My Dinner from Eleanor's

By Trilby Singer

All he was wanted was his dinner, plain and simple, and then he would be on his way.

She suggested that he try something different for a change.

That is how the night began.

A man.
A woman.
An order of vegan macaroni and cheese.

That is how the night began.

It became an evening of conversation. The talk was of art, literature, history, until...

This Is a story that addresses that age-old dilemma:
When you have gone home with someone you have just met, to a mysterious house on a dark and foreboding street, and that person wants to draw you, and asks that you pose in... a certain way... what do you do?

(A Jack Albright Selection)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilby Singer
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463287736

Book preview

My Dinner from Eleanor’s

by

Trilby Singer

Copyright 2017

All rights reserved.

Neither this book nor any portion of it may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright owner or their designated agents, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, or actual locations is purely coincidental.

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ISBN: 9780463287736

Caveat lector

Those who have not yet reached their majority, and are thus not adults in the eyes of the law, and those who are of weak moral fiber should not proceed beyond this point.

If, in spite of this warning, the unqualified reader proceeds, the author takes no legal or ethical responsibility.

There was a loud clap. It ended.

I bowed to my partner, and then extended my hands. She reached out and gripped my wrists.

I twisted around and raised my hands above my head while she maintained her hold. We settled in, back-to-back. I dropped my body, bringing my center down below hers while stretching my arms upward as if reaching for the ceiling. Her back slid against mine. When I felt that I was low enough, I paused. Her grip tightened, which was my signal. From my crouch, feet firm upon the ground, I extended my arms heavenwards, leaning forward, just enough, not too much. My hips were the fulcrum, my extended arms the lever that lifted her body off the mat. I curved my back to form an arch, against which her body rested, dangling. She gave a faintly audible sigh as her body relaxed, tension flowing out of her, into me, and through me down into the earth below. All the while, she kept a firm hold.

I straightened slowly, coming to an erect posture, gently lowering her back to the mat. We reversed the turn we had done before, coming around face to face. She released her grip, and extended her arms, offering her wrists for me to grasp. I bowed, indicating that this was not necessary. She was short and slight, all of 40 kilograms; 90 pounds soaking wet. I had no doubt she could throw me, but I thought it best to decline her offer.

The others had started to line up. She and I went our separate ways, joining the formation where we could. I positioned myself strategically, ready for a hasty exit.

We followed the usual decorum. The class bowed, thanking the evening’s sensei. We bowed to thank each other. There were the usual announcements. I mentally calibrated the elapsing time: if the class had ended on schedule, I would have just enough time to make it.

The opportunity finally presented itself, and I left the mat. Hakama were being folded, and someone was distributing the cleaning materials. I dodged that. It was a bit a faux pas, a minor dereliction of duty, but it had been a large class tonight, and they did not need me.

I was the first one to the shower in the changing room. I intended a quick wash, but in my rush, I used too much of the liquid soap. The mountains of resulting foam ran slow circuits around the drain, mocking my haste. The feeble flow of water from the showerhead was barely enough, but I managed to rinse myself clean. I dried and dressed quickly. I put on my coat and went to retrieve my shoes at the dojo entrance.

Even before I got to the entrance, I was feeling the cold. The brick and cinderblock of the refurbished factory space were poor protection from a deep February freeze. 'Refurbished' meant little more than that the machinery had been removed, the asbestos sealed away, and factory floor space had been divided into 'lofts'. The ancient gas heaters were no match for frigid winds when they rattled the old, drafty windows.

As I stepped outside, the cold hit me; it almost took my breath. I held my gloved hand against my mouth to create a pocket of breathe-warmed air. I could feel the dampness in my hair freezing.

I got to my car. It started without too much of a fuss. The engine hummed in the way a ten-year-old engine with over two hundred thousand miles on it will. The radio blared some song I half-remembered. I noted the time on the dashboard clock and saw that I still had just enough time to make it. With no time to warm up the car, I put it into drive. The heater blew frigid air, the needle of the engine temperature gauge planted firmly against the C. I took shallow breaths, lest I frost up the windshield. I vaguely wondered, not for the first time, why windshields did not have heating elements embedded in the glass the way that rear windows do.

I pulled out of the parking lot, and onto the city streets. Though I controlled my breath, a glaze of habitation frost was forming on the windshield. I should have pulled over and waited for the car to warm enough to keep the windows clear, but I risked it. The defroster was beginning to throw some heat, and a pattern of melted frost had begun to form at the bottom of the windshield: wavy, like mist rising from water. It swirled along the base of the glass like the hamon on a blade. I drove on.

As I drove, the heavy darkness was broken with irregular periodicity by the sickly orange-yellow glow of the sodium streetlights. The streets were empty and dreary in the way they can only be in the depths of freezing winter night. I welcomed the lifelessness. I encountered neither vehicles nor pedestrians, which meant I made good time.

I arrived at Eleanor's with time to spare.

Eleanor's was located in a repurposed building, one of many along the Avenue. The city was full of such structures, artifacts of more prosperous times. There had been a building boom on this part of the Avenue back in the 1950s, part of the economic expansion after World War 2. They would have just called it ‘post-war’ in those days; no one would have needed to specify which war. I often tried to imagine what the Avenue would have looked like then. Here and there, the decaying husk of a building hinted at a gaudy exuberance that was long gone. The Avenue had endured decades of the ebb and flow tides of prosperity and recession. The adjoining neighborhoods were of old three-family houses and older Victorian homes. The best of them retained a shabby gentility; the