Red Writing Hood: Pick A Number
This prompt was one of the first Red Dress Club prompts. We were to choose numbers from a list as follows: The first number will be for your character, the second your setting, the third the time and the fourth will be the situation.
Then take the four elements and combine them into a short story.
All four you picked MUST be your main elements, but you can add in other characters, settings, times and situations.
I chose a waitress, at a party, at or around midnight and someone has lost/found something.
Thank
God Margaret’s equally desperate to come up with rent money. Our apartment
isn’t expensive but it’s happens every month. We both have fulltime jobs but somehow
it’s always a problem. We need to find better drink specials or boys to buy
rounds without strings attached.
Opportunity
appears at our apartment door in the form of Sandy, Mar’s sister, who offers us
a Friday gig that pays $75 cash for five hours of waitressing. “I suck at
waitressing?” “You’ll be fine. You’ll need a black skirt, white blouse and you’re
good to go.” She didn’t mention
the gig was at Owensia Golf Club, the most exclusive country club in the Chicagoland
area. Can you say swank?
The
first night goes so well the GM asks us back for a REALLY BIG party where our
best behavior is required. Huh? The waitresses are buzzing because there’re some huge
names attending tonight (Marshall Fields, Wrigleys, Pritzkers, Mortons). This
is the kind of party I’d rather attend then serve but being broke is a
fantastic motivator.
It takes
only moments to realize there’s benefits to wandering through this crowd. The
fancies brought along the younger generation. I know I’m just a waitress and have a boyfriend, but I’ve
always believed you can be on a diet and still look at the menu, and there’s
good stuff on this one.
I
keep catching the eye of this great looking guy and, shit, he’s moving into my
area so I’ll have to take his drink order. I always go red in the face at times
like this and I feel it as he orders a beer. Now, I’m going to have to bring it back to him. Just relax, I
tell myself. I didn’t become more bold and flirtatious until a year or two later.
For
dinner, I’m assigned the Marshall Fields table and guess who’s at it? Couldn’t
I just get the rich nobodys? I see Margaret laughing and I know it was a
mistake to mention I thought this guy was hot. Every time I set a plate in
front of him, he speaks to me. If I wasn’t so uncomfortable I might pick up the
flirting.
It’s
midnight; party over, thank God. Margaret asks, “Where’s your bracelet?” Oh
shit! I am not going back into THAT room.
You
know the feeling when you sense someone close to you; you feel their energy field
or heat? The hair on my neck rises as I hear someone say,
“I think
this is yours.”
My
face does it again as I turn around.
“Hi,
I’m Jeremy. You’re Gina, right.”
“How’d
you know my name?”
He points to Margaret. That rat!
"Would you consider giving me your number?”
"Would you consider giving me your number?”
“I
don’t give out my number,” I say yet smiling.
“Ok,
I’ll give you mine and you can decide if you wanna call” as he reaches for a
cocktail napkin.
“I
have a fantastic memory. Tell me and I’ll remember.”
Now I have to decide if I’m going to call Jeremy Fields or not because I do remember the number….
Now I have to decide if I’m going to call Jeremy Fields or not because I do remember the number….
8 comments:
oooh :) Call him! Then again... boyfriend... hmmm. I like the stream-of-consciousness style of the story.
To call, or not to call, that's the question. Love the voice in this. It's brazen and fresh. Great job!
Thanks. I'm not very good at fiction so I know how this story goes. Put it this way, it wasn't a serious boyfriend so, hence the dilemma.
Thanks! It was fun and pretty easy to write.
You started off a little sluggish, like you weren't comfortable. Somewhere around the middle you got your legs underneath you and took off running. Great job!
Thanks. You are right about the slow beginning but when I got to the good part, I was really having fun writing it.
Gina's got a great voice, and it reads like a casual email or a diary.
My one critique would be to separate the speakers by paragraphs, especially with few to no speech tags. It will smooth out the reading experience.
Thanks, Cameron! I definitely need practice with dialog so I appreciate the feedback.
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