His gasp brought Charlotte back to her past, decades ago in their sophomore year in college, when a skinny tall boy with too-large ears approached her after their English lit class. They’d been assigned as a team by Professor Rife to write a 10-page thesis paper. (Continuing from last week’s The Bookstore Intruder.)
“Each team must agree upon a book most admired, and then defend it. The goal is to read your paper in class next week and convince the other teams to vote for your book.”
Charlotte shivered in annoyance when the young man found her an hour later in the library.
“Hi, I’m Andrew,” he began.
“The Shooting Gallery,” Charlotte responded, not one to savor a conversation.
Without skipping a beat, her new teammate retorted, “Pride and Prejudice.”
His reply stopped Charlotte cold. She’d have to canoe more carefully on these treacherous waters. Charlotte’s innocent, blue-eyed expression and shapely figure attracted males like nails to a magnet, but normally she could swipe them away like nasty pests.
“In The Shooting Gallery, Yuko Tsushima writes of the existential loneliness that is the heart of humanity,” Charlotte said with a sneer. “Jane Austen simply writes romance.”
“Without romance, without moonlit love, youth withers into despair, and old age arrives with remorse and regret,” Andrew countered.
Charlotte’s heart leapt into haywire spirals. “Who said that?”
“I did. Just now,” Andrew admitted. “We’ll have a much better chance to win with Jane Austen than with a Japanese short story feminist.”
Sure enough, their collaborative paper won an A and a round of applause from the other students. But no matter, Andrew wooed her with words, not wins. “One day,” he proclaimed, “ ‘my back will sprout a pair of lance-shaped wings….’ ”
“My bookmarked Yuko quote,” Charlotte whispered as they explored each other’s wings, and every other part of their bodies.
But a month later, Charlotte sprouted off, back to the isolated world of Block Island, after her dad’s sudden heart attack and her mother’s losing battle with keeping the family bookstore intact.
Andrew was a dream – another lifetime ago – until now, eons later at the bookstore Charlotte now owned, this lean, bald-headed man’s gasp brought a million questions to the forefront.
“You never came,” Charlotte murmured, her eyes tearing with questions and doubt.
“My wings were clipped,” Andrew tried to explain, the words choking in his throat.
So instead, he walked slowly, gingerly, to the woman he once loved, and held out his hand.
Charlotte took a step backward, into the “A” shelves, and a book fell onto the floor.
Sense and Sensibility.
Oh, this is soooo good.
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Thanks for enjoying Charlotte and Andrew’s story. ❤
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Great job, Pam.
I can’t believe how much you got into these two short pieces. I’m picturing it all like a movie.
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Thanks for giving me ‘magnet’ to play with in this story. Hmmm, Susan Sarandon as Charlotte? 🙂
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Sure, think big. 🙂
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Wow! this is fabulous! And thanks for linking back to my blog. I followed the other links and found some wonderful bloggers to follow.
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Oh, I’m so glad the linking worked – that was my intent, to bring excellent bloggers to each other. Your word (moonlight – moonlit) helped Andrew woo Charlotte. 🙂
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It’s a lovely story!
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Love it, that is so neat!
Have a great weekend! 😀
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Your weekend is going better than mine, which is rather “sleety” mixed with snow and ice. ;-0
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Absolutely adore your warming words of love.
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Many thanks, Jeanette. As Andrew says, without love, there’s only regret….Love turns our world into colors – sunrises, rainbows.<3
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Like Merril, I agree this reads like a screenplay. I can picture it all in my mind, as I did in the movie Beauty and the Beast, who mesmerizes Beauty when she views his floor to ceiling book collection and hears him spouting Shakespeare.
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Many men would do well to heed Andrew and the Beast – wow with words and bookshelves!!! 🙂
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I am enjoying this story so much!
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Thanks for reading the bookstore double-header, Lorrie. I totally enjoyed your tale of Casey – we are both dog lovers extraordinaire. xo
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Great job! I love anything with a Jane Austen theme. You packed a lot in a few words!!
