The rain clouds the panes in thick drops and the small holes in the battered window send chilling spikes of November air across the room. The wind rattles and shakes the petals of a dying flower that weeps forlornly over mountains of crunched up paper balls. The typewriter is lonely except the incessant tapping of an author`s finger searching desperately for words; words that choke on his cigarette smoke and falter in the wind.
On the bed beside him, tucked into a small ball of duvet and cushions, lays a girl: she has a pen behind her ear and hair that falls across the pages of `Jane Eyre` like golden sun. The small lamp on the desk bathes her in a warm glow: it is a cosy warmth, but an imaginary one; she shivers in the cold.
The tapping continues until, with an exasperated sigh, the author leans back in his chair and rests his head upon his arm, the small cigarette unlit and limp in his mouth. He sighs again and with creaking bones leans forwards to take a sip of coffee with the temperature of old bath water.
Another sigh.
"Are you going to be sighing all night?" the girl asks, peering over her novel with a charming glare.
"Possibly" the author responds with sarcastic sharpness, rummaging amongst old ideas to find his lighter. He pauses over his notepad. "Why?"
"I was wondering whether I was going to find it necessary to get up and ram one of your trashed ideas down your throat just to get you to shut up" she answers with a cheeky slur.
"You`re being a flirt" he says with a swish of his hand, before returning to his typewriter with false purpose.
"Flirting is a woman`s trade, one must keep in practice" she replies with an aristocratic tone.
The author smiles a deep smile.
She returns to her book but he sits with his eyes on her, lighter suspended in the air halfway between soul and mind. Two or three minutes passes and he simply watches; she is oblivious until, after scribbling away her own ramblings, she catches his eye.
"Are you alright, or do you need help lighting your cigarette?" she smiles.
He raises his finger to his mouth as she lowers her book. She tilts her head questioningly in the way that she always did. The light sparkles in her eyes like a supernova to a casual astronomer; half-reclined with a case of beer on a care free summer`s night, the astronomer would be suddenly enraptured by such an awe inspiring display of random beauty that he would sit, quite stunned, until his wife dragged him to bed.
Well, that`s how the author saw it, anyway.
With a curious smile and a subconsciously timid tucking of hair behind ear, she mouths the word: "What?"
"I have an idea" the author breathes as cogs of creativity whir and spin with the lubrication of imagination.
There are comfortable seconds of silence.
"Well?" she asks.
The author shakes his head.
"I can`t"
"Tell me!" she replies, with pseudo petulance.
There is silence again as the writer stares out of the window.
"Please?" she asks quietly.
"I`m going to write about us"
Her heart explodes with a flutter and love reaches her face first in hot flushes. He doesn`t look at her, but her eyes are buried deep within his mind.
"Well, go on then" she breathes.
He senses the smile in her words and the love in her orders. So, turning away and sinking into his typewriter, he did.
