WHAT BRANDY AND WRITERS POUR . . . (FlashFiction)

"GOLDEN TRUTH, SPEAK YOUR STUFF" ~ Pic ala disou13

WHAT BRANDY

AND WRITERS  POUR

~ By Absolutely*Kate

"Clara -- Bow, 

  Greta -- Garbo,

  Marilyn -- Monroe.

"Cooper drank Gable
  under the table -- 

 Montgomery the Clift

 got Joe DiMaggio miffed."

From under the archway with the red peeling fleur de lis wallpaper into the darkened dining room shushed my tentative muffle of a whisper. I was enough in awe of him at the time that my psyche wasn't feigning frightened. "Is that a mantra? A limerick? What's he doing? Where's he going with this?" The silver fox stammering the luscious Hollywood litany in the next room was the legend my reading mind had grown more grown-up on. Fortunate I was to have met up with his gal Friday after work on Tuesday at the Double Diamond Cafe. She was shiny. I liked her spark. 

We arranged to meet on Wednesday at lunch for a burger and a chocolate malt. That wasn't the last straw. Thursday we danced til dark. Now, she'd honoured me with this nifty invite to meeting my literary hero. I felt more like a blustering boy peeking around a crazy corner called consciousness than a suave man on the make.

"He's warming up. He has to tone his decibel to resonate  writer's rhythm. He only finds himself when he gets lost like that," Molly explained softly, her hand rubbing a pathway up my back, nearing my shoulder. Both were soft, her honey lilting voice and the warming hand I wished never to leave that trail.

"But what happens if he doesn't?"

"There'll be a piper's orchestration to pay. There'll be glass shards to sweep up in the morning. Come on. I'll introduce you."

"No, nonononononoo. He's busy. He's working." I backed up, bumped into, then neatly sidestepped a leather ottoman placed precariously at the side of the sidebar. What it was doing in the dining room, I wondered if I'd ever be lucky enough to come back to find out. But I liked the lay of the great writer's land. And I certainly liked the press of Molly's precious hand.

"Oh you Chickenshit scribe, come on. He can't hurt a fly with its wings peeled back at twenty paces."

"Yeah right, and you know that metaphorically, you're playin' me. I've heard of aggravated dissent though. There's bodies they haven't found, I hear tell. He gets cranky, zany and conceives new profanities to profuse when he doesn't take to someone or something . . . well, ya know?"

"Yeah, I know, I know. I've been his publicist for years. Who do you think plants colourful rooted tidbits to modern day media Heddas? You seen any Norma Desmond look-a-likes hoppering around when you came up the boulevard at sunset?"

Imagining the net results she must get with such articulate volley skills, I backhanded a ready compliment, "Well geeez Molly, you're no hag. You're a looker. You've got class where other dames just sweat it out. You're the tip, you're the top -- "

"Hustle your handsome ass before your lose your cool Cole Porter. Jerome doesn't wait long when he hankers his brandy handy."

Though still subdued, I couldn't very well suppress a snort at Moll's flaunt and flair for quick retorts. So rhetorically I retorted back towards the backside of how hips swayed when swathed tight and narrow in a grey silk pencil skirt. (Oh baby, those defining lines swished where they swathed.) "So you're tellin' me Jerome prefers his snifter swifter?"

"Jerome wasn't built in a day, Harvey. A PR dame worth her own renown has to fan flames to fire up a good writer's fame."

"COME IN, COME IN. I hear you two children doling idle prattle. You call that 'dialogue'? I drub it drivel. And bring some extra snifters." Rumbling up a chuckle, he was on a raucous roll ~ "Good golly Miss Molly -- brandy is medicinal to all."

Molly crossed her eyes, then sent wiggly eyebrows to trajectories not yet charted in the common cosmos. "Here we go again," she lilted from her poised perch 'pon the tapestry arm of his armchair, purposely positioned at the epicenter of his golden writer's lair. Shades of amber, tones of gleaming gold, over all, new and old. Bookcases upon bookcases, side tables generous with crystal decanters alongside sink-into leather club chairs with fussy antimacassars arranged upon the back, plump pillows, gilded frames of friends and possibly foes, as I recalled this titled titan's penchant for speaking the force of what truths moved him. That was the worth of his girth. He held nothing back. Never a hack. And now Hollywood had come calling for a "tell all". Jumpin' genre to kindle his writing nook for sure.

