Colder than the air pumped by the humidifier, the sudden draft pulled Natalie from her guests to the new arrivals at the door.  There was a girl her age, her older brother, and their father.  All were in white that blended with their pasty skin.  The girls traded hugs before the young celebrator ushered them into the living room.  Behind her, Natalie’s Marian Academy classmates turned from the television and their dolls.  Their happy voices dropped to whimpers and sunny smiles turned to quivering lips as they watched her hugging and greeting empty air.
 
In the kitchen, Sabina ripped the tinfoil off a platter of spaghetti and set it beside the fried chicken and cake.  Her head was throbbing from baking a cookbook-perfect cake the previous night.  The feat surpassed her best record in using the oven - making brownies that resembled ash in taste and texture.  Her next culinary milestone was evenly frying chicken drumsticks, tender on the inside, crispy on the outside, with a flavor that could please young taste buds reared on fast food produce.
 
The deathly silence in the living room slowly reached her mind and tore her from setting the table.  When she turned, she caught her daughter pulling an invisible companion.  “Natalie!”  She shrieked.  “No playing with Sarah and Bill on your birthday.”  The familiar names made the girls smile again.  Possession of Sarah, the buxom fashion doll, and Bill, her buff mate, could catapult a girl from class wallflower to superstar.
 
“Mommy, they’re Maria, Diego, and Jim.”
 
“She calls Sarah as Maria and Bill as Diego or Jim.  You also pretend that Sarah and Bill are real, right?”  Sabina crossed her fingers for an affirmative response.  “I play a lot with Sarah and Bill,” pink-cheeked and chubby Trina, a frequent house guest, shared, “but…but…not like…”  Sabina untangled her fingers and sighed.  Several weeks, a few months maybe, were all that she could recollect of the time when Natalie discarded Sarah for Maria who was nothing but void space for Sabina.  Natalie played mostly with her dolls and her only living playmate was Trina, so Sabina dismissed it as boredom.
 
Natalie then created another invisible friend, Diego, and dropped Bill.  Still, Sabina believed that her daughter was tired of girlfriends and wanted a boy.  When she heard Natalie calling someone Jim, she attributed Natalie’s behavior to a hyperactive imagination and never searched the phonebook for a shrink.  Investigating her child’s playing habits was another burden that she could not add to her career and single motherhood.
 
“Me too,” a pony-tailed girl in a Sarah-like ensemble, confessed, “I play with my ten Sarah dolls and one Bill a lot.” Michelle, Sabina remembered the girl’s name.  “I dress them, comb their hair, make them fight Bill, make them look like me,” she paused and grin mischievously,” not like Natalie who pretends that she’s holding them when she’s not and calls them by different names.”  Most of the girls giggled at her comment.  Had Sabina not remembered seeing Michelle jumping from a Mercedes, a Bimmer, and a Jaguar, she would have roughly evicted the haughty lass from the party.
 
“They’re laughing at Natalie,” Maria sniffled.  “Make them stop.”
 
“Oh, they’ll cry for hurting her,” Diego volunteered.  “Just let them see me.”
 
“Later they will be punished,” Jim’s hand gripped Diego’s shoulder while his eyes never left the cake on the table, similar to the dozens that he had baked before for other children but none for his own brood.  That would change that day.  With heavy assistance, he practiced his craft again the previous night.
 
“Mommy, they’re not Sarah and Bill,” Natalie pointed at a beige-painted wall.  Some young red lips blanched while louder snickering came from Michelle’s camp.
 
Seeing the impishness of the heiress, Sabina cursed the Marian tradition of inviting the whole class to birthday parties.  She lighted the candle, shaped like the number eight, on the cake, signaling the end of Natalie’s debasing reign as the party’s queen.  “Girls, let’s sing happy birthday to Natalie!”  Congregating around the cake, the girls of Section Blessing began singing the gay song.
 
“Happy birthday, Maria Rosalie.  Happy birthday, Maria Rosalie.  Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday, Maria Rosalie.”  Diego and Jim also sang.
 
“Papa, where’s the cake you promised me?”
 
Diego tugged his father’s arm.  “You said we will have new playmates today.  I don’t see them.”
 
“That’s your cake.” Jim pointed at the chocolate cake, sharing Sabina’s pride in creating the delectable pastry.  Both labored in the kitchen the previous night, one was the puppeteer and the other the puppet.  Only the former could remember pouring a can of toxin on the dough, icing, and fried chicken breading.
 
Natalie puffed her cheeks and snuffed out the candle.  Then, the cake was subdivided and young hands grabbed the fried chicken.
 
“And they,” Jim indicated Natalie’s classmates, “are your new playmates, Diego.”

_________

©2010 Prospero E. Pulma Jr.

Prospero lives in the Philippines. His stories have appeared in the Philippine Graphic, Very Short Stories for Harried Readers, and short-story.net.  When he is free from the salt mines and the taxman, he posts identical entries on his Friendster and Blogspot blogs and writes other mundane stuff on Facebook.  He also tries to write serious material, hoping that an editor will pick up his work and hoping more that it will not end up in the recycle bin.
 
 

Basima, Spain—June 3, 1968

The house is dark.

It’s been years since her last visit, but she remembers well. The spiral staircase the leads up to the second floor. The short hallway with its arch of a window that looks down upon the ocean.

She follows him, and her heart hitches into her throat, because she knows what comes next.

He turns to her, and she feels his hands on her hips. He’s moving her towards the bedroom.

She sways backwards, and now she’s guiding him. He’s pulling off his jacket.

Her shawl spills to the floor, a thin puddle in the darkness.

On the bed, he pulls her close and they move together, like they had never been apart. She tried to remember how long it had been since they last made love, and couldn’t .

Only that it was too long if it could feel this good.

She holds him with her nails digging into his back. Her own voice sounds foreign to her. She whispers and sometimes groans. He is single minded. She feels him tense against her as  his breathing grows ragged.

And then release. He calls her name, and turns onto his back.

Loaded silence. She is warm, but shivering. It takes a while for her heart to fall back to a normal rhythm.

“Fiona?” he says again, this time, softly. His face remains in shadow.

“Yes?” her voice sounds off. Edgy.

He pauses, just a moment. Instead of speaking again, he kisses her lips and lays back down.  

She nestles into his arms and closes her eyes.

“Okay. You’re awfully quiet,” he teased.

“You always say I talk too much.”

“I do think you’re remembering somebody else.”

Fiona was grateful for the dark, because she could feel her face turning red. He was right. She was thinking of Rafael.

“Justin,” she said, tracing her fingers across his chest. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“If I’d met you before I met him….”

“Would we have been together?” he finished her thought. “ Maybe. But we’re together now, aren’t we?”

“That’s not the same.”

He smiled. “Doesn’t matter. I take what you offer.”

Fiona sighed. She was a believer in fate.  All things happened for a reason. Just then, she couldn’t think of any rational reason why she should go back to Rafael. Or why she couldn’t be happy being Justin’s… girlfriend, if nothing else.

Except the fact that Rafael could still destroy her. He’d overlook infidelity. Her not coming back… that was a different thing entirely.

Rafael  made it clear from the beginning that he’d do what he needed to do to keep her under his thumb.

Justin drifted comfortably to sleep. Fiona laid awake, relishing the warmth of his bare skin against hers.

Her memories of him would have to last, she thought sadly.

When Justin woke the next morning, she was gone. Her shawl still laid on the floor.

_________

©2010 Lori Titus