STORY & SONG: Glass Like Glitter Like Snow
a 500-word love story with a theme song
Story & Song: What is this?
Last Fall, I entered a 500-word short story writing contest via nycmidnight. 4,000+ writers from around the world were randomly divided into subgroups and given a prompt that included a genre, an object, and an action. Contestants had 48 hours to write a fully formed story with no more than 500 words, incorporating all three elements of the prompt. I was assigned to ROMANCE, which is hilarious because I am romance-aversive. Nevertheless, I won my subgroup! (Not the whole contest. Just my subgroup.)
I really liked the exercise. I liked the challenge of using as few words as possible to create complex characters. It’s kind of like songwriting. So, here is the beginning of what I think will be a monthly series: Story & Song. Once a month I’ll bring you a 500-word story and write and record (roughly) a song to go with it.
Because it’s Valentine’s week, here is the 500-word love story I wrote last Fall.
STORY: Glass Like Glitter Like Snow
PROMPT: Romance * A chandelier * Singing
SONG: Love Anyway (Nora’s Song)
Words & Music by Patresa Hartman
“It’s time,” he texts.
Sam, the epidemiologist from Seattle, the one she’d met at the conference six months ago in Atlanta for the job in Des Moines she lost last week.
“I can’t,” she replies.
Nora, the newly unemployed epidemiologist from Des Moines.
“I’ll come to you,” he writes.
She remembers his lips on her neck, her hand on his chest, the button of his starched shirt, popped free and lodged under the hotel chair leg.
This is not like me, Nora had confessed.
But there had been wine and the third anniversary of the grainy, oblong asteroid that barreled across her mother’s brain scan, obliterating the quiet, careful life they’d shared since her father took his fists and left.
“Nora…” he writes.
She leaves the phone on the coffee table, paces to the other side of the room and back (eight steps).
“Fine…” (Four letters followed by three dots.)
Another text arrives, a photograph:
Smile, full.
Eyes, humored.
Freckles, deceptively youthful.
Sam.
“Your turf,” he writes. “See you Friday.”
He’s already purchased the plane ticket.
Nora holds her phone, scrolls backward through the months since they’d met until she reaches the invitation -- Room number? -- sent from the elevator after drinks in the hotel lounge.
And the next morning, after she’d slipped away on an earlier flight: Nora, where are you?
And persisting at eight-hour intervals until she’d answered: I’m sorry.
With reliable distance, words returned, parasailing over mountain ranges and time zones. Good Mornings and Good Nights filled gaps in otherwise careful algorithms: a riskless brand of intimacy that suited her.
**
Sometimes this work feels like watching everybody get sick and die, he’d write.
**
Numbers make me feel safe, she’d reply.
**
I was secretly relieved when my ex-wife and I couldn’t have kids.
**
I dream about my mother. It’s always snowing, even though she died in Fall.
**
You know I’d move there tomorrow.
**
Sam, stop.
**
Thursday comes.
“7:00. Aposto Café,” he writes. “I googled. Do you know the place?”
The cicadas chorus through her kitchen window. She closes it.
“I do,” she says, not sure if she will.
But her mother pleads, “Child, live,” in a wintry dream, and so she does.
Friday arrives.
Nora circles the block four times before parking. A storm is coming. Wind follows her through the restaurant door and sweeps crystals dangling from the chandelier over the entryway.
Three men in the corner sing in harmony -- Italian, she guesses.
Her stomach coils. “Oh, God,” she whispers and turns to leave.
When the trio finishes, the bartender pops a champagne cork. It misfires, slices the air and slams through the chandelier. Flame-shaped bulbs shatter and sprinkle glass like glitter, like snow.
The world tilts.
Sam is beside her then, reaching. “Are you okay?” He smiles. His lips are on her cheek, his fingers in her fingers. He smells rooted like oak and cedar.
“Opa!” shouts the bartender.
“You’re here,” Nora says.
“So are you,” Sam answers.
SONG: Love Anyway (Nora’s Song)
Words & Music by Patresa Hartman
LYRICS
Everything that flies will fall someday.
Everything that flies will fall someday.
What if I dare to fly anyway?
What if I dare to fly anyway?
Everything that lives will die someday.
Everything that lives will die someday.
What if I dare to live anyway?
What if I dare to live anyway?
Everyone who loves will lose someday.
Everyone who loves will lose someday.
What if I dare to love anyway?
What if I dare to love anyway?
Everyone who chooses can change their mind someday.
Everyone who chooses can change their mind someday.
What if I let you choose me anyway?
What if I let you choose me anyway?
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