As some of you know, Love Bugs is my novel-in-progress. Due to a slipup in postings last week, I'm sharing two excerpts here today to make up for the omission (whoo hoo! Double Whammy!). I hope you enjoy it. Please do let me know if you’d like to keep reading the novel, or if you prefer the previous personal narrative-style posts.
If you haven’t read the previous excerpts, you can catch up on them here first:
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February, 2019
How on earth did she end up here?
She was surrounded by supplies on all sides--lotion, water bottle, sunglasses on the table to her left; notebook, pen, paperback and phone on the table to her right. Just the day before, she’d been certain she might never write another word again. My career ended along with Bradley’s life, she had thought.
But now, she had to admit it felt good to have the sun on her skin again after the last few miserable months of winter. When Anastasia had first parked herself beside the pool, she felt as if she might just regain her creative edge somehow. She found a lounge chair at the back, pushed up against the fence, with one of those huge umbrellas to provide lots of shade. She set up her station with the small tables on either side, standing guard like sentinels.
There was just enough shade from the palm trees around the pool so she could, theoretically, sit there through most of the day without burning. She repositioned herself on the chair and slathered sunscreen on her arms and chest, inhaling the soft coconut scent.
The pool shimmered turquoise, its surface punctuated by several brightly colored pool noodles floating randomly, like some exotic cocktail topped with thin slices of lemon and kiwi. It filled most of the available space, leaving only enough room around the perimeter for the chairs and a narrow walking area—the concrete already soaked with water—leading to the other side where the towel kiosk stood. The smiling young man behind the door doled out perfectly rolled towels, striped red and white, like giant peppermint candies.
It was early enough that only a few chairs were occupied on the other side of the water. Anastasia closed her eyes and let her head rest on the back of the chair. It felt good to know that all the mundane details of her day were taken care of by someone else. Staff changed her sheets, washed her towels, even brought her fresh tea to the door each morning. Yes, I could definitly become reacquainted with my creativity here, she thought. All I need is a bit of a break.
At the far end of the pool, a little girl was playing with her brother. She splashed huge waves at the boy, calling out, “Sharkie! Sharkie! Come and get me, Sharkie!” But he wanted none of it.
“Come on, I’m your breakfast!” she enticed him, pushing a surge of water toward his back.
The boy was busy with his own game, dunking his head underwater and holding his breath for as long as he could. His head bobbed up and he drew a few deep, quick breaths.
Without glancing her way, he called back, “I can’t eat you. I’m on a vegetarian diet,” then slid below the surface again.
The girl slumped for a second, then straightened up and tossed her head back, pigtails flapping against her neck as she continued to splash around in the corner.
There were only two other people at the far end, a hugely obese man sunning on his back on a deck chair, his bikini-clad wife prone on a chair beside him. His belly was completely burnt and so massive that he reminded Anastasia of one of the red hills in Sedona.
Those lovely hills, she thought. If only we could go back again some time.
Sedona was where they’d had their honeymoon. Bradley had just earned his two weeks off from the engineering firm, and Anastasia hadn’t yet published anything of note. At the time, Bradley suggested it would be an ideal place to trigger her creativity and allow her to perhaps do some writing.
Since Bradley was a huge fan of traditional Westerns, he already knew that some of the greats, including John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, had filmed there. And there had been whispered rumors that Elvis Presley was in the process of wrapping a film just as they set off for wedded bliss.
“Who knows?” he’d joked, leaning in to kiss her, “Maybe we’ll even meet some of our idols there.”
She raised her face to meet his. “I’ve already got my idol,” she said.
The writing wasn’t meant to be. Anastasia hadn’t anticipated what their time would be like as newlyweds, almost every spare second entangled in the bedsheets, making love anywhere and everywhere. In those days, Sedona was still considered the outback, with very few amenities or hotels.
She smiled. Oh, such memories!