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Maybe I packed a bit too much, Darlene, but I loved the challenge of using the words sent to me via comments in last week’s post – FUN! 🙂
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Thanks for continuing this heartwarming story. It’s the perfect medicine for a sleepless night.
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Ahhh, you have sleepless nights too, huh? I just got a phone call from a SF friend – 5:30 a.m. her time. I suggested she pick up a good book – or read some blogs. 🙂 Thanks for enjoying my bookstore stories, Gerlinde.
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Love the story and clever way you incorporated the seven words.
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I’ll admit, I had a lot of fun with the challenge of explaining more of Charlotte and Andrew’s story, using those seven divergent words! Thank you so much for enjoying. xo
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Love it! Well done, Pam!
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Thanks for your ‘bookmark’ word, Anneli. It was fun to ‘bookmark’ it in the story. 🙂
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Very enjoyable story. Will we hear more?
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If this is flash fiction, it is fabulous. If this is a sequel to the last week’s story, it is mystical. If this is a romantic story, it is brimming with love that pulls at the strings of a heart. It has the charm of a poem…”attracted males like nails to a magnet, but normally she could swipe them away like nasty pests.”
Pamela, I marvel at your style of compressing so much within a short story, which bears all the ingredients of a dream dish. Thanks for sharing all those links…my fingers are eager to press at them as my mind races past them.
“Without romance, without moonlit love, youth withers into despair, and old age arrives with remorse and regret,” how true!! Love your choice of words.
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Thank you for your kind words, Balroop. Yes, this is a flash fiction sequel of a mystical love story. 🙂 Enjoy the links to the blogs of others – they’re all fabulous. xo
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Wow, Pam. I love how you tied Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in at the end. That was awesome. And you did a great job pulling those words into a short piece and have them make perfect sense. Loved it.
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Even CANOE, Diana! I was chewing my nails over your word, CANOE, but as you suggested, the word can be used in many imaginative ways – I like using nouns as verbs. 🙂
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You were more creative with it than I would have been! It made a great metaphor. 🙂
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😘
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You are crazy good!
– Leslie
>
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You are a sweetie to say so. xo
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Love this, my friend! So very clever and descriptive!
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Thanks – to the best photographer I know. You’ve taken some fabulous shots in libraries – and bookstores? And I love all of your still lives with books. xo
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I’m glad “haywire” found a home in this clever story. 😉
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I’m a singer/songwriter. Well, this story in its many elements (right down to the Austen references) reminds me of a song I wrote some years back. I just grabbed it off an old computer I still have and posted it up online, on an old music page I used to use. Figured you wouldn’t mind if I shared it here; it hasn’t seen the light of day in years, so maybe here, it will bring at least a few people some enjoyment:
It Is What It Is
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Erik – you are talented in so many ways – but your song/music blew me away. I hope my other readers hit the link to your “It Is What It Is.” If my story DID ever be screen-written for a movie, I’d want your song for the beginning and end of the film. Beautiful.
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Wow, high praise, thank you. And wouldn’t that be fun? So glad you enjoyed it and got why it came to mind for your story.
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Great job, Pam! And the photo of the bookstore…I so want to see inside!
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I took this picture of the only Kauai bookstore – “western-most independent bookstore in the United States.” Chock-full of new and used books…along with the store cat, and an orchid or two. 🙂
My review of your book is up on Amazon!!! xoxoxox
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Very cool place. Thank you so much for your kind review, Pam. I really appreciate you reading outside of your normal genre. ❤
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I’ll read outside my genre anytime if you are the author, Jill! 💚
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What a beautiful story. It reminds me of my aunt who was reunited with the man she loved 50 years later, after his wife died. They had a happy ending and married. They had a wonderful marriage in the twilight years of their lives.
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Oh, I love these ‘sunset’ romances, Patricia. Thanks for writing here about your aunt. Lovely. ❤
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This is going to only get better and better. I can’t wait for more, Pamela. Keep going, please. I love, love stories and haven’t read one in ages.
