Welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Each morning I spend fifteen minutes writing on a singular story line. Each morning starts with the last line of the previous day. The goal is to get a (very) rough draft out of the simple story idea and to avoid letting the story idea languish in limbo forever, actually writing it out. This is the third year I have done this writing experiment and each year I learn just a little bit about myself and the way I write as well as creating a framework for the story. But without further ado…
Day 39: She was tired and wanted to start out on a pleasant note.
She was tired and wanted to start out on a pleasant note. The car weaved itself through traffic and finally stopped in front of an apartment building. Sebastian pulled up to the curb and a man stepped away from the door to open their car door.
“Sebastian will bring up the luggage,” Her grandmother told her.
“Oh,” Gwen said. “She looked at the driver. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he replied.
Margaret exited the car and Gwen followed. She blinked in surprise as she saw the man who opened the door was wearing some sort of uniform. The crest on his jacket matched the crest on the front door of the building. It was a door he was even now moving to open as he closed the car door and hurried to reach it before they could. He opened the door.
“Thank you Jeremy,” Margaret said. He nodded and Gwen smiled at him as they passed into the building. He closed the door behind them and resumed his post beside it, standing sentinel. Gwen tried not to gape like a tourist as she followed her grandmother across the lobby. Everything seemed poliished to a high gloss.
The marble tile of the floor gleamed as though freshly scrubbed. The small wooden table against the wall shone with lacquer and polish. The silver flower vase gleamed. Even the tulips in the vase looked sleek and as though some one just spritzed them with gloss so they would match the room. Gwen wanted to look up as they crossed to the elevator, but she didn’t want to look like she was gaping.
At the elevator the doors opened and when the two of them got inside and Gwen was facing outwards towards the lobby she let her eyes dart up. A glowing crystal chandelier was the center piece of the room.
‘And it is shiny too,’ Gwen thought.
At the moment she felt distinctly shiny. She tried to picture walking through the lobby in her running clothes, coming home from the park her grandmother said was nearby all sweaty from her run. She couldn’t picture it. As the elevator lifted them up, Gwen tried to imagine each of her outfits in turn passing through that lobby. None of them seemed appropriate. Gen rubbed her gritty eyes and felt like a grubby child.
‘Its only for the summer,’ she told herself. ‘Just so that I can figure out what to do next.’ The thought was slightly comforting after the intimidation of the lobby. She was certain that an entire summer’s worth of time would be enough for her to figure out what it was she wanted to do with herself.
The elevator rose and finally stopped. The doors dinged open and she followed Margaret out of the elevator. The hallway they walked down was well appointed but far less shiny. The floor was wood but there was a carpet runner laid down the center so neither of them made a sound as they walked. There was another small table placed at the end of the hall that matched the one in the lobby. It was shiny and had flowers. The tulips in this vase were opened a little more and looked somehow less pristinely arranged, more natural. They were still beautiful, but it felt like they exhaled and allowed themselves to breathe a little. Gwen smiled slightly at the thought.
The doors in this hallway were fairly widely spaced and Gwen wondered if that meant the apartments were large or if there was something else taking up the extra space. Margaret opened the door to 238 and Gwen followed her inside.
Ten til Midnight 