Seen Through a Window

{Hello all! I'm happy to announce that I'm taking an evening creative writing class in Bristol, which means I'm forced to cut back on all those long-winded ideas and write short, experimental exercises. I'm reminded of all those good times we had in our Marianopolis meetings! Our first homework assignment was "Seen Through a Window", like we did on the blog all those months ago. Here's what I wrote... N.B. I won't be tagging this as "away" because, although I wrote it away from home, it's not specifically about being abroad.}

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I was interested in Don Miguel from a very young age, because Don Miguel was a writer, and that’s what I wanted to be. I was never good at sports, and my mother had always told me I was destined to become a famous man of letters.

Don Miguel wasn’t really renowned internationally, but he wrote sufficiently popular novels in an energetic, manly prose — reflected in titles like The Furious Commandante, Walking on Burning Suns, and Death and the Queen’s Gardener — to be something of a celebrity in the town where we lived. My father owned the town’s hotel. Don Miguel rented from him a small, one story guesthouse, which served as his studio.

One day — I was about probably 11 or 12 — as I was watering the flower bed of peonies that grew at the edge of the hotel gardens, I noticed that the guesthouse window was wide open. I approached and peeped inside, noticing that a peculiar odor, a kind of tangy sweetness, was mingling with the smell of the peonies. The window’s angle only offered a limited view inside: the opposite window with its curtains closed, a patch of tiled floor, a rickety chair in front of a wooden desk, a large black typewriter on the desk with spindly metallic strands holding the keys and a sheet of paper jutting out from the top, an ashtray with a cigarette still burning in it, spewing a thin plume of smoke that swirled and dissolved halfway to the ceiling.

Then, to my surprise, a naked woman walked into view. She was thin and inconceivably beautiful. It was the first time I ever saw a naked woman other than my mother. I made sure the hedge covered me and stared, hot blood thumping in my ears.

The naked woman went over to the typewriter. She took the lit cigarette, put it in her mouth, and bent down over the desk, giving me a marvelous view of her narrow backside.

I stood there, awestruck, frozen stiff. The hard, cold hose was still my hand, spurting water at the fat, fragrant peonies.

She started to type fast on the typewriter. I heard a man’s voice, imperious, from the other side of the room: “Make the dialogue more intense, guapa. Make it funny, like when I tell you terrible things and you answer with that sarcastic tone.” It was Don Miguel.

The girl typed away, sucking on her cigarette.

Soon, my mind became less crowded with the image of the woman’s naked beauty, and I realized that Don Miguel was not the author of his novels. This girl had written The Furious Commandate, Walking on Burning Suns, and Death and the Queen’s Gardener. Despite never having read any of these books, I felt cheated.

Then, it struck me that this woman was also Don Miguel’s lover, and that the faint, vaguely sickening odor that drifted out of the open window was the smell of sex.