As a break from normal habit, I’m posting 2 stories today. The first is the version of Wooing Barbara that doesn’t work (or wouldn’t work for me). The second is a version that cuts a little closer to what I was looking for when the process of Wooing Barbara began. We don’t like to show people the failures. In saying that, I’m not assuming that the reader will agree that the second version is all that wonderful on own. But the differences in the two versions may be instructive. They were certainly instructive for me:
Wooing Barbara (The One that Doesn’t Work):
The football arced and fell into his hands. The feel of the catch, the leather, the grit between the stitching, the smell of cut grass took him back to those Friday nights when the guys waited for calls, graphs drawn, ten yard of infinity, the quiet before the longshot pass.
His father called for the ball. Elmo, an old friend from school, sat on the porch with Barbara, another friend, whom he hoped to woo. He imagined Barbara’s hand on the grip of a racket. He imagined her breasts. He saw her bringing in the groceries. He imagined waking up whole.
He kept looking to the porch to verify whether she was watching him, as she had from the sidelines back in high school and that Elmo had moved no closer. They were all single: he, Elmo, and Barbara, who had a subtle way of averting enticements with a jerk of a straight chin and three blinks of her fast gray eyes.
“You all go throw the ball,” Elmo had said. “Barbara and I will watch. This’ll be better than wrestling on television, right Barbara?”
“Clueless,” she said, “but you can tell me all about your trip to the Boston.”
“Would you just throw me the ball already,” his father said.
“Sorry, Dad,” he said.
During dinner he read the dynamics. This was his house. His father had moved in having lost a long-time job at the firm. He’d sold his house at somewhat of a loss. So, he was a man who lived with his father. The invites had come at unexpectedly. Barbara had called. “I’m in town looking for a place,” she’d said. “Dinner?” “Sure.” “I’d wondered what happened to you after college.” “We can talk about it over dinner,” she said.
“Barbara, this is my father, Hector,” he’d introduced. “Oh my, such a handsome father,” Barbara had said, which was a good start.
Then Elmo had turned into the drive, hopped out, waved. And was invited in.
“You’re looking for a place,” he said, “in town or around this area?”
“She’s looking for a place in town,” Elmo said, chewing a thin slice of chicken. “Something small, something with a lot of light.”
“I like light,” he said, wanting Elmo to know that he’d rather have Barbara answer his questions.
“I was stuffed into small apartment in Seattle,” Barbara said. “I don’t want real big, but bigger.”
“Are you looking or are you still with the firm?” he asked.
“As usual,” Elmo said, with a chuckle, now holding his wine glass by the base, “you’re a tad bit dense. It’s easy to see she’s still with the firm.”
“I’m senior in the company now,” Barbara said. “An opportunity opened. So, here I am.”
“They built the Dome. They build the Reservoir. They build the big bridge you’ve probably seen in the news,” Elmo said, launching off. “Wonderful stuff.”
He watched Elmo take sips of the wine. A few words passed between Barbara, Elmo, and his father.
It had been his father who’d said, “Let’s toss the ball some, just like old time.”
Barbara leaned into Elmo and sipped his wine. She sipped hers. “Elmo, you’d said earlier . . . ”
Ug ug ug ug.
Wooing Barbara (The One that Works Better):
Cooper would woo Barbara, who was newly back from Seattle for a job close to home, where everything began. Cooper dreamed about this wooing as a lovely process. Inspire; treat; impress; and most of all, act as if you know what you’re doing.
“Dinner at 6?” he asked.
“Sounds fun,” she said. “We can catch up.”
“Lovely,” he told himself.
“We never eat at 6,” Dad said, recently laid off. He’d sold his home. “I can move back with you,” he’d told Cooper. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“We eat at 6 now,” Cooper said.
“But I invited Elmo,” Dad said. “I saw him at the store. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Not Elmo, Dad. He’s a playboy.”
“Elmo is?”
Cooper had to think fast, double the recipes. Grilled duck, baker’s bread, another trip for Roussanne.
“And whatever you do, don’t leave her alone with him,” Cooper said, the table laid, the duck in citrus, the wine chilled, the coals soon for lighting.
Elmo arrived second. He squeezed them all with big hugs. He wore a hat with a feather in the band. That might have been an iPhone in a leather holster. They gathered on the deck, the air scented with mown backyard.
“I remember you from high school,” Barbara told Elmo.
“Those days I was handsome and lithe,” Elmo said. “Time has diminished me, Barbara.”
“Tell me about it,” said Dad.
“Nonsense,” Barbara said.
“You were beautiful,” Cooper told Barbara, pouring the wine, imaging a late night of reacquaintance by fire and star light. “Lovely,” Cooper thought to himself.
“Even more so now,” Elmo said with a smile. “Cooper was always easy with the poetry. A woman like Barbara never stops being beautiful, Cooper.”
“Good one,” Dad said.
“I didn’t mean you’re not beautiful now,” Cooper said.
“Of course you didn’t,” Elmo said. “Of course not, old pal.”
Barbara said, “All these years and we’re back together. High school seems so remote.”
“Yes, Cooper and I on the field, leading the charge. Go, Tigers,” Elmo said, pumping his fist. “High times, they were. We were all on fire.”
“I was a star player myself,” Dad said.
“Right,” said Cooper. “So young and foolish.”
Which brought a brief moment of silence. Then: “Meaning what, Coop?” Elmo said. “Barbara here was a star, thick with the in crowd, a straight A student. That’s not young and foolish. That’s going places.”
“And we sure did go places,” Barbara said.
“I remember,” Elmo said. “You were ‘Most likely to Go Places’ in the yearbook. What were you, Cooper?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Cooper said.
“I’m sure you went places, Coop,” Elmo said. “Oh, anyway. We should catch up. We should have lots of stories to tell. We should talk about the places we’ve gone–in the town where it all started.”
“I was a star player myself,” Dad said. “Cooper,” he said, standing, “let’s you and me go toss the football.”
“Now that’s a good idea,” Elmo said. “Barbara and I’ll watch from here, catch up on old times. Let’s see you throw that old pigskin there, Cooper. You had an impressive arm, as I recall.”
“Lovely,” Cooper thought to himself.
