewer than a night, so she made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse.
“What do you say we share a cab back to my place?” I looked at her surprised and paused.
“You live with the car about twenty minutes driving distance away, Jack. You shouldn’t be sleeping alone after two bottles of Chianti.” She smiled. “It’s all right, Babe,” she said, swaying to and fro in a femininely coquette way.
I kissed her and she exhaled noisily, taking my arm and leaning against my shoulder. I saw a cab coming our way and we stepped in.
As she opened the door to a flat that I had never seen before, a fragrance came flying transversely toward my nostrils that I recognized. It was a charming place in creamy, soft tones with see through draperies, a balcony and a scented neon lit waterfall in the corner next to it. Four stuffed teddy bears were positioned on the white sofa and the remote control was still on the sofa next to the New York Daily News TV & Radio guide.
I realized what smelled so good was the scented waterfall. Carrie told me that she had received it from her father as a present on her birthday. It had a battery pack in the pedestal that lasted nearly forever and she had poured lilac scent into the water this morning. The place oozed of lilacs. She asked me if I wanted anything to knock back and I said no, feeling I had drunk enough already.
I ended up brushing my teeth with her spare tooth brush. When I came out, I found her looking at a book. She turned around, smiling at me with those big brown eyes.
“Jack!”
I nodded.
“I don’t do this with every person, you know.”
I smiled.
“I’ve had a crush on you for a lengthy period and I know you
haven’t noticed. I keep those things to myself.”
I caressed her cheek. “You’re not the only one who hides these things well.”
After that we fell into a dreamy world of creamy devotion and fell asleep into each other’s arms around three thirty.
The dream that I had that daybreak took me through a forest that led me to a lake. Just as I was about to jump into the river I felt a wind caressing me, stopping me from jumping in.
I slowly opened my eyes. A soft, female hand was caressing my left cheek. The first sight that met my eyes was Carrie, already showered and made up, dressed in a nice black and white dress, smelling wonderful.
“You’re already up” I croaked.
She smiled.
“Been up an hour. You seemed so saccharine, sleeping gently.
That hot little snore of yours filling the room, so I showered and got ready.”
I rubbed my eyes and yawned. She bent over and kissed me.
“You taste good” I told her.
“Can’t say the same for you, dear,” she mused.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“That’s okay,” she chuckled. “If you take a shower and get your things together I’ll make you some breakfast. All right?”
She caressed me again with that nail polished love giver.
I nodded, feeling tremendous.
“What time is it?” I inquired softly, bending to see the alarm clock.
“Five past eight. How you like your eggs?”
”Sunny side up!”
“Then that is what you shall have, Sir!”
As I stood in the shower rinsing off, I heard Carrie singing in the kitchen frying the eggs and making the toast. There was no radio on. I believed this was opera. Having only listened to AOR and Musical classics by now, what I heard was nice – albeit unusual to my ears. I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off and found a toothbrush and some toothpaste laying neatly on the shelf. I brushed my teeth very slowly and watched myself in the large round mirror. I felt like a stud, last night had been the best sex of my life twice.
The quiet breakfast was followed by a quiet walk to the lab. Carrie had chosen not take the car, but stroll to work. I went along with that willingly being somewhat tired and knowing that the partying would show in my face.
Carrie on the other hand looked more radiant than ever. I don’t how she did it. She had slept just as little, even less. She had drunk just as much wine as I had. This was a mystery.
My head was throbbing.
To be continued in
When Your Spirits Climb - Part Two
CHARLES E.J. MOULTON is an internationally published author with, to date, 77 published pieces to his credit. He has performed in 108 stage productions as a singer and actor, is a painter (exhibited and sold), chorus conductor, drama- and vocal-coach and film-actor. He is married and has a daughter.
When Your Spirits Climb - Part One(Charles E.J. Moulton)
WHEN YOUR SPIRITS CLIMB
A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton
(The picture posted with this story is of Charles E.J. Moulton as he looked when he sang Joe Cocker's "Summer in the City" in the Theater Fest in Germany back in 2013.)
© 2010 Charles E.J. Moulton
FROM JACK’S POINT OF VIEW
I remember that day vividly.
I had just arrived at the lab for the third time, having forgotten my book at my laboratory counter.
