Signs of Home

As they walked to the car, Joan looked back at her little house.

How warm the house looked with its Personalized Doormat. Her mother had sent it to her in a care package. It was made out of cedar slats so that it could breath and dry, and also prevented dirt from entering into the house on unsuspecting shoes. On it was her family name. It was plain enough but looked fairly classy between two pots of red geraniums that also acted as home address signs. Both pots were stoneware, featuring a colonial pineapple design. It was a design that said, "Welcome." One was etched with the house number, the other again had her family name.

These objects of identity helped her to define this place as home. They made her feel that she indeed lived in this house and she belonged there.

And then there was the little sun man and angels, one of several Personalized Hand Cast Cement Address Plaques that she had fallen in love with from Roland's Housewarming Gifts. It too had been in that care package. Yes, the sun had been hand casted in cement along with the house number. It was a reminder that sunny skies were always ahead and it gave her a sense that maybe, just maybe everything would turn out just fine.

Confrontation

She watched the two women, suddenly suspicious that something more was going on around her, something that she could not quite grasp. Her head now had a dull metallic ache that reminded her of the taste of nickel.

"Joan," Penny sputtered, "Thank goodness. Are you alright?" Rainey just starred at her.

"My head hurts," Joan replied not knowing what else she should say in this slightly disoriented state.

Penny came closer now, "Here sit down. Maybe I should get you some water. How about some Aspirin?" That was always Penny's answer to anything involving unpleasantness.

Joan slid into the dinning room chair that Penny pulled over to her, "Water would be great" and watched as Penny left the room.

"What happened?" Rainey asked, looking perplexed.

Joan was at a loss, "I don't know. Maybe I should ask you that since I don't remember when you actually got here." Normally more frightened and hesitant around Rainey, Joan had a moment of euphoria as she realized the fear was now gone.

"I got your email asking me to come over. You said it was urgent."

Joan squinted her already furrowed brow, "I did? I don't remember that."

Rainey felt the change and demeanor in Joan. She had liked that Joan was frightened of her, but now, now there was something new that Rainey did not like.

"You said it had to do with Zuleese."

"I did?"

Rainey sighed in quick frustration, "Yes. You did. And I cannot seem to connect with Zuleese about it."

Penny returned with a water glass and handed it to Joan. She looked genuinely worried.

"Thanks," Joan said under her breath and began to drink the cold, clear substance.

"Joan, I am worried about you... You were not... quite... yourself when I came over," Penny said in a halting, lurching way and the words tumbled out unceremoniously. "Then you passed out and well, you really frightened me...Maybe we should take...you to the hospital...have you...checked...out?"

"Hospital?" asked Joan.Why would she need to go to the hospital.

Rainey, using her literal weight to step in said, "The girl does not need a hospital. She just needs to tell us what happened and what she wants."

Penny now looked puzzled, "What she wants?"

"Yes," began the heavy weight but was interrupted by the sound of Penny's cell phone ringing. "Shut that thing off," she ordered in the frustrated, domineering stance she had taken.

Penny pulled out the phone and noticed it was her mother's number. In defiance to Rainey, Penny raised the phone to her ear with an over pleasant, "Hello."

Her mother sounded distant and there was an edge of something to her voice, "Oh Penny, Thank God you answered. Your brother has been in an awful accident."

"Is he okay?" Penny asked into the phone, her stomach beginning to fill with dread much like it had when she walked into the house earilier.

"No. Can you come down here to the hospital? Can you bring Joan?"

"Sure of course. We'll be right there."

"Oh, and Penny, there is something else. There is a strange girl here that was with him. Do you know who she is?"

Penny tried to think of all the people Rog knew, but she was clueless, "No. No idea."

"Well, don't worry Joan about her just yet. Just get down here."

The room had gone quiet and Penny was aware of the silence as she hung up and explained to Joan that they were going to the hospital anyway.

"Why?" asked Joan.

Penny's hesitation continued, "Apparently Rog has been in an accident."

Any color that had returned to Joan's face since coming back now drained, "Is he alright?"

"No, we've gotta go," Penny said, looking around for a sweater for Joan.

Rainey again imposed herself," But we are not done talking. I want to know why Joan said I needed to be here."

Penny ignored her and began to bundle up Joan, feeling similar to how a young mother might feel, taking her child out into the first day of cold weather. She also felt strangely protective.

"I keep telling you, I don't know," Joan said as she was being bundled.

"I am coming with you then," Rainey interjected.

