What I’m Blogging

Word Count: 325

“We’ve been through this before,” she said to him in a loud whisper. Her eyes flared, betraying an anger which was not expressed in her controlled voice. He, oblivious to her mood, or purposely thick, sat calmly reading a newspaper and taking a long drink from his steaming coffie mug. After a pause he folded his paper and placed it off to one side of the cafe table.

“Perhaps we should go over it again,” he said “for my benefit,” he added in an equally loud whisper.

She took a deep breath, maitained her composure and politely offered, “ I’m not going to discuss it with you here, can’t it wait til we’re alone?”

“We’re never alone,” he pounced almost befire she was finished. “We had to come here for some privacy, and this is as private as it gets.” He made a sweeping motion with his hand indicating the rest of the cafe. Other than myself, and a disinterested teenager behind the couter, the couple was alone.

“You know what Mom and Dad’s was like before we moved in,” she said. Her face was becoming distressed and she was clenching her hands on the table.

“I thought we were going to have our own space,” he retorted. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your folks putting us up, but I didn’t thing that we’d still be dating three months after our wedding!”

The woman looked agast. Her eyes, moistened with that blow, looked around the cafe and she realized that the teenager’s inattention had evaporated and my pretense of polite eavesdropping had become a stare.

“You shithead!” she hissed at him as she gathered her indignation and her purse and left the cafe. He slowly took another drink from his mug and picked up his paper, turning the pages until he came to the classified section.

…all literature is gossip…

It’s the birthday of Truman Capote, born in New Orleans (1924). He was the son of a salesman and a beauty queen. He moved to New York City with his mother, went to Trinity School, dropped out when he was 17, and began working for the New Yorker magazine. His first book came out in 1948, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

It was Truman Capote who said, “All literature is gossip.” He also said, “Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does or music. If you were born knowing them, fine. It not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
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