A Work in Progress

by L. T. Smith

  I could say that the only thing injured was my pride, but I would be lying. Although my dress riding up to show my panty-covered arse in the middle of Elm Hill would not have been classified as one of my shining moments, at least the panties were clean. The velocity of the fall, the collision of a stiffened hand and an exposed knee on cobblestones took centre stage in the injury department. The sudden stop—from plummet to static—shot shards of pain through both my arm and my leg, and the noise I made was a noise I don’t think I’ve ever made before and hope I will never make again. It was in times of pain like this that my ability to swear like a trooper deserted me, which served to show me how truly agonising the impact was.

  Amazing to think of all the times I have fallen over in my life and how my body has reacted to them. As a kid, I would trip, hit the ground, and bounce up so fluidly that it would appear to have been choreographed, the seamless movement from upright, to horizontal, to upright lasting mere instants. When I was in my teenage years, the action of falling and getting up again could still be up to Olympic standards: the dip, slight pause, and back on my feet before any of my mates spotted my certain social suicide. But now, in my thirties, I was down like a welterweight fighter and the count was approaching ten, and I had no intention of getting up. The contemplation of having a cup of tea and a biscuit as a means of alleviating the shock of it all flittered through my head, maybe whilst holding court and telling everyone of my near-death experience.

  All that was about to change. My apathy towards how I looked as I sprawled on the ground, and even the flashing of my arse, was suddenly brought to book.

  “Hey.”

  I stopped scrunching my face into the ground beneath me, keening my hearing to what seemed to be the sound of an angel. Had I died? Had my fall actually seen me off?

  “Try not to move.”

  There it was again. Soft, delicate, enchanting. I must have passed over into the light without even seeing the light, the near-death experience not so much of an exaggeration now. I felt exonerated and pissed off at the same time. Trust me to bite the bullet in such an unheroic way, something so simple, so facile, so bloody everyday. I couldn’t even pop my clogs with gusto.

  The sensation of something touching my shoulder brought my train of thought to a screeching halt. Jolts of what felt like electricity raced throughout me, the shudder of it rippling inside, the feeling both wonderful and exhilarating. If this was what it was like to be dead…

  “Can you move your fingers?”

  Did angels typically worry about such things? Not one to ask questions of celestial beings, I wiggled my fingers, my eyes fixed on the digits of my right hand, which was next to my face.

  A smaller hand came into view, a beautiful hand—soft, delicate, the kind of hand that people would associate with an angel. The hand moved along my forearm and towards my hand, leaving tingles on my skin in its wake. Each one of my fingers was touched, examined, and, it felt to me, caressed.

  “Don’t worry, miss. I’m just checking for breakages. My name is…”

  Miss? Checking for breakages? What the hell?

  It was at that moment that I realised the person feeling me up was not an angel, and I was not being examined before entering the Pearly Gates.

  “Fuck!” Remarkably, the embarrassment of looking like a twat far outweighed the pain of the fall and allowed my swearing ability to return in full force. Embarrassment multiplied by Twat minus Pain equals Fuck, known henceforth as E x T - P = F. I could also add springing to my feet into the equation, but it was more like a jerky, spasmodic scramble than a deft leap.

  “I wouldn’t advise—”

  Whatever advice the angelic voice was about to deliver was cut short by me standing up and deftly brushing off the bits of dirt and small stones clinging to my arms and legs. My hands smarted, and I turned them over and found grazes across each palm along with a black skid mark where I must have gone across the ground in my weak attempt to break my fall.

  “No point asking if you can wiggle your toes, then.”

  My head shot up, my face turning to the owner of that voice.

  Nothing else mattered—no fall, no grazes, no embarrassment, not even my throbbing feet. I was mesmerised, totally transfixed. The woman standing before me was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. She was shorter than me but seemed taller, fuller, her personality giving her presence impact. Blonde hair stopped just shy of her shoulders, the bottom curl of it lifting slightly as if collecting the last rays of sunlight. But it was her eyes that held me fast. I don’t think I had ever seen eyes like hers in my life, and I knew that however long I were to hunt, I would never see eyes like those again. It wasn’t just their divine shape, their wide innocence, or the dark lashes guarding their secrets. It was the colour, and the fact that the longer I stared into them, the colour changed.

  The outer rim of the iris was green, a dark green, the circumference of it definite and exact. That contrasted with the lighter, almost translucent green or grey adjacent to it; then the amber, the soft, sweet amber that shimmered and shifted as the pupil pushed it outwards.

  As I stood staring into these captivating eyes, an image blossomed wildly and fully formed inside my head—those eyes looking at me across a breakfast table, watching me as I poured tea into china cups. Those eyes sparking with humour as I snatched her uneaten toast from her plate, eating it whilst her half-laughed words protested in vain. The same delightful eyes closing in laughter as she rushed to get ready for work and I stopped her with a kiss, the kiss turning heated and shifting into desire. Then, those eyes, half-hooded with want, need, passion…

  “Hey.”

  The music in her voice made me smile stupidly. I stepped forwards to touch her, the daydream of being with her still clinging to me.

  “I think you should sit down for a minute.”