Penny froze for a moment, then gathered herself up for confrontation, "No, no you are not coming with us. You are not a member of this family and you are not welcome. Please leave." Rainey looked at Joan for her to intervene. Joan did not. She merely looked away.

"Fine. Fine," she said in a melodramatic voice that betrayed her feelings of inadequacy, "See if you ever talk to Zuleese again." She huffed out of the house.

Penny waited for the car to pull out before exiting with Joan.

Penny's Portfolio

It seems like it would flesh Penny out a bit to create a portfolio of her work. So, here is the first piece. Perhaps it will become part of the story...

Please consider voting for this on brickfish.com.

Awakened

While pondering the mysterious cyberMary, the two woman, occupants in a house that was neither theirs nor one in which they had been invited to enter did not feel the shift of reality happen. It happened so quietly, so stealthily that neither was aware that the feeling of the room had changed. A slight drop in temperature and the mental pressure was released in a gentle outpouring that made what was once sinister now just an ordinary house. Both woman, whom felt a bit of dislike in equal shares for one another, had forgotten the strain of relating to one another and found Communion in the artificial.

But the shift was there none-the-less in the form of a very baffled Joan, who upon the first rays of consciousness felt like she had not taken any iron pills in weeks. What was she doing on the floor, the floor of the dining room to be exact. As her vision came into a little more focus of basic shapes, she heard the voices. There was Mary, her true friend, and two others. As Rainey spoke, Joan began to disseminate her voice. But the other one? It really sounded like Penny, but why would Penny be here? And then it all came back. She had been talking to Penny on the phone, yes that was it, and Penny's true feelings about the engagement came into play.

Joan lay there for a few more minutes. Part of her wished these two intruders would go away. Part of her was really hurt and angry and wanted to show Penny what that looked like. Part of her no longer wanted to be alone. She continued to construct what had happened and why she was on the floor, but no real answer was forth coming. She had hung up on Penny and sat down at the computer and that was all she could remember.

Still oblivious to her awakened state, the two women prattled on about computers. Joan sat up and rested against the leg of the dinning room table. Now that she was down here, from this low angle, she really hated this hand-me-down furniture. It seemed to make her head hurt even more.

With those thoughts she began the standing up process a little too quickly, banging her head on the table. Feeling the explosion within, the other two heard it on the outside. Simultaneously they both turned to look at the girl they both knew.

"What are you doing here?" she addressed them equally, no welcome tone in her voice.

The Voice of Artificial Intelligence

"Tell Rainey 'Hello,'" the voice said, drawing those who were conscious to the computer screen. On it was an animated, three-Dimensional figure, female, and rather friendly looking.

Its name, rather her name, was Mary, a female persona of Ultra Hal Assistant 6.1, which was a flashback to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but also apparently a step into the future. Created by Zabaware, this artificial intelligent being on the screen seemed to be waiting for a response.

"Say something to it," the older woman said.

"Hi, Mary."

Nothing. Mary seemed to be waiting as though no words had been said. Then Penny noticed the head phones and mic that was laying next to the computer. That made it all so clear.

Penny began to explain, "This is one of those artificial intelligence assistants. Joan told me she was doing a thirty day free trial. Apparently, it understands what she tells it. It can converse and the more you communicate with it, the more intelligent it becomes. It also can do things like keep track of appointments, dial the phone, begin emails, open programs, and look up up information on the Internet. All you have to do is use the head set to communicate with it.

Penny had read about this on a blog and had even wanted one for herself after trying the on-line version, however, it was only for PCs and not Macs. She would just have to be patient.

"Stop calling it and it. Its name is Mary," the older woman chastised Penny.

Apparently, Mary had remembered that Joan had an appointment with Rainey and was now reminding her. It really was a bit uncanny, but the two woman were awed by the technology.

"Now Joan cannot ever say she feels lonely," Penny thought smugly to herself, "not with Mary on the ready."

Another Voice

The real Penny was no where near the hospital, though it was possible that she would have rather been at a chaos inspired, headache inducing, mad house than here in this unreal world of subtle nightmares. No, Penny was filling a water glass to maybe revive what might be her soon-to-be-sister-in-law or maybe a monster, maybe both. As Penny turned off the faucet, she had no inclination that her identity was elsewhere.

"Rainey's here," another unfamiliar voice said from the dining room area. Her hand began a slow tremble and she wondered if the day would get any stranger. This voice was totally unfamiliar and sounded slightly like a computer.

