The exercise:
May we have Hindsight?
Yes, we May.
Mine:
So Quebec City with Serena was fun for the first week. She taught me all sorts of things to say in French - most of which earned me odd looks from the locals, but I think that was just because my accent wasn't very good.
We ate a lot of good food at a lot of fancy restaurants. Serena kept insisting that we tell each place that it was one of our birthdays so that we'd get free desserts with lit candles on them. I went along with it because, to be honest, that was something I always wanted to do - I just never had a girl that was willing to do it with me. Until Serena.
Toward the end of the second week, though, things started to be less fun. Serena would get upset any time I tried making plans for after we got back home. I thought she just wanted to live in the moment, to be in Quebec City right up until we weren't in Quebec City anymore. Which, hey, right on, you know?
But then on what was supposed to be our second last night there, her brother's car was stolen. The police found it the next day in the parking lot of an abandoned factory, burned to a crisp. And I thought maybe we might be stuck there for a little longer than expected, and maybe I should call the nursing home to let them know what was going on.
And that was right around the time the fireworks incident happened.
2 comments:
I've been looking forward to seeing what you do with Serena, and you haven't disappointed! I like the detail about the birthday candles especially, and the "stealing" of her "brother's" car is both apt and nicely done. So... fireworks incident, hey? (I'm ignoring your pun, by the way. Just so you know.)
Hindsight
We were in our second hotel; the first one had been nice, if maybe a bit more fancy than I thought we could afford, but that all got dealt with when the hotel had a fire in its laundry room. We arrived back to see the flames shooting out of the windows and sparks and embers filling the air, and Serena cooed at it and the Fire Marshall asked us to stand back and then someone else came over to find out who we were.
"They look like fireworks," said Serena, pointing at the sparks and floating embers. She sounded like a little girl at a birthday party, and I was sure I loved her then, for seeing the beauty in a disaster.
"That's the hotel where we're staying," I said to the fireman, who looked tired and sweaty. "Our room is... probably just two above where the flames are."
"You'll need to talk to this man, then," said the fireman, taking me to a man wearing a suit and a face that said this was costing him more than he wanted to think about. "He'll sort you out with a replacement room and some compensation."
"In this hotel?" I said, trying to sound clever and like I knew how to negotiate.
"Why does everyone ask that?" sighed the besuited man. "Is it a joke I just don't get? Because you can't all be that stupid. No, sir, you'll be going to the Labrador Palace, and... well, you definitely don't deserve it but it looks like you'll be in the Prince Philip suite. Congratulations."
No-one's ever congratulated me with so much sarcasm before, but a suite is a suite, even if I didn't rightly know back then what that meant, and so I accepted the bits of paper he gave me and dragged Serena away from the show -- I mean, the blazing hotel, and we went to our second hotel.
So that's where I was, asking the phone operator to be put through to the nursing home where I used to work, and might still work if they thought I was on holiday, and Serena was in the living room because -- and I couldn't believe it either -- a suite meant we had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room and a small kitchen.
"No, Oakways Nursing Home," I said to the operator. "It's on the highway, it's big and there's these big trees around it. Well yes, they might be oaks? I never asked them."
POP
"No, it was there when I left. I'm sure it's not burned down."
POP-POP
"Yes, I'll hold."
POP. POP. BANG!
"You're a policeman? Why do you want to talk to me?"
POP-POP-POP-POP-POPPITY
"No, I don't know anything about accelerants." BANG-BANG "No, I don't know what that noise is either, let me just go and see if there's a car backfiring."
I set the receiver down on the table, and went towards the kitchen. Serena appeared in the doorway, smiling.
"I put fireworks in the oven!" she said. "They make beautiful lights in there, you have to see this!"
"Is that safe?" I asked, letting her take my hand and pull me forwards. "The police are on the phone, they say the nursing home burned down."
"Oh?" She dropped my hand and darted past me to hang the phone up, which is why I was the only one past the kitchen doorway when the rest of the fireworks in the oven got hot enough to explode. In hindsight, that was astonishingly lucky as I was shielded from the shrapnel of the oven's glass door by the kitchen table and chairs.
Greg - thank you!
And... I know you're not. My puns are unignorable.
Hah, some great touches in this one. The misdirection with Serena thinking of fireworks at the hotel fire was beautifully done. And well, the actual fireworks incident was quite... the incident.
It's rather remarkable our hero(?) has survived to tell his tale, isn't it?
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