This is another example of a Sorbet. I love the prompt of “Imagine this,” because that is what writing is about. We imagine this and then a story comes to life. It is a joyous way to enter story.
the Albatross
Imagine this: When she Bernice Upton announces she would like to tell Robert Janes a story, he is intrigued.
“What kind of story? A story with a happy ending? Love? Romance? Adventure? Will there be swords?”
“No, I expect it will be like asking the waitress in your favourite café about her life and finding out her great-grandmother slept with Ernest Hemingway, and that this great-grandmother had a sister who posed as a man to get into the army in the Second World War, and this woman’s son became a speechwriter for one of the presidents of the United States – one of the good ones, not the horror they have now – and that the speechwriter’s daughter is a dancer with the New York City Ballet and that she worked on a cruise ship for a year before she auditioned for the ballet; and that ship came close to hitting a massive iceberg off the coast of Hawaii. And on that night in August, when the iceberg – all 200,000 tonnes of it – was a few metres off the starboard hull of the Albatross, the dancer – who was standing on deck, on the port side looking out into the warm tropical night, despondent because two married men had hit on her that night and this must be a sign her dance career was going nowhere – felt suddenly cold.” Bernice Upton stopped. Cleared her throat. “It will be something like that.”