  Wrinkling my nose seemed to be the only response I was capable of at that moment.

  “Did you bang your head?”

  Those glorious eyes were looking at me with concern. Or was it wariness?

  I stepped back quickly and my heel snagged another cobble, making me wobble. A strong hand caught my forearm and steadied me, and a sizzle of electricity sparked.

  “Come, sit. Let me examine you.”

  She led me over to a set of nearby steps and eased me down until I was seated securely on the top one. I wanted to keep looking at her, but knew that was not the thing to do. A person didn’t go around staring deeply into another person’s eyes before the two of them were even introduced. Even after that, it was not always appropriate. I focused my attention on the space next to me where she placed my handbag.

  “Look at me. Here.”

  I shifted my gaze from the scuffed leather and lifted my face to see where she was pointing. Her index finger was directed straight at her eyes, and I fell into her gaze again.

  I noted how her eyes read mine, how her irises became smaller and smaller as we looked at each other, how the colour was shoved away by an insistent pupil. The evening wasn’t dark enough to make the eyes dilate as quickly as they were, and I didn’t know why they were. It was only when her eyes slowly fluttered closed for a moment and then opened wide that it seemed as if the spell was lifted. I’m not sure how long I stared into her eyes, but I knew it wasn’t long enough.

  A small cough escaped me, almost as if to punctuate the moment, and she gave a small shake of her head as she took a step back.

  “Erm… Well, can you, erm… Just a moment.” She stood up straight, her attention on her own bag. The sound of rifling through the contents sounded a little too loud, a little too frantic.

  I didn’t say anything, just watched her trying to find something that I doubted she’d lost.

  Had she felt it too? Had she seen the same changes in my eyes, the same dilation indicating attraction, stimulation, or, at a push, low light? I was no expert in pupillometry, but my money was on a big fat “yes, she had.” My heart actually skipped
or raced or did something signifying excitement as I allowed myself to believe she was as attracted to me as I was to her.

  The nameless woman with gorgeous eyes pulled her phone from her handbag. “Here we go. This’ll have to do.”

  My imagination leapt into action, believing that she was either going to give me her number or ask for mine. I would have to check what my number was, as I could never remember it, but at least I knew where my phone was, which was a bonus.

  “Please look straight at the light.”

  The light? What light?

  I didn’t get the chance to verbalise my question before a sharp, bright light almost blinded me. Thankfully, I bit back the expletive that rapidly formed itself on my lips.

  She moved the light and I sighed with a relief that only comes from a person who has been surprised by a torch, albeit a torch coming from a mobile phone. Shouldn’t she have at least warned me it was coming?

  “And again. Straight at the light.”

  An impulse to grab her wrist and lower the eye burner flitted through me, but I resisted it, my upbringing of “suck it up” kicking in whilst my self-respect dipped lower. This was no mean feat, as “flashing my arse after fucking over in front of a gorgeous woman whilst acting like a dipshit” took some beating on the “hitting rock bottom” scale.

  “Your pupils are dilated but seem normal, although…” She flashed the light into my right eye, then my left, “they should contract more quickly when faced with direct light.”

  If my google-eyed drooling hadn’t alerted her that maybe my pupils were indicating my attraction for her, I wasn’t going to be the person who pointed it out. Instead, I smiled.

  The woman lowered her phone, her eyes nearly burrowing into my own. “Or… Have you, by any chance, taken any recreational—”

  “No!” Not that taking recreational substances was a bad thing—well, it is, it can be—but it was something I had never participated in, and I didn’t want my blonde heroine thinking that I did. Heroine probably was not the word that I should have used at that point, especially when discussing dilated pupils and recreational use of controlled substances.

  Instead of reacting to my outburst, she smiled her gorgeous smile, and I completely forgot everything else, if only for a moment.

  “Apart from the cuts and grazes, and obviously the lack of recreational drugs…”

  I opened my mouth to object, but she laughed a delightful little laugh and I clamped my lips closed.

  “How do you feel?”

  Like I want to see you again.

  “I’m good.” I wriggled my shoulders as if I was testing my muscles and bones, my expression thoughtful, though all I could really think about was how I could keep her with me a little longer without outright lying. “A little achy, but fine.”

  I immediately felt worse. With answers like that, seeing her again definitely would not be happening. I breathed deeply, readying myself for the sigh of all sighs, but held on to it instead, the ache of it ballooning in my chest until I felt I could release it slowly, in a steady stream.

  She tilted her head and squinted those fabulous eyes for a moment before nodding, a quick, decisive nod. “My name’s Virgina.” She stuck out her hand in greeting, and I was not slow to reach out and take it.

  Even though my palm was grazed, the feeling of hers in mine seemed to take away the pain of it all, as if her skin had healed me. I lightly shook her hand. “Brynn.”

  Then it belatedly struck me. What had she said her name was? I opened my mouth to ask, but knew that if I queried her name and it wasn’t what I thought it was, she would maybe know what I thought she had said. Not the best way to make an impression.

  “Vir-gina, not vagina.” She laughed, a slight pink hue blossoming in her cheeks. “My parents had an evil sense of humour.”