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I’m thrilled that my story has entertained you! I may come back to Charlotte and Andrew in the future. My publisher keeps insisting that I start blogging about my children’s picture book, which will be released in two weeks. ;-0
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Well get with that project and plese return to the bookstore story. 🙂
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Very good, very well worked Pam. Enjoyed this a lot.
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Well, you led this sequel- story because of your “Shooting Gallery,” Roy. Did I surprise you by really using it? 🙂
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No, but I thought it might have been used as the scene of the original encounter. You have more imagination than me 🙂
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Can’t ‘imagine’ that!!! 🙂
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What’s to say, except <3!!
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xoxo
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This is very clever. I really like how you’ve got all the words in. Brilliant!
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Thank goodness I found a fascinating book called “The Shooting Gallery.” That phrase would have stumped me if I hadn’t. :-0 So glad you enjoyed it – I certainly had a great time with the challenge. xo
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Oh, fun! Thanks for continuing the tale.
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Enjoyed it and quite relieved when I got all those words in, Nancy. 🙂
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This is wonderful, Pam. Well done! xxx
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Many thanks, Dianne. ❤
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Exquisite! You are amazing, Pam!!
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xo ❤
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Oh this is so wonderful. You have such a way with words! I loved it. Touching and because of my age, haha, I can relate to lost and rekindled love decades later.
I recently reconnected with my first love from age 10. Have not seen him since then 1967 …long story.. but we reconnected about three years ago. Sparks still there, attraction in tact. That’s all I am saying ….in public !
Peta
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You have kindled my curiosity beyond measure, Peta. I love LOVE stories, and yours sounds like the sweetest one yet. Thankfully I follow your blog, so I get a bit of measure of your love madness. xo
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Ohhhh the ending.. with the Austin book.. Perfect. And the part about the clipped wings was cleverly written too, Pam!
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Thanks so much, Christy. Andrew came up with that all on his own – I love that about him…. and in the end, so does Charlotte. xo 🙂
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Oh.. this is exciting! I am so glad I waited to read all of my emails from you at once!!! 😉
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🙂 You’re such a fun one, Courtney.
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That was a captivating story, Pam. Mega hugs!
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Delicious! Your writing always provides a mini-escape!
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Many thanks, Elizabeth. Escapism is GOOD. 🙂
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Oh, very interesting Pamela, I love the idea of that story, and you write it very well… a shock indeed! I’m almost fifty myself, the thought of meeting a guy now, someone I remember from my teens… a bizarre moment that would be. But… I did actually, about ten years ago, very briefly, in a kitchen shop, he was a lot older than me, so had aged a lot, but I still recognised him… something about the eyes. Most inappropriate place to bump into an old flame, especially when they are with a woman you suspect is their wife. I never said a word, and neither did he, I left shop before I did! 😉
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But I love your memory of the uncomfortable meeting, Suzy. That’s where good stories come from sometimes: uncomfortable memories. :-0 Ha ha. I had the best time writing this two-part fast fiction, because the characters wrote it for me. I do wonder what’s happening with them now….
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They do yes, we can turn any piece of our lives into an entire story. Makes life a little more enjoyable! 🙂
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… perhaps uncomfortably enjoyable 😉
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Sometimes, yes!!
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Dear roughwighting, or whatever your name is, I am none other than Detective Tony Pastry of New Scotland Yard. My informant has told me that you are the Red Herring, the notorious art thief. And my informant is very reliable: He recently sold me the Moon for £500 and a pint of mild. He’s very big in NASA, you know. He has also informed me that the Pink Panther films are not fictitious but are in fact a series of documentaries about a real Inspector Clouseau. Since then I have modelled my entire career on Clouseau’s achievements and it has not been easy, I can tell you. If you do not immediately hand yourself in at the nearest police station, I will have to come and put you under arrest.
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