Noble prize winner Dr. Yalal Kirvin’s book about the science of cloning had become my most valued. I was devouring the volume page by page, seeking to find every fragment of information I could get my hands on.
The theme had always been my cup of tea, even before it was something that anyone could really remotely relate to. The idea of actually being able to make a replica of another being fascinated me. Moreover, actually being able to control the biology of nature really drove me more than just cloning a being.
What I found out over the course of the next few years was that I really wanted to control myself.
That is the story I have to tell here.
What we had in the lab was more a form of scientific analysis of pharmacy and so my interest in cloning was more a hobby than anything else. I would not have left the book laying there over night if I could help it, but only if I could help it.
I was a bit preoccupied. A colleague of mine had caught my eye and I was doing my best to ignore it. I couldn’t. This girl was alluring.
Companies sent medicine to us and we tried them on laboratory rats, analyzed the remedy in test tubes and tried to break down the individual ingredients to see what they would do and how they could be improved. Most of what we did to the rats was harmless.
We were a pretty dull place and so I spent my time trying to come up with fun stuff to analyze in my breaks – like this book. Could I clone a rat? A bug? A person? Could I isolate a hormone and break it apart? Could I divide hormones and isolate their effects on man?
Was this a Jekyll and Hyde problem?
How was it that you could create a complete different being by feeding it off another source? Was it right or wrong? However, as I devoured the book I also had this small thought at the edge of my subconscious telling me that I was lying to myself. I was interested in cloning, yes, but my mind would rather have people be replaceable by copies than having to deal with people on a personal level of responsibility. My history as a Casanova, a life style I had long ago left, shoved into a corner, forgotten and classified, had been replaced with responsibility.
I had never touched philandering for years, but my mind was clearly very keen on letting this subject pop up again and again. I was falling deeply in love and my MCP, male chauvinist pig to the layman, was not really having any of it.
I carried the book in question in a leather cover around everywhere, until I forgot it one day at the lab by a deliberate mistake, which was the start of a very nice relationship that forced me to face this old unsolved task: sex.
I had been at Robert Grobe Laboratories from nine until five that sunny august day and then left due to exhaustion. As the evening lingered on, I would forget this fatigue. About half way home to my flat, my boss, whose name graced the gilded backslapping inscription on the wall outside, called me and said I had forgotten to take home the package he had prepared.
I responded “What package?” and he alleged he had put together some books his medical publisher had an overload of copies of. I could have them. They were books on cloning.
So, I returned to pick up the parcel of extra material. Returning home, I leafed through them, positioning myself in front of the TV, surprised at my own disinterest in my favourite subject.
I had some left-over pasta in the fridge and all the time I shifted in my sofa, feeling like there was something left for me to do. I then realized I had forgotten my book at the lab and that made me happy for it gave me something to accomplish and I returned there promptly, now for third time that day. I thought I was crazy fleeing to work so often. Maybe it was fate that lured me there again and again, although traffic down lower Manhattan was heavy at this hour. I figured that I had nothing better to do at home that I might as well take a trip back to work. It gave me an opportunity to move about.
I had expected to be alone, I told myself, when I arrived back in that sterile hole of analysis, but I wasn’t.
Carrie, the cutest and most humble of all the girls in the staff, was still there and she was working late. Her exquisite brown and curly hair hanging down across the elevation of her countenance. She was looking at a plastically sealed test sample and trying to open it as I walked down the narrow stairs into the germ-free, neon-lit room.
She looked up as I entered the basement of a space and as she did I noticed that she blushed.
The room was as unwelcome as ever with its’ three long white rows of laboratory workbenches, but Carrie was a welcome sight: temperate, sexy with a bosom of honey melon sized éclairs and delightfully bashful in an open sort of way. She was a mixture between Paula Abdul, Mona Lisa and Velasquez’ Venus and I loved it. I would’ve jumped at her then and there and she knew it.
“Oh, Hi, Jack,” she grinned, still fiddling with the lid of her tube. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
I walked up to my table, grinning.
“Forgot this!” I said and took the brown leather covered book in my hand. “My bible!”
She looked at it from above.
“Ah,” she said, her face attaining this bewildered gaze that I found so winning. “Can I ask you something, big guy?” she asked me, setting this plastic tablet holder aside.
“Sure,” I nodded.
