The Book I'm Not Writing, Rachel 2

It is amazing how much time I spend thinking about a story I am not writing. It is even more amazing how anxious it makes me when I consider how lazy I am (a true novelist would perhaps look forward to figuring out such details as a story's time period and accompanying artifacts, would look forward to finding the answers to questions such as, "How do you, in fact, make a shoe?").

I do not want to answer these questions or dig for the details I would need. I remind myself that it's okay. I am not writing this story.

Still. This particular character has been hanging out in my head for a good seven years. When I first met her, she was strolling in the park, walking a dog. She looks the same. She is just as lovely and wears the same grey shoes. She is not nearly as bold. Her name is the same, and her Jewish heritage has traveled with her, but she is hanging out with sparrows instead of Golden Retrievers.

She is still meeting an Italian man, but he was much older before and rather talkative and married to... well, the same woman he will be married to here... except this wife is younger and I think she might even dance the Tango. Or something like that. Unfortunately, that is a detail I may have to put in and then take out when I discover the story's time period.

But that should be okay, right? Because how much work can it be to revise a story you aren't even writing?

----

Part One, if you haven't read it yet.

Pigeons were cooing just outside the window, and one appeared to be nesting in the geranium box. The geraniums should have been red this year. Last year she’d planted pink, and the year before a brilliant purple. But this year it was time again for red. Instead, a pigeon was staking her claim, making a place for little ones where the geraniums should be blooming.

A hand crossed Rachel's forehead and slipped a lock of silver hair behind her ear. It was Francis.

“Fifth Saturday, remember?” she said to him.

“I remember, Nana.”

Rachel lapsed into silence. The pigeons were still cooing and the sky was that kind of blue that makes you wonder if the whole world is floating in a universe of water.

A voice came from the other side of the room, “What’s she talking about, Frankie?”

“Oh, the fifth Saturday. That was the day she met my mother.”

“She loved your mother, yeah?”

“Adored her. Not like how it was with my father. I think he scared her with his quiet ways. But my mom. Maria! They were like a tree and its shadow; one moved and the other bent to follow. You don't come by a friendship like that more than once in a lifetime.”

It was true, thought Rachel. She and Maria had met on the fifth Saturday.

----

Do you have a story you aren't writing? Add your link below and link back here from your post. Thanks! :)