Then there was that one day trip where they’d laid a picnic blanket by the side of the road. It was so deserted that they didn’t see a single car go by the entire time they ate. Before they’d even opened the tupperware filled with deviled eggs and saltines, they set down the plastic wine glasses and made love on the blanket, with only a few tumbleweeds to shelter them from any prying eyes that might happen by--which, in those days, were precious few.
I could have stayed on that blanket for days.
The rest of the honeymoon was spent camping or hiking. It might have served their wallets, but Anastasia hated hearing the scratches and wild noises outside the tent every night. And what about that time, on the trail, when they came upon a wild javelina? She took one look at the alien-looking beast with its pointed snout, all covered in coarse hair, and just about went into cardiac arrest.
She couldn’t help it, she started shrieking. Before the beast could strike, Bradley came running, only to see the javelina scurry off into the bushes, just as scared as his new wife was.
She couldn’t stop screaming. It didn’t matter that he hugged her close in the safety of his arms, cooing and caressing her.
“Get it away from me! Get it away from me!” She flapped her hands furiously in front of her face and chest.
Anastasia squinted into the sun. Against the light in her eyes, she could make out the shape of a large, round man peering down at her, a horrified look on his face. Water was dripping from his hair and down his chin.
“Are you all right, Ma’am?” the big-bellied man asked. “I heard you scream. You seemed pretty upset. . . “
What was this rotund man doing practically on top of her? She noticed the swim trunks, still dripping as well, and the sun sparkling across the top of the pool.
Florida.
“Oh, dear me, I am so sorry, young man,” she said. “I was just recalling a scare I had once. . . I must have been daydreaming. Oh, yes, I suppose my expression reflected that.” She reached over to pull the towel around her shoulders.
“But you know what, now that I think of it, I may have had a bit too much sun in any case. I’ll make my way over to the cafe and sit under one of those awnings over there.”
She gave him a thin smile in an attempt to assure him she was all right. “But I do appreciate you checking up on me.”
The man remained still. He’s waiting for me to get up, she thought. She nodded and smiled once more.
“Not a problem,” he said. “I’m just glad everything is okay.” He smiled perfunctorily before heading back to his wife on the other side of the pool.
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2478, Month 8
She had always loved The Promenade, from the time she was big enough to run down the gravel pathways clinging to her father’s steadying hand. True, other parks on the planet had also been constructed to showcase the beauty of vegetation, but The Promenade was the largest, with the most varied collection of flowers anywhere on the planet.
Unlike Relpek’s endemic vegetation, the plants in the Promenade had been planned, cultivated, and nursed for years so that everything within it was safe and beautiful.
When they first arrived on Relpek, the people were met with lush, wildly growing bushes and trees in odd shapes and sizes that were both lovely and alluring. They discovered very quickly that even brushing against the leaves of the native Pluma trees could be deadly; the leaves themselves exuded a thin, almost mist-like liquid that clung to their surfaces and was highly toxic to people. Satsana heard stories of early settlers who’d reached over to touch the leaves and fell writhing in paroxysms of agony, only to be pronounced dead the following morning.
As a result, they’d built the dome surrounding their world to keep the native greenery out, with only two exits on the entire planet. One led to the north shores, far from Satsana’s home; the other was at the southern tip of the Promenade, beyond the flower gardens, where the Pluma bushes grew and the ocean touched the land, intended for emergency exits only.
Leading out from the exit was a thin path into the water. Its use was approved only for the Botygen, some of whom had been specially trained to fish during the early mornings as a way to bolster the food supply. Because the Sbarac never came ashore during the day, the Botygen, armed with large numbers and their weapons, were relatively safe to do this.
In all their time on the planet, only one Botygen had been killed in an encounter with the Sbarac, but dozens of regular citizens had perished when they ventured out too late at night. Because of this, a curfew was strictly imposed, and Botygen soldiers monitored The Promenade at night. Anyone found outside or in the park after curfew would suffer massive fines and withdrawal of privileges.
