Entry 13
By Steven Paul Lansky
"Lacey #4"
Looking like a pixie, with a thin, curvy body, piercing, long-lashed, blue eyes, her long brown hair tucked into two pigtail braids, looping above her head, tied with red ribbons, she lay on her belly, elbows propped on the sidewalk, one of my discarded harmonicas at her lips. Lacey’s bare feet swung above her waist, Capri cut jeans showing plenty of clean-shaven ankle. Seven in the evening with the summer sun slanting over the roof of the ice cream shop on the corner across the street, her position seemed odd to me, mostly because it was such a public place and she was so at home. I wanted very badly to know what she was up to, but did not want to interrupt her idyll as her mouth moved against the chrome and black plastic while the reeds vibrated in a simple pattern; she was playing Skip to My Lou, but one note clunked each time, the blown reed, the reason I had discarded the instrument. Impressed by her ability to find the tune without one of the notes, and play it with such innocence, I sat down, my back to the painted, red brick building, crossed my legs and felt the gritty concrete sidewalk with the palms of my big hands.
“Do you think my performance was better than a D?” Lacey asked.
“Yes. But, it doesn’t matter what I think,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” She pinched her nose with her hand and grimaced.
“Did you go talk to the teacher?”
“I made an appointment for tomorrow.”
“How did you do in the rest of the class?”
“I missed an assignment. She said on the eval that I hadn’t taken each of the elements of acting the scene into consideration. And she didn’t like the soliloquy I selected.”
“Were you required to get the selection approved ahead of time?”
“Yes.”
“Did she approve it?”
“That was the assignment I missed.”
“Lace. You have to talk to her.”
“She’s my advisor and she’s being hard on me for no reason.”
I could feel the tremor in her voice.
“If I knew I was getting a D in the course, I would have dropped it and saved the money. She knows I’m paying for it myself.”
Lacey’s girlfriend, Kerrie came out of the coffeehouse. Kerrie had a pierced nose and many earrings. Her nail polish was black, her lipstick dark blue. Kerrie’s curly light brown hair was tossed up into a wrap on her head. She always wore the same black tank top and torn, indigo jeans with blue ballpoint inkings scrawled on the tops of the thighs. Kerrie had a bent back, thin, pale arms and was now forcing me away.
“Lacey, we have to go,” Kerrie said, lighting a cigarette and handing it to my Ace.
“Just a minute,” Lacey turned back to me. “What do I do?”
“Go to the appointment tomorrow and ask if you can do some extra work, something that she approves beforehand.”
I’m trying to figure out how Lacey cannot see her patterns, but I am slipping myself, I think sometimes that she is satirizing me. Or, that she is melting away into my madness.
The material published in Queen City Forum Magazine’s “The InkTank” retains the copyright and all rights are reserved to the author of the story, poem, serial, or otherwise. None of the afore mentioned may be copied, reprinted or reproduced without the expressed written consent of the author.
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