She leaned with her right hand on the counter and crossed her legs, putting her head to the side. “Why d’ya leather cover your books? I mean, it’s real elegant, but I’ve never seen it before.”
I laughed. “I only do this with certain books.” I nodded again. “Special books” I alleged, lifting the one I held in my hand. “I received this leather cover when I was five and it has changed host three times. All books that it has covered were the same size. My first bible, a real one, graced the inside of the cover first. Grandma gave it to me. Then my beloved copy of Treasure Island and ... this.”
“Okay” she chirped. “That explains a lot.”
Then I added: “Yalal Kirvin is a genius.”
She lifted the plastic holder and looked at it. “That’s the only geneticist I have actually not read enough about” she responded and then looked up. “Maybe you can tell me about him some day.”
”Be glad to.” I looked at her hands fiddling. “Trouble?”
She smiled.
“Yeah. The samples they send must be sealed with superglue.”
I then put the book aside, walked up to her and said:
“Want me to do it?”
She chuckled. “Oh, thanks, yeah.” She gave me the sample, put
her hands on her hips and sighed.
“I’ve been trying to get that thing open for ten minutes.”
While I tried, making my nails bleed, I asked her:
“What is this?”
“The genome of an industrial organism,” she smiled. “Streptomyces Avermitilis. Funny stuff.”
“Rogers from Iowa sent this?”
”Rogers sends all the stuff Iovine Pharmaceuticals feel have been laying too long on their shelf, but I just thought I would come here and do their microscopic reading for them. Tried to cool down with some 1996 Gallo Cabernet and some tortilla cheese dip in front of Ally McBeal Reruns, but I was just too jittery, I guess.”
She watched me struggle.
“Can’t you get it up?”
I stopped and looked at her, giving me a mischievous look.
Carrie smiled, blushing. “I meant ... get it open. Geez. I’m sorry.” She put her hands in front of her face.
“Don’t worry, Carrie,” I chuckled. “I’d like to get it up for you.”
She gave me a playful slap on my wrist.
I laughed. “Actually I’m a gentleman,” I said and this was followed by the familiar plop from the can which had three compartments with three different antibiotics inside them.
“Ah,” I laughed. “The glorious finish.”
I felt victorious. This proved my point. I was not a Male Chauvinist Pig, I helped her get it unfastened. “There you go, voila.”
“Merci” she said and smiled, sitting down on the leather covered stool. It sighed, the air fizzing out of it gently as she sat down on it with her appealing tush. She put the antibiotic in the analytical scanner and let the machine warm up, before she turned away from me again and smiled. “You are a gentleman.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Oh, well. I think that I am some of the
time. Not always, but more often than usual.”
She grinned at me.
There was a long pause, while I wondered if I should leave her to her work or offer her my help. I had just planned a quiet evening on the couch hoping to find out something about this duality theory of Kirvin’s over a glass of Chianti and plop into bed. Now, it seemed more interesting to stay here with this gorgeous girl and help her get her pills together. What was I talking about, man? I had to stay here. This girl was much more than I one night stand. She was a miracle.
“Can I help you?” she said and turned to me, looking up from her lens. I looked up from the book I was pretending to read and smiled.
“Oh, no. I’m just dawdling.”
She cocked her head and returned to her microscope. “My father always used to say ‘Don’t dawdle.’ ” She looked up at me, cocking her head. “But if you like dawdling, I enjoy your company. Dawdle if you like.”
“Okay” I responded. “Couldn’t think of better company to dawdle with.”
There was a long pause before I gathered enough courage to ask her this. “How long since your father died?”
“Six months,” she said. “I loved him, still do very much. He is around me all the time. It’s like he supports me even more now that he is ...” She paused and thought for a moment. “Now that he is somewhere else. Not in his body, I mean.” She resumed working and continued speaking as she did. “He was the best doctor I knew. All the singers went to him. All my professionalism comes from him. But I miss him so. I really do.”
“How old was he?”
“Seventy-seven.”
There was a long silence.
Finally I said: “You can count on me for comfort.”
She smiled: “That’s sweet.” There was another pause. “He worries about me as he always did, but he does so because he wants his little girl to do well.”
She took out her note pad and pencil and jotted down some numbers on the paper. She looked back into the microscope, read, concentrated.
