3 April 2021
CONGRATULATIONS!
Your submission (of 11 January) “Love is in the Air” has been selected by a panel of 3 Judges as the CTN Short Story 2021 runner-up contest winner. Your award includes:
1. $100 Amazon Digital Gift Card (emailed upon receipt of attached permission/information)
2. Interview/Story published on the CTN website (upon receipt of responses to question/permission found attached
3. Free Book Consultation (must be scheduled) In order to receive your award package, you must respond and return the attached information to justwrite@ctnbooks.com by MARCH 24th 2021.
If we do not receive the return document by this date,
your award will be forfeited. If you have any questions,
please contact us at the aforementioned address.
Again Congratulations! CTN Administrator
Let this be a lesson to me. E-mail is not ENTIRELY bad news and trauma, unless I’m too a-scared to look. Then I miss stuff. Like otherwise good news or deadlines. My response to them:
“I am delighted to learn this ON THE THIRD of APRIL. So… tough break for me, at least in re the hundred bucks! Please feel free to publish it anyway. If a story is any good then it shouldn’t matter whether the author is still alive or gets paid. It’s supposed to be about the story, right? So… where may I see it in print, and how do I purchase copies?
Who would have thought that e-mail could actually be used for something useful or profitable? Well, demonstrably, it still can’t! Anyway… the “winner” in question:
Love is in the Air
MMXI
(Ever wish you could live in a musical comedy?
No you didn’t. You know better.)
God I hate spring. Every year it seems to get worse.
I was standing in the middle of the fountain in the middle of the square in the middle of town in the middle of April when I came to. I was standing with my feet spread wide and I was holding this strange woman. Startled by my own dawning awareness, I dropped her, and she splashed loudly at my feet.
She had no beef with me. I was no more responsible for her dunking than she was. There’s no telling how wet we might have gotten during the spontaneous production. I should be the least of her complaints.
She came up sputtering and looking a little lost.
The Restoration Crew, resplendent in their powder blue uniforms and shining nickel plated helmets, rushed into the square as I helped her to her feet. I tried to apologize for dropping her, but she predictably brushed me off – bad enough to find oneself in an intimate embrace with a stranger, no need to prolong the awkwardness.
A young officer stopped by the edge of the fountain as we made our way out. “Any injuries here?” he asked.
I looked at my impromptu dance partner and she shook her head.
“Nah. I guess we’re good here, Officer, thanks.” After he bustled off to tend to other possibly distressed dancers in our ephemeral troupe, I turned back to my erstwhile companion and attempted to apologize again. I’m new to the city so I guess I’m a little less jaded about all this.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said, shaking her head slowly, trying still to dislodge the cobwebs in her mind. “There’s no telling what might happen during one of these numbers. I guess we’re lucky we’re just wet. We could’ve danced our way into traffic.”
“Brrr…” I shivered from both the cold wind across my drenched trousers and the thought of spontaneous choreography taking us into the oncoming lorries. Their heavy magnetic shielding may protect drovers from getting caught up in song, but it also necessarily obstructs operators’ views. All those blind spots don’t help much when some hapless civilian blunders into the road. “Ouch. Grease spot is the word,” I agreed. “That is one nasty way to paint someone’s wagon.” She smiled and nodded as she wrung out her skirt.
It’s a good thing, I guess, that there are more suicides in December than in April. Also that depression is generally less infectious than infatuation.
Infatuation is wonderful but it’s also the worst. Things are only new when they’re new, after all, and when infatuation fades it leaves either true enduring love or near mortal embarrassment. In the meantime, however, it has such empathic potency as to draw disinterested strangers into its orbit. Collateral damage, some call it. A bleeding nuisance, says I. Compulsive choreography kills more innocents than drunk driving, these days. Cities are getting too big. If it weren’t for economies of scale, ease of communication, and other wholesome market phenomena, no one (excepting hopeless romantics) would put up with this crap – in spite of the intense reverie one feels during compulsory terpsichore.
I checked my directional guide and started following the indicator to my case. Naturally, it had its own little broadcast beacon. Standard equipment these days. After happy bums are finished tripping the light fantastic, they could easily abscond with strangers’ goods if we didn’t take such sensible precautions.
A high pitched peep peep peeping alerted me to the near presence of my satchel so I switched off the beacon and started batting the bushes out of my way to reveal my reports and lunch still safely nested under the hedge.
Not sure how late I was, I hopped the crosstown trolley, jumped off at the corner of Lerner and Loew, and raced into Hammerstein Centre in time to witness a proposal of marriage.
Half an hour later I was again looking for my case as I tried to shake the fog out of my head.