Table for Five

Table For Five

   “Of all the restaurants in all the towns…” I thought aloud as her group entered.

   “Booking for five. Johnson.” Her hair was grey instead of rich chestnut, but I knew.

   A family table, six seats.

   She moved her chair to sit at the head of the table. A Matriarch’s place. The couples faced each other. The middle-aged woman looked like her mother. She could have looked like me if things had been different. A least that had worked out alright.

   The youngest couple were still bubbly. Ostentatiously left handed, flashing her engagement ring. Obviously a celebration dinner.

   I checked out the oldest one as I served. She looked at me a few times with a slight frown. Maybe she recognised me, or perhaps just didn’t expect a man my age to still be working. I noticed a few fiery red strands amongst her grey and smiled.

   “My Grandaughter’s engagement dinner.” She announced, and the girl flashed her ring under my nose.

   “Very nice, Miss.”

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   As they left she hesitated in the door, smiled, pressed a folded napkin into my hand.

   “My number, Jimmy. If you’ve got over your shyness in the last fifty years, I’m still single.”

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Strange that in some way this has a similar impact as a poem. It says so much with such economy and it lingers with you after reading it. Thanks for posting/

Cheers, Marc.

I’ve spent a lot of years learning what I can leave out, and the ultra short stories with fixed number of words encourage you to be ruthless. You have to think in terms of sharp-edged images which really earn their keep, rather than more wordy prose that leaves the reader to work out what you mean.

For examp[e, the action of the nameless woman, moving her chair to claim the matriarch’s position establishing the relationship of the whole group…

A great great deal of a beginner writer’s prose is spent ‘setting the scene’. In a short story you don’t have enough spare words to do that. You have to just jump straight in at a point of tension or conflict, and then crank it up even more. The reader will usually feel enough of it to come along for the ride.

Gyppo