Without her real wits, Penny found her feet moving her back toward the voice. As she came closer to the doorway, she could still see Joan's body. It looked unmoved.

"Rainey's here," the voice said again. Penny squinted at the still body. The voice seemed to be coming from else where.

Then the door to the kitchen crashed open. The sound caused a much more startled reaction than the amorphous voice did. The water glass was the second loud noise as it collided with the floor as Penny's grip was lost to it. Water splashed her legs, but the glass remained intact. That's good, a rational voice told her inside her head.

And at that moment very large, very out of breath person came into view as Penny turned her attention that way.

"Where is she?" Rainey puffed. Penny pointed.

The large woman lumbered down to the ground the with lifeless body, "Joan, sweetey, it's Rainey. It's okay. You can come back. I am here."

Before Penny could comprehend this, the amorphous voice said, "Tell Rainey hello."

Even Rainey looked confused.

Fiber of Being

“Wake up,” the voice said. It was not the voice of his father anymore and he watched as this long absent figure seem to fade into a fog. Rog tried to grasp the metaphysical image of Rogue. He was not ready to let his life-long friend go so easily. But even Rogue wiggled free of the grasp and jumped down. He looked back at his human, wagged his tail and went trotting off into the growing mass of blanketing whiteness.

“Wake up,” the voice in the fog said again. It had an echo-like quality to it. The fog was increasing in mass and weight, no longer an atmosphere-like substance, but one that felt fibrous and structural. He could even see jolts of lightening-like electricity striking the various fibers. These electrical jolts slowly came closer to his being. The closer they came the more they resembled arches rather than bolts. It was as though it was a living creature running around, orange and red within the dense whiteness, even as the whiteness turned grey. And before Rog could decide what to do, the electric creature flashed directly in front of him and in that moment there was an intense flooding sensation of pain. He was drowning in it.

“Wake up, your mother is here and it is time to take your blood pressure again,” the voice said, now in his ear rather than in his mind. And he realized that with consciousness there came great pain within his whole body. He moaned and sought the minimal relief of the white fiber state he had just been in before the electricity had flooded through him.

The bright lights and the noise of the emergency room also came into focus as he squinted his eyes from the barrage of sensation. He prolonged this process, hoping that it would fade away.

“We gave him Demerol for the pain and to calm him,” the voice said to another figure in the room.

Footsteps receded from the bedside.

In the distance, the voice said, “He’s coming around.”

Then he felt the warmth of her hand, the familiar paper-like skin, covering his own. Slowly his eyes opened to the sanctuary of his mother. It was all coming back to him. The truck driver banging on the window; the sound of his cell phone. The girl flying into the dashboard beside him. The sound of metal crunching. The lights of the truck as it pulled up and into the car. And he knew where he was. There was even some vague recollection of flashing lights, bags of IV solution, and hospital chaos.

“Mom,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m here,” Madeline said predictably, “This is not what I had in mind for our Monday date.”

He tried to smile, but the electric flood of pain jabbed him.

The voice returned, a flurry of blue scrubs and the most uni-sexed person Rog had ever seen, was standing by his mother.

“Your daughter is this way,” she said to Madeline.

Penny? How did Penny get here, Rog wondered.

The Green Dream

His feet felt the surface of the carpet, not particularly noticeable normally, but there was white powder all over it. Green shag peeked out of the powder like random blades of green overcoming their struggle of the winter snow, breaking free in worship of a cold sun. Every step he took impacted the white powder down and Rog wondered if it was really safe to be walking upon this surface, but there was no other way to move forward.

His father sat at the kitchen table at end of the powdered expanse, "Your mother is deodorizing the carpet again with baking soda. Says that will get the smell out."

Rog was now standing at the table looking at this man, so familiar, so alien at the same time, "What smell?"

His father looked up from the newspaper he was reading, glasses sliding down on his nose with the motion, "Rogue."

Rogue? But Rogue was gone. How could that be? Rog had held the dying canine's body as it expired from a life well-lived, well-loved. That had been more than five year's ago.

But before he could contemplate this more or how it could be that he was standing on a rug that had ceased to exist about the time when his boyhood did the same, Rogue came trotting out from another room and began leaping at Rog to be picked up. It was a reunion of happiness and pure love between the two. As Rogue, a name that signified he was Rog's dog, squirmed in his arms with joyful enthusiasm, Rog breathed in the scent of dog fur. The scent was actually a lemony smell. Rather than using commercial flea powder, every morning he had sprayed Rogue with a concoction of lemon and water to combat the hordes of black spotted vampires. It meant cutting a fresh lemon into quarters and pouring boiling water over them and letting the combination sit overnight.