“My father was and still is a beautiful soul. I’m happy his spirit is still around.”
She cleared her throat and smiled at me, her eyes clogging up.
“I am happy that I am a spiritual enough to believe that.”
I put my arm around her shoulder and stroked it.
She looked up again and smiled.
“I like that.”
“That’s not the reason why you work overtime is it?”
“What?” Carrie seemed surprised. “My dad?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
She shrugged. “I guess I can’t relax that well, so I work.”
She put her hand against my shoulder and now I felt how warm it was and how wonderful it felt to have her lay a hand on me. She desperately wanted to tell me that it wasn’t bad at all of me to bring the subject up. In fact, she welcomed me caring about what she felt and how she felt.
“I like that you care.” Carrie smiled. “Sweetie.”
She had called me Sweetie, so I smiled and looked down.
“Good,” I mused, somewhat red. “I do.”
She took away her hand and it was obvious to both of us now that we had revealed to each other how we felt.
I went to the left side of her table and leaned against it, looking up at the ceiling while she worked, enjoying the beauty of the comfortable silence.
It was obvious to everyone that we had a crush on each other, but no one knew why two singles like us still hadn’t mated up. I just enjoyed her company.
What really bothered me was that I might take advantage of her difficult situation, I mean with her father being dead and all. I did have my pre history with women. This woman needed me now and, frankly, I needed her. Strangely enough, I realized that first now.
I looked at her again and she threw me a glance and smiled.
There was a pause.
“When you are ready with that we could go have a bit to eat. You know that Italian place we went to at my birthday? What was it called? Luigi’s.”
“Yeah, Luigi’s,” she crooned. “Bit of a walk, isn’t it?”
“It’s a warm night,” I mused.”
“Your treat?”
I smiled. “Let me be the gentleman.”
She smiled. “Be glad my father is not here in person to tell you this, but you are making a pass at me, aren’t you? He would be saying: Her-hrrm, Young lady, are you sure that he is serious about you?”
I smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know.” I looked at her, embarrassed. “Yeah. Maybe. I happen to think you are a very attractive young lady.”
She gave me a half smile.
“Don’t you have plans for the evening?”
“No. Went here on a whim.” I shrugged, looking at the cover.
The passion that I felt for Kirvin was getting burly competition from the only thing that was stronger.
She smiled and looked into her lens again, adjusting it.
“What have you got in mind?” she said, twitching her red lips and lightly flaring her nostrils. I knew what that meant. She liked that I was flirting with her.
I walked up to her with a vast and cutely sappy grin on my countenance. She put her arms around my waist and gave me the longest and most sensual kiss I have ever received.
I don’t know how long we stood there, kissing.
When we were done, we were sweaty.
“Do you still want to go to Luigi’s?” I asked.
“They have the best Caesar’s Salad in the galaxy” she whispered and we both laughed.
“How long are they open?”
I giggled. “Luigi closes when the cooks go on strike.”
She laughed. “And they always put too much garlic into the sauce. Bob’s gonna hate us.”
“He does anyway,” I said. “That leaves us privacy.”
“Just promise me one thing, honey,” she mused with her head toward my forehead and looking into the inside of my soul.
“What?” I asked and kissed her again, feeling like I was flying.
“Brush your teeth when we get to my place,” she giggled.
“I assume you have an extra tooth brush,” I laughed.
“I will even brush them for you,” she sang. “With my own mouth. If you let me brush other parts of you as well.”
“Now that is a promise,” I laughed.
She let go of my clutch and walked a few steps away from me, her derriere swaying to and fro.
She looked up at me, jotted down three numbers on the pad and said softly: “We should make love right here, Jack, and leave a mess for Bob to clean up.”
I jumped toward her and started fondling her.
“You have protection?”
“Maybe,” I answered.
She laughed and pushed me away. “Then wait until after dinner, hombre. Then you have something to look forward to.”
“What about the mess for Bob to clean up?” I joked.
“Bob will fire us,” she swooned as she rubbed my bottom, “and we will get fired and have to live on welfare.”
“More time,” I said, feeling my crotch swell and hearing the table creak. “We will have sex under the bridge until our teeth fall out.”
“Bob’s a great boss, Jack. You just fail to see that.”