  I grinned stupidly and shook my head to disavow the notion that I had thought she’d said anything other than Virgina, when we both knew that I had heard, or thought of, the latter word she had mentioned.

  “I don’t usually go by Virgina, though. I only ever say it to get a reaction. I go by—”

  My phone blasted out Lionel Richie’s “Hello,” and I realised that my attempt at humour when setting the ringtone was shite. Why couldn’t it have been something cool like Drake’s “Hotline Bling”? Or Drake and Rihanna’s “Work”? Or even—

  “Your phone is ringing.”

  Virgina was pointing to my handbag, and I stared at her finger, then at her face.

  Thankfully the phone stopped, and I felt a brief sense of reprieve from my musical embarrassment. It didn’t last long. The bloody thing started up again, and the song still didn’t sound any better. If anything, it sounded worse.

  “I think someone really wants to talk to you.”

  It was a toss-up whether I would respond with “No shit, Sherlock” or just grin and make that moronic sound with which I tended to punctuate my stupidity. I went with the latter, reaching over to my handbag to pull out the shrilling mass of metal and plastic. I saw Gill’s face on the screen, a shot I’d taken of her looking as beautiful as she always did, her smile wide and full.

  And then I did something that I couldn’t remember ever having done before when Gill called me—I pressed Decline Call. Didn’t even think about it, just pressed the red phone logo. Lionel stopped in mid-word, not even able to warble out how open his arms were.

  I blinked as the picture of the woman I’d lusted after for years disappeared.

  “I’m sure it’s fine. She’s just wondering where I am.”

  “Oh.”

  I know I get the wrong end of the stick most of the time, but even though the sound Virgina uttered could have been indicative of many emotions, I chose to believe there was a sense of disappointment tucked within her monosyllabic response. It could actually have been that Virgina wanted me to call the person back so that she could escape her Samaritan duties, or she had put two and two together and was disappointed that I had a female calling me. I wanted to gush and say “It was my mother/Aunty Eva/Nanny. Honestly.” Or “I’m minding the phone for a friend.”

  It dawned on me that I was being even more weird than usual.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting friends at eight-thirty, and they are probably worried that I’m not there yet.” Of course it was only one friend, but I didn’t think I should focus on the singular.

  Virgina tilted her head, her eyes squinting, then lifted her phone and looked at the screen. “Eight-sixteen.” She looked at me questioningly.

  “I’m usually early.”

  The smile she gave me made funny things happen inside my chest, and I fought the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl after trying her first half of cider.

  “Do you have far to go?” she asked.

  “Tombland, opposite the cathedral.”

  Virgina pursed her lips, then a smile budded across her mouth. “I’m going that way. Maybe I could escort you, you know, make sure you get there in one piece.”

  Pride being a factor, I instinctively decided to decline her offer. I didn’t want her to think that she had to make sure I made it to my destination, that I needed her guiding hand or else I would fall over and do myself even more of an injury. But instead of going all macho, I smiled and thanked her before surprising myself with “I’d be delighted.”

  Delighted? Me? I couldn’t remember the last time I could have classified myself as delighted. To the contrary, I had never used the term in my life unless I was being sarcastic, and that usually went hand in hand with “bloody marvellous.”

  She held out her hand. Stupidly, I misconstrued the gesture and shook it in greeting instead of registering her offer to help me to my feet. Heat hit my face, and I knew I was glowing with embarrassment. Considering what she had witnessed from me up to that point, me shaking her hand instead of hoisting myself vertical should have been the least of my worries.

  Eventually we made a move towards my destination, my shoes reminding me once again that I
had made a bad footwear decision as far as actually walking was concerned. I am not sure whether it was me who set the pace or Virgina, but the steady stroll-cum-totter I was managing was not nearly as bad as pre-buggering over. For which I will be forever grateful.

  The walking without fucking over again might be exciting to some, but that was not where my attention was focused at that point. Although neither of us had engaged in conversation since I had moved from seated to standing to moving, it didn’t feel weird. I would have usually babbled to fill the silence, but no. I just strolled—or kind of prowled, in a wibbly-wobbly way—next to the woman who had helped me to me feet and was now, of her own volition, walking me to Gill’s fella’s party.

  It was at that precise moment that I realised I hadn’t thanked her for all she had done. “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!”

  Virgina jumped, and her shoulder bumped the frame of the shop window we were passing.

  I grabbed her and pulled her towards me, then realised that was a tad too familiar and pushed her away again.

  “What the hell!”

  I believe if someone had grabbed me and played a game of push-me, pull-me whilst shouting an apology, I would have come out with something far meatier than Virgina’s “What the hell?”

  I immediately let go of her, which caused her to tip backwards and into the shop window. The last rays of the sun reflected off the glass and obscured the view of the stock in the window that represented whatever it was the shop sold.

  Instead of apologising, my “What the fuck?” contributed to a situation that was progressively becoming more like a scene from screwball comedy, without the humour. My exclamation was a result of my sudden realisation of how close this scene was coming to be like my novel, the one that I was having no success writing. It was not exactly like the scene I was creating, but it did have a shop window that reflected stuff in it, stuff that I couldn’t quite see. In fact, it was a little like this—not quite in focus.