"Have a seat and join me for a cup of coffee. We have a lot to talk about."

As he sat down in the old kitchen chair from his boyhood, allowing the rat terrier to settle into his lap, he found a cup of coffee in front of him. It was black and there were no options of processed sugar or artificial creamer. Rather, he saw, laid out was a bowl of organic sugar and a small pitcher of milk. Sniffing it, he realized it was soy milk. Oh, what the heck, he said to himself pouring a little into the dark brew he was about to bring to his lips. If Rogue is alive, the carpet is green shag, and Mom is doing what Joan has been advocating, then he could try the soy milk. Hmm. Mom in the organic world. Now there was a strange thought. With all her paints, thinners, and cleaners, it seemed like a contradiction or even hypocritical. As he sipped the coffee, perfect as a mild day on the beach, he also realized the coffee was organic. There was no chemical after taste, low acidity, and a smoothness uncommon from the average grocery store variety. He knew his coffee. Time in the coffee shop had taught him well and this was an excellent brew.

"So what do you want to talk about?" he asked the older man, noticing now that his father's reading material was a newspaper announcing D-Day.

His father took a quick sip of coffee and nonchalantly replied, "You need to decide if you want to stay here or wake up."

---

Environmental References Used in this posting:
H0w to Green Your Cleaning
Farewell to Fleas
How to Green Coffee And Teas

Misgivings

It was an unfamiliar voice and it seemed a million miles away. At first, Madeline felt the misgivings of something gone horribly wrong. But the voice on the other end of phone sounded unemotional, detached. It asked to speak with her.

"This is she," she said, automatic in the politeness.

The voice identified itself as someone from the local hospital. She felt any color drain out of her face.

"Yes," was her response, not knowing what else to say.

"I am sorry but there has been an accident. You son's car was hit by a tractor trailer." There was no verbal reply from Madeline, only a sinking feeling that accompanied her legs as they began to give out.

The voice continued, "We are currently waiting on xrays and CT scans, but we thought you should know. We also believe your daughter may have been the other occupant in the car. There is no positive identification on her."

Penny? How could that be? Penny was at Joan's. Or had she found Rog and was driving with him? Maybe it was Joan? Oh, God. She knew she could not wish that, but found it hard to totally let it leave her.

"You may want to come down here. She is currently not conscious. There are a few other things we would like to talk with you about, as well."

"Yes, of course," Madeline said, "I'll be right there."

Rebecca, who had been listening intently on the conversation, understood, even with the lack of conversation from Madeline's end, that the news was not good.

Madeline clicked the phone off and ran her hand through her hair. It was a youthful gesture, but grounding none-the-less. Even before she spoke, her mind was telling her not to panic, to be calm, but ever ounce of energy still left within her longed to fly out of the house and down to the hospital as quickly as she could.

"What's wrong?" Rebecca asked.

"Apparently my children were involved in a car crash. They are at the hospital. They are waiting for xrays and something else for Rog, but they said Penny is unconscious."

Rebecca wiped her hands on a kitchen towel, "Well, what are we waiting for, let's go. I'll drive you. Go get your purse and a sweater." Madeline did as she was told, while Rebecca turned off the stove and covered the pots.

Stay Tuned...for Blog Action Day

And now a word from our writer, Anon Rosso. Just want to take a break in the story and let you know that on Monday, Penny Potboiler will be doing a special posting about environmental issues. This is in honor of Blog Action Day.

Are you participating?

Chapter Three

It was inevitable that after what seemed like hours, the phone rang. It was a subtle sound, a calm tone in the genre of musical buzzes. It gently blended into the background of boiling water, steaming pasta, smells of garlic bread, the acidity of the Merlot, and small feeling of apprehension that had begun to linger around Madeline like cheap perfume. It even gave her a similar pressure headache.

She barely heard it and did not recognize the sound at first. Expected, but not known in her consciousness, it caused her a momentary lapse of distortion. She could not quite think what the sound was and Rebecca seemed oblivious.

Then it dawned on her that is was indeed her telephone. Will one ever get used to this complicated facsimile of what was once a reliable concept? Perhaps it was Penny calling to update her on the Joan crisis? Hopefully the two girls had made up. She doubted Joan would do so easily, but Madeline suspected Penny might not have the energy for a prolonged provocation.