“Please let us make love right here, right now,” I pleaded.
“Oh, what the hell,” she said.
She now took off her white robe and started tearing off her blouse and displaying her breasts. As I nibbled on her body, I continued the conversation.
“I guess” I responded and repeated more softly “I guess. He just seems to push me more than he pushes others.”
After that, clothes were thrown in every direction and we ended up somewhere in the office going at it like to racoons. It must’ve been ten o’clock when we stepped into the shower of the nerve centre and cleaned off. We were like glue on each other and kept on kissing like mad. We marched out of a clean lab and were half way toward Luigi’s a half hour later and continued our conversation about the fact that Bob kept on pushing me more than other guys in the place.
“Jackie” she urged, stretching her head toward me as we walked. “That’s his tactic when he likes someone’s potential.” She looked back onto the sidewalk and tried to smile. “You’ve been here for three years. You should know that he likes your work.”
I nodded. I did know, but he always gave me assignments I didn’t like instead of letting me take care of the research.
She looked up at me again and this time she had read my mind. She stopped where she was on the sidewalk and said:
“You can’t expect him to hand you over to the main research.”
I shook my head.
“Carrie” I said, shocked. “I am overqualified for minor analysis.”
“So am I” she smiled. “But our time will come. Trust me.”
I smiled, touched by this sudden warm trust that seemed to emerge from her soul. She spoke slowly in ‘us’-terms and that made me feel very good. I sighed, raising my hand to her cheek.
I caressed it softly.
“I trust you.”
She looked at me warmly and suddenly the laboratory that she
had been speaking of was not so important any more.
“You’re so sweet,” I said.
She smiled and blushed. There was a lump in her throat, I felt that she was nervous.
Her eyes were as big as tea saucers. I took a step closer to her, my heart beating fast.
“Thanks,” she whispered in a high voice.
Slowly our mouths and tongues met in a kiss again.
We were talking softly about nothing, it seemed, but that nothing was as sweet as honey.
She’d look at me and I would smile. I’d tell her she radiated such
warmth and she would blush. Then our hands would clasp gently tighter and our fingers mould and mingle, figuratively speaking that is.
We walked down the avenue toward the Minskoff Theatre where Alfred Molina was headlining Fiddler on the Roof and then we strolled down the avenue past the Winter Garden, stopping at every corner and kissing.
We took a side street and passed Tout va bien, a French place, after which we came back upon the avenue and walked past Dave Letterman’s Talk Show Theatre, crossed the street past the Broadway Diner and onto the passage that took us to one of my favourite cafés, Café Vienna, where they had the best carrot cake in the world. I can’t even recall what it tasted like that evening.
I felt myself closer to this girl than I ever had in the years I’d known her. I couldn’t think what my colleagues were going to say about it. What mattered was that I was holding her hand and she was holding mine and that I was in love again after being a one night stand philandering single for almost five years.
It felt right. I had no guarantee that it would last, but it was wonderful. Close after stopping by the Café for a cappuccino and a cake, we took a cab to the park and ended up walking the last five minutes that it took us to come to the best pasta in town. We crossed the street and walked for a while next to the park that was safer than before thanks to Giuliani.
There were a few bums lined up on the park benches, the odd hobo walking by and some ladies of the night and I felt what I felt every time I came here from the more posh part of Manhattan that the lab was located in. I wanted to cross the street into the section closer to Luigi’s and get out.
Then she suddenly turned to me on the side street a block away from the restaurant and kissed me. The intensity of the kiss was so enormous that I had to stop three times to catch my breath. It made me forget everything else.
We spent fifteen minutes on the corner.
I was desperate.
We walked into the bistro around midnight and at once Luigi himself greeted us. There were five couples in there, all of them youngish, 30-something lovers like us and it was clear to me once again that his was a sort of secret spot for lover’s to meet.
“He, buon giorno” he sing-songed. “No see you long, Jack-ah?”
“It’s been a while,” I answered, smiling.
“Issabeen a while,” he responded in his hoarse Genova accent.
“Miss Fisher, e vero?”
Carrie grinned, blushing. “You remember!”
Luigi threw his hands to his side and waved. “Your highness, Luigi always remember the lady who sing so beautifully for us lassa month-a. What was it? Everybody dance now?”
