Free write -- The Couple

 

Despite the heat, the Vandoeuvre tearoom terrace is a bit cooler under the umbrella for our Tuesday free write. Sherlock settled under the table. The four other patrons are all talking in English. We select the man and the woman at the nest tableand begin writing for ten minutes.

THE COUPLE

My free write

Will he ever shut up, Mathilde wonders. All I want to do is to rent him office space not learn about his software and apps.

He wasn’t bad looking, maybe a few years older than she was. He certainly wasn’t dressed for a business meeting in his wash-faded Tshirt and shorts. The T-shirt read “10 Reasons for Procrastination” with the number 1-10 below. All were empty.

It’s not my choice to procrastinate. I can’t get a word in.

He sipped his coffee.

“How many people will be in this office?” she says fast.

“Ten.” He then begins to describe each one.

Despite the umbrella-shade, she is hot in her summer suit. She wore it out of her Swissness wanting proper business attire.

She glanced at her watch under the table then reached for the floor plan in her notebook. Maybe, just maybe, they can get to the reason for the meeting. As he launches into employee number six, his strengths and weaknesses, she thinks, maybe not.

Rick’s free writer

He never had any intention of buying or as in this case, investing, but what a pleasant way to spend an hour or so on a reasonably cool morning in the shade of the café’s umbrella on what promised to be an oppressively hot and humid day. Unusual for this part of the world suffering the creeping effects of climate change.

He was dressed casually, comme d’habitude: an old T-shirt, shorts and sandals. His favorite sunglasses perched on his head, somewhat masking his male baldness.

She was dressed for success: beige power summer blazer, black skirt tight, but not too suggestive, platform shoes from one of trendy shops in Confederate Center.

As she displayed her proposal on her iPad, teasing the financial gains he might enjoy, he listened politely, but absorbed only enough to ask the occasional question and long enough to prolong the conversation. He supped his tea slowly, took a bite of his croissant every few minutes, never enough to suggest he might be close to finishing.

Sometimes he changed the subject, commenting on how his kids had moved to the UK, but rarely came to visit.

It had been two years since his wife had died after falling off her bike and hitting her head on a trail boulder.

In that time this was his 45th meeting with different sales women.

Comparison

When we do these free writes sometimes, we stress the same things. Other times, one of us might go off on a tangent still triggered by the same prompt. This time we both picked up on certain things we saw and wove them into the piece.