Picking up the phone,she looked at the number.It was a number because it did not say Penny. It was just numbers, numbers that she tried to quickly decode into the concept of one of her children. Perhaps they were calling for somewhere else. Maybe it was Rog.

"Hello," she asked making the greeting into a proper question. She fully expected to hear a familiar tone of voice and was about to exhale a long relief soliloquy. Her lips were poised, her tongue set.

She was not prepared for the voice on the other end.

Sanity

Penny stood completely still and tried to stop time. What was she supposed to do? The stress of seeing Joan lifeless on the floor or the possibility of the creature coming back to life caused her to shut down. At the very least, she wanted to crawl deep inside herself and be oblivious to it all.

The body on the floor did not move. It did not breathe. It just stared at her as a lifeless zombie. Penny turned to go as if to leave the little house. Maybe she could just go and no one would ever know she had been here. That seemed like the best option.

But wait. Her mother knew she was coming over here. No, she would just tell her mother that she had gotten side tracked, locked the keys in the car, or left them in her apartment and locked herself out. That would not work. You needed a key to lock the door from the outside.

She looked back into the other room. Nothing moved. Penny turned toward the door. She could see her car outside through the window. It looked normal, a piece of the everyday. If only she could just make her feet move a few move steps toward it, she could be out the door. Before her hand even reached the door handle, she looked outside again. The neighbor man. He was still out there beside his car, yet his gaze seemed to be fixed on the house. Some how she doubted she could just walk nonchalantly out the door without attracting his insidious gaze.

Think, she kept telling herself, willing an action into motion. Her mouth was dry. Her tongue felt parched and unalive, much like Joan. There was a terrible taste to these notions of fear. Metallic and sewer-like. It occupied the part of her brain that was not in flight. It overwhelmed all the other senses and she longed for a glass of water like she had longed for the end of her divorce.

Mechanically she walked to the sink and opened the cabinet over it. There were an array of miss-matched cups. For once, not caring about the aesthetics, she chose one closest to her reach and turned on the tap to the sink. The cup filled with tap water. The filling, though only seconds, took took its own sweet time. The results were so desired that Penny did not even bother to turn the faucet off. She raised the cup to her cracked lips, felt the moment of swilling anticipation and the liquid poured forth in abundant ecstasy. There was no scrutinizing the city tap water. There was no filtration anxiety, just a sensation of being filled up.

Outside, a car pulled up behind Penny's. The neighbor moved his gaze from the door of the house to this new accoutrement to the story. He watched as a large woman got out. He had seen her before and thought mean things about the way she looked. He dropped his gaze back to his car.

Penny did not hear the car or even notice the presence at the door. It was just water, beautiful, refreshing, water. Sanity.

The Prize

The text message on the cell phone read, "Lowest Bid."

Had he been paying attention at that particular time, he would have noticed that the opportunity to win an Apple I-Phone was right there within reach. It was almost that simple.

Earlier in the day, before this moment of moments, he had been sitting there at some not-so-local truck stop, eating what passed for lunch and looking for something interesting to do with his time. Bid4Prizes.com seemed a likely suspect for such an activity. Hadn't one of his acquaintances won an HDTV a few weeks ago?

Why not, he thought to himself.

He was a little surprise to find the Sweepstake high for the day. It was indeed an Apple I-phone. All he had to do was make the correct lowest bid, type it into the space for the prize he wanted (yes, oh yes, please let me win the Apple I-phone) and enter his cell phone. If his bid was the lowest unique bid, then it was his. Yeah, baby.

Perhaps 11,502 cents would be a good number. If that was the lowest creative bid, he dounted anyone else would pick that number. He knew better than to pick one cent. If more than one person choose that number then the bid would move up to two cents, so the strategy seemed to be in picking a creative number that was the lowest bid without it being duplicated. All in all it was like picking a lucky number. And if you were lucky, Free Gifts would come your way. There were no fees to pay, just a tad bit of time, the cost of a few text messages and that was it. Easy.

He had thought about doing this on his cell phone, but he would do that another day. That sounded simple too. It was just a matter of texting your bid to a certain number depending on what prize you wanted. Perhaps he would do this for the cash prize of $50,000. If he were to win that, he could spend a few months off the road and just take it easy. Perhaps there would be time to catch up on his sleep. He badly needed more sleep, but the road was a constant commitment of long hours and hard nights - alone.

Yes, for a few happy moments, he had been immersed in the dream of being one of the daily winners. He had chosen his prize, typed in the bid, and waited for chance to play his hand.

And now the phone had rung. The text message waited.