She shrugged. “No, I was intoxicated. I only sing when I’m drunk. I’m not very good.”
Luigi twitched his moustache and winked at me. “Your girl is modest. She too good to be modest, I think. She sing-ah O Sole Mio like a real-ah female Pavarotti, eh?” Luigi laughed and his belly shook. We had to laugh with. “Come with me. Top secret table for two, eh?”
Luigi took striding steps to a very nice rising around the right corner grabbing to menus on the way. It was a round table surrounded by leaves and flowers and half circle of wooden columns on a balcony ledge with a picture of a bay in the back. A big sign was posted above
the painting, obviously put there by Luigi himself. It said NAPOLI in big letters. He pulled the table away a foot and then let Carrie sit down on the one end of the couch. Then he gestured for me to sit, bowed, gave us the menus, said.
“Take your time, we no hurry here. Cook live in kitchen. He no leave or he fired,” and left. “Buona fortuna.” He screamed something to the bartender in intense Italian. “Ehi, Adalfieri. Dare a questi due amanti affascinanti giovani alcuni dei nostri Amaretto.” He turned to us. “You like Amaretto?”
We nodded.
“In here it is a welcome for young lovers before dinner,” Luigi said. “I give you free.”
“Thank you,” we responded.
He bowed and left, screaming again at someone else.
“Ora cerchiamo di essere tranquillo qui intorno. Le coppie fanno l'amore. Una pizza Suzanna e tre Farfarello Gnocchi e bravo presto.”
I giggled. “What did I tell you?”
She picked up the menu. “I’ve only been here twice, but he always makes me chuckle.”
I smiled and took her hand. “I’m so in love with you.”
She looked down on my hand and she took it.
“This is butterfly time.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “Butterfly time?”
“My mother used to say that when someone was in love.”
I sighed and sank into those big brown eyes. I caressed her hand and kissed it. I finally broke the silence. “You must sing for me one day.”
“I’m not a good singer.” She protested. She shook her head, looking to the other end of the room where another couple were holding hands. “I was here with my Aunt Cecile and her family last month. Luigi had a star spangled banner pizza made for that day.”
“Oh, really?” I responded. “What was on it?”
” Salami, Pineapple, Artichokes, Peas, Mushrooms, Pepperoni.”
She raised her eyebrows and pointed to her flat stomach.
“I had to go on a diet for a week after that. I ended up dancing to older south Italian hits. Actually, I think it was the Grappa. Or the three bottles of Chianti.”
“Three bottles?” I laughed. “Sound like fun.”
“I’m not always so organized and predictable as in the lab, you
know. I can be quite crazy.”
“I like that,” I said, surprised at my own corny comment.
Luigi occasionally arrived to ask if everything was all right. At times we were doing more than cuddling, but it seemed to bother no one, so we kept it up.
We were on our second bottle of wine and feeling great.
“Are you strong enough to labour your way through a hangover in seven hours?”
I nodded: “I am if you are.”
She told me about her father and mother, their summer house in Upstate New York, that was now being auctioned out and how she had hit her toe against a stone wall at three years of age and that it had given her a crooked toe. The topics of conversation ranged from the sacred to the profane and there really wasn’t an organization in which order the subjects arrived. What really mattered was the trust. She had told me that her name had brought a lot of people to raise their eyebrows:
“Your name is Carrie Fisher? Isn’t that like Princess Leia in Star Wars?”
She had wondered why no one rarely asked her about that in the lab. Maybe they weren’t Star Wars fans. I answered that they probably were, only they were polite about asking about it. Carrie thought they were dry. I am was the only one with a sense of fun.
Trust is trust, so I told her about me.
I told her about my childhood in North Dakota and how I’d received a scholarship for the NYU and how that had brought me to study genetics and medicine. I also told her that it eventually led me to the lab. So I sat there and I gave her the full story about my first chemistry kit at age five and how my mother had to pull me away from the kit to go to bed.
From then on I was lost. The day my teacher told me about genetic engineering, I felt compelled to read more and more about the genes, as the only jeans I still knew were the kind you wear sitting on a saddle. My father was a good rider and used to have his riding jeans. These genes, however, gave me goose bumps and so I spent years trying to find more about them and what they did and how they functioned.
