Short Story

   It’s still early in the evening but it’s already dark outside. Ruth is sitting in front of the dresser mirror, putting on make-up, getting ready for Wendy’s farewell party. Every now and then she stops dabbing at her face to check for a telltale line where the make-up ends and the real Ruth begins. Her bottom lip juts out, the way it does whenever she concentrates hard on something.

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Birds called him awake where he slept on the riverbank, a veritable madhouse of caws and chirps and twittering that began with the advent of day and increased with the encroaching light. He struggled against waking as if the day held more than he could handle and he wanted no part of it but he’d fallen asleep in some curious aviary walled only by the trees and when the cries grew more strident and persistent he discarded his strange dreams and sat looking out across the river.

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When I was in France a drummer invited me to his practice rooms in a suburb of Paris called Montreuil. We made a good noise together and one jam led to another. I decided to get a hold of a back-up guitar which I could leave in the Montreuil practice room to save me carrying my own guitar across town each time. I wasn’t looking for an expensive guitar, since it was possible that other users of the rooms would use it, and ... you know how it is, perhaps it might be “borrowed” one day and never returned.

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