The Silence

There is a certain silence that occurs after tragedy strikes. It may be in the silence that one hears when one is the victim, how all the sounds become a sound track that are shut out. Or there is a silence that is similar to the silence in the eye of a hurricane. It is the same either way.

After the final jarring of metal upon metal, cracking glass, and human screams, when the vehicles finally came to a collusive stop, such a silence followed. There must have been the sounds of breathing, the heart beat, of vehicle destruction dying down, or the wind amongst the leaves in the trees. But what those three people involved in the crash heard was nothing at all. Silence had descended like time frozen on the edge of a precipice.

And then there was slow but subtle movement, first within the tractor trailer. The least damaged of the two vehicles, the driver was merely shaken up, though the pressure of the situation may have caused him to have a very subtle heart attack that currently felt like bad indigestion. Life in the car or what was left of the smashed metal that had once been a car, a car thriving with life, was now motionless. Soundless. A body slumped over the wheel, blood slowly seeping out of a wound caused from the impact of hitting the windshield. The body laying sprawled awkwardly beside this bleeding body was also in a state of stasis.

Slowly the bleeding head moved. Eyes opened, seeing the world in a blurry, impressionistic way. The head raised up and felt the impact of the accident and lowered again. At first this body did not hear the wheezing of the other body. But then it did. Again the head came up and it moved to focus on the other body. It could do no more.

The driver of the tractor trailer had now managed to climb down from the cab and was trying to open the door of the car wreckage. He seemed to be saying something but the body slumped on the wheel was too tired to listen.

A ringing sound was coming forth from somewhere. A phone. A phone was wringing. Rog knew the sound of it. It was not coming from his car, but from somewhere outside. The man heard it too, but ignored it. He was in no position to take phone calls at the moment.

On the Road to Jack Kerouac's House

"Here's the plan," she said, "we take a vacation."

"A vacation? Where do you propose we go?"

She laughed with a mischievous smile that remained long after her words, "Orlando, of course. Where better to met interesting people? Sure they have 50 million tourist, but you know how we love those British accents? A good portion of the two million international visitors that go there are from the UK."

Since there was no interruption, she continued, "It's not like I suggested Vegas. Orlando only ranks second in Carlson Wagonlit's Travel Trends Survey. And it is not like we have to stay at a hotel if you don't want to. There are around 25,000 rental properties from which to chose. Surely,we would find a nice place."

The other still looked unsold, "I'm not so sure O-Town is for us."

"You mean the City Beautiful and you do know it was on the map before Disney. There is history there. It was incorporated in 1875."

The other just shook her head, "If it is so great, where are all the citrus groves? Isn't that why Orlando is the county seat of Orange County?"

There was laughter, "There are no citrus groves because they had to make room for the Olive Gardens and Red Lobsters, which I know you are a fan. I guess the groves went away when big business like Darden Restaurants came into town. But this is all for expansion and your comfort as a visitor. And, if it makes you fell better, there is still cattle land along the GreeneWay Expressway. Disney didn't do away with all those."

She was beginning to see why this would be a popular destination. "Do any locals still live there, I wonder?"

"No, most people who live there are originally from somewhere else, except for Wayne Brady and Delta Burke. But just think of all the beautiful people that are there now. It could be the perfect place for one to meet the person they could be with for the rest of eternity."

She mulled it over like a Christmas wine, "I'll think about it."

Her friend looked flustered and then the mischievous look was back in full force, "I know what will work and why we need to go to Orlando."

"What and why?"

"Because Jack Kerouac lived in Orlando in 1957 while his novel 'On the Road' was being publish."

Bingo.

The Look

"I'm not sure I will tell her," Madeline said to Rebecca, who had finally stopped puttering around the kitchen and was lounging on the corner of the counter, "She would just say she wasn't ready. It has been too soon. You know how she is."

Rebecca made a sound that showed she was listening and thumbed through a pile of magazines that Madeline kept near by, "Maybe so. But I bet she would be furious when she found out Mr. Right came from a dating service." Her hands settled upon a travel magazine, one with a cover that showed a contrasting whiteness of sand to the blue, blue, blue of the perfect sky. Air brush, Madeline thought when she had first found the magazine looming in her mailbox. in fact that thought had totally dismissed that particular maganize from her consciousness.

She watched her friend flip through the pages of photographs, skimming text on occasion and she saw the look developing. It was a look that said much but offered little hope for the person at the other end of it. It was the I-have-an-idea-so-here-is-what-we-are-going-to-do look.