I told her about my dog Freddy that was my best friend until he passed away at age fifteen. My story of how I wanted him to be buried in the garden of our house really touched Carrie and how he finally ended up being buried in the local pet cemetery made her cry. How I used to put a new flower there every week on a Sunday made her smile. I had a feeling about her, this was more than just a fling.
Slightly tipsy and very happy, we walked out onto the sidewalk around half past two, knowing that we would be zombies in seven hours. We strolled the street down to the park again and realized there that we needed to be alive at labour in fewer than a night, so she made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse.
“What do you say we share a cab back to my place?” I looked at her surprised and paused.
“You live with the car about twenty minutes driving distance away, Jack. You shouldn’t be sleeping alone after two bottles of Chianti.” She smiled. “It’s all right, Babe,” she said, swaying to and fro in a femininely coquette way.
I kissed her and she exhaled noisily, taking my arm and leaning against my shoulder. I saw a cab coming our way and we stepped in.
As she opened the door to a flat that I had never seen before, a fragrance came flying transversely toward my nostrils that I recognized. It was a charming place in creamy, soft tones with see through draperies, a balcony and a scented neon lit waterfall in the corner next to it. Four stuffed teddy bears were positioned on the white sofa and the remote control was still on the sofa next to the New York Daily News TV & Radio guide.
I realized what smelled so good was the scented waterfall. Carrie told me that she had received it from her father as a present on her birthday. It had a battery pack in the pedestal that lasted nearly forever and she had poured lilac scent into the water this morning. The place oozed of lilacs. She asked me if I wanted anything to knock back and I said no, feeling I had drunk enough already.
I ended up brushing my teeth with her spare tooth brush. When I came out, I found her looking at a book. She turned around, smiling at me with those big brown eyes.
“Jack!”
I nodded.
“I don’t do this with every person, you know.”
I smiled.
“I’ve had a crush on you for a lengthy period and I know you
haven’t noticed. I keep those things to myself.”
I caressed her cheek. “You’re not the only one who hides these things well.”
After that we fell into a dreamy world of creamy devotion and fell asleep into each other’s arms around three thirty.
The dream that I had that daybreak took me through a forest that led me to a lake. Just as I was about to jump into the river I felt a wind caressing me, stopping me from jumping in.
I slowly opened my eyes. A soft, female hand was caressing my left cheek. The first sight that met my eyes was Carrie, already showered and made up, dressed in a nice black and white dress, smelling wonderful.
“You’re already up” I croaked.
She smiled.
“Been up an hour. You seemed so saccharine, sleeping gently.
That hot little snore of yours filling the room, so I showered and got ready.”
I rubbed my eyes and yawned. She bent over and kissed me.
“You taste good” I told her.
“Can’t say the same for you, dear,” she mused.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“That’s okay,” she chuckled. “If you take a shower and get your things together I’ll make you some breakfast. All right?”
She caressed me again with that nail polished love giver.
I nodded, feeling tremendous.
“What time is it?” I inquired softly, bending to see the alarm clock.
“Five past eight. How you like your eggs?”
”Sunny side up!”
“Then that is what you shall have, Sir!”
As I stood in the shower rinsing off, I heard Carrie singing in the kitchen frying the eggs and making the toast. There was no radio on. I believed this was opera. Having only listened to AOR and Musical classics by now, what I heard was nice – albeit unusual to my ears. I stepped out of the shower, dried myself off and found a toothbrush and some toothpaste laying neatly on the shelf. I brushed my teeth very slowly and watched myself in the large round mirror. I felt like a stud, last night had been the best sex of my life twice.
The quiet breakfast was followed by a quiet walk to the lab. Carrie had chosen not take the car, but stroll to work. I went along with that willingly being somewhat tired and knowing that the partying would show in my face.
Carrie on the other hand looked more radiant than ever. I don’t how she did it. She had slept just as little, even less. She had drunk just as much wine as I had. This was a mystery.
My head was throbbing.
To be continued in
When Your Spirits Climb - Part Two
CHARLES E.J. MOULTON is an internationally published author with, to date, 77 published pieces to his credit. He has performed in 108 stage productions as a singer and actor, is a painter (exhibited and sold), chorus conductor, drama- and vocal-coach and film-actor. He is married and has a daughter.
- Share this story on
- 3
COMMENTS (0)