She had a swell way of laughing that accompanied understated delivery. There came a catch to her throat which begged to be touched. The laugh, not the throat. Not yet. I wanted to grasp out for it as if it was a blown bubble floating to be freely caught. I wanted to feel Molly's laugh slide a slick little pounce into my hand. Bet it would pulsate before it popped.

Reveries don't ruminate long though when the floor show's about to begin its beguine, if you know what I mean. Jerome Beauregard Chandell was an illusion sitting still but playing broadly to the room. Like the beat, beat, beat of a streeted Gershwin parade, he was promenading Broadway with one hand in the air waving galley proofs and the other stroking the bulbous snifter as if it was a "5:00 serving girl" from back in studio mogul days. It's true what they say - There's no biz like show biz and his grin was spots and kleigs, all in ~

"Brandy takes away vagrant chills!" He boomed. He sipped. "Brandy is comprised chiefly of antioxidants and moratoriums ." He savoured length to his swallows, tilting his head to nudge Molly's re-pour, adjusting body comfort further into the hold of the regal wingback as the crackling fire understudied like a sound effects foley. Cliches worn tight as the crimson velvet smoking jacket I couldn't believe I was seeing, crinkled the room. "The better the stronger the brandy the better the stronger the benefits! Why whole sections of corrupt pockets can be emptied open with the proper brandy a man of reason realizes. This is an indisputable secret of dignity I bestow upon the two of you." 

He pronounced his edicts without rancor. I wanted to swim long and lanky through them, or maybe, it was the handy brandy's swirl causing me these crosscurrents of good tide-ings. I smirked somewhat to myself at the familiar ease of puns, but I sensed in this scene my higher self learning, as if opening pages from a different side of a book not oft seen.

Molly assented with the smirk of a curvy smile and a nod tangled in tresses, but affectionately so. I watched as a voyeur on the shelf behind Thorndike and Barnhart's unabridged dictionary as JB reached his irrepressible non pen-hand possessively to tantalize a runaway honey strand ever so gently behind one pale pink ear. My own deep swigs were warming up a higher rise that couldn't keep still. My less furtive steps paced discovery 'round the great writer's room. I watched my fingers fondle leather spines. I heard my eyes snap-count how many rows lined up by colour grouping tomes hailed authors this more than mortal wordsmithy had lent a hand, ear or some folded moola to over their mutually climbing eras. Legend. Smooth and rich, like what he wrote. Like what he drank -- prolifically.

In my fuzzy imagination I realized I wanted to do what the Zenith console on the mahogany buffet was cueing up to do -- I wanted to give Molly "a kiss to build a dream on", but some fella's dreams are another man's opus. Jerome B. Chandell could certainly settle the score on opuses. Or was it opi? The Corvoisier was settling in.

"Cardiovascular traumas would behave like good little twits with proper brandy consumption," Jerome pontificated, one finger daring hyperbole to over-dramatize points into thin air, "and bar exams would be readily passed by moderate drinkers lingering longevity!"

Molly winked. It was slow. It was sedatious. Just the sight of that wink tasted delicious. Even from across the room where I had been watching the world still spin from the globe-eye view I'd bumped it into. She hit me hard with those heaters somewhere above Argentina. Slow as silk that knows how to sheath itself, saturated Molly's voice, "We can go now Harvey."

~ ~ ~

"CLICKETY'CLACK"  pic: TimothyKHamilton

CHAPTER ONE:

Old movies were made to be sung. Not wasted too young. You had to pour a good movie. You had to drink it in. You had to taste swirl and breathe amber. That's what bottled up Breathless the stuff that Hollywood was made for. I understood this like the solid sanctity of rolling credits, standing in line one chilly night in November AT THE BIJOU.

~ ~ ~ 

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, quoth the mighty Remington back. Precisely. Prolifically. Preponderously, I intuited a writer lost when found. Reverently, I put my snifter down, accepted Molly Mahoney's soft proffered hand.

The leading lady always got the good exit lines: "He's writing again. We can go. The proofing comes tomorrow."

(c) 2010 ~ Author Absolutely*Kate

Premiering AT THE BIJOU

Absolutely*Kate is a playful writer, but a soulful writer . . . with moxie. The world needs more moxie. Join her with your own wordsmithery AT THE BIJOU come the New Year's return to the acclaimed ~ Double*Feature Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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