To further insure the people’s safety, the original settlers had quickly installed a continuous, towering barbed-wire fencing system around the entire dome along the shoreline, so that anyone attempting to enter or leave the dome would be caught and critically injured before they could escape.
The Promenade itself contained a series of glass walls along the outside edges as well, built like a maze so that people could stroll within the natural vegetation at the outskirts and still appreciate its variety and beauty without actually coming into contact with it.
Apart from the proximity to the water, The Promenade was really built to be a source of beauty and relaxation for the populace. As long as they enjoyed it within daylight hours, it was perfectly safe, and it provided people with untold happiness.
With its lazy, meandering pathways, stone arches and unexpected fountains where people often stopped to rest, The Promenade allowed visitors to wander freely—and to dream. It was the planet’s homage to Earth. In it, expert gardeners and horticulturists had spent untold hours of research, labor and care to re-create some of the landscapes of that planet, all surrounded by, and protected from, the untamed verdure of Relpek’s own vegetation.
Visitors could encounter running streams, lush green lawns dotted with topiary bushes made to resemble animals, open meadows for picnic lunches, and the main attraction: rows and rows of flowers, grown in boxes huddled together so they lived shoulder-to-shoulder, like the original settlers who all shared a single living space before they expanded to inhabit the rest of Relpek.
At times like this when Satsana strolled along the pathways surrounded by families in the sunshine, she felt as if she were part of a larger community, stretching back to her ancestors’ days on Earth.
Although it had been many generations since the first settlers landed on Relpek, some of the great-grandparents still clung to fading memories and insisted on doing things as they remembered them being done before. The use of audiophones, for instance, seemed quaint and antiquated to Satsana, when they had the ability to connect any time with video.
Still, she was thankful every day for The Promenade and the careful cultivation of the flowers there. Through years keeping painstakingly detailed records, seed saving, tilling the otherwise infertile soil, and hand-watering the blooms, the country’s gardeners had managed to reproduce the full panoply of color, texture and shapes of the floral population they’d left behind.
It was afternoon break when families took their children through the park to enjoy the daylight and beauty of the flowers. Satsana looked forward to this stroll every day, even when her spirits were low. Though she’d never learned the individual names of the plants, she nevertheless knew each one intimately, as if they were long-lost soul mates that she’d discovered by chance.
“Hello, pale pink pom-poms,” she said to a bush of large, round blooms, their individual petals appearing like droplets that covered the surface of the flower.
“And here’s my white friends with the greenish yellow centers,” to a climbing plant covered with small flowers, each with five pointed petals surrounding a center filled with tiny shoots of green.
“I love you the most, red hugging petals,” she said to one, her favorite heavenly-scented blossom in which the delicately thin petals seemed to curve inward, like a small child crouched into a ball. She never forgot to visit her favorite, no matter how short the stay at the park.
“That one is called a rose,” announced a voice from behind her. “They were very popular in the old days, I understand. They represent love and devotion. They don’t last very long, either.”
The man was old, perhaps in his 100s, and he frowned as he spoke. “I can’t really smell them any more, which is just fine with me--too cloying, anyway,” he said. “I always thought they were overrated.”
Satsana smiled. “Oh, no, really?” She leaned over and inhaled the heady scent deeply into her lungs. “I just adore them. They’re my favorite. And how wonderful that they are meant to show love!”
The man waved his hand in dismissal and kept hobbling along.
Satsana quashed the urge to touch those enticing petals. It was strictly forbidden to touch any of the flowers. They had been grown with far too much sweat and toil, and their lives were far too ephemeral to be cut short even more by people handling them. These were truly the treasures of the planet, and everyone who lived there knew it.
Satsana continued on. Only ten minutes left before she must return to work. “Hello, silly droopy pinkies with the purple splotches,” she called to a bell-shaped flower toward the end of the path, as she skipped out of the park and back toward the library. Once there, she’d return to work and more daydreams in front of the blinking computer screen.
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