Thursday, January 10, 2008

In My View


I decided this morning to look up and whatever I see, that's what I write about. When I looked out the back door I realized that the building next door was growing. Here's today's effort. Welcome back, Jenny! We missed you on the blog. Can't wait to see more Scab. Hey, Bob, we get to share our brilliance with Jenny again. Very cool!

Diego glared at the top of the wall surrounding the rented villa. In the ten days since he and Sharon had arrived wooden forms had grown above the wall, cement was poured and now workmen stood on scaffolding able to look down on them and the pool deck. Somehow the knowledge of those eyes watching took away his feeling of relaxation, made him feel self-conscious, like he should be working with them, like a pretender. From the time he was a little boy growing up on this island, he had promised himself that he would live in one of these villas. He spent nights awake in the cramped little house in the kunuku he shared with his parents and eight brothers and sisters planning how he would grow up and get a job off island that would enable him to come back one day to show everyone what he really was. Not that he suffered, there was no shame in being poor or from a big family where things were tight, but Diego felt it. His parents worked hard and did their best but he wanted more, he wanted ease, and he wanted to be admired not just tolerated. Getting Maria pregnant had not been in his plans at all. They had worked at one of the big resorts, he was a bartender, known among the other young men for charming the lonely middle-aged ladies who stayed there out of bigger tips, and she was on the housekeeping staff. Someone threw a party one weekend for someone’s marriage, one thing led to another and Maria was pregnant. Being a daddy just when his future was beginning was not in his plans. He quit his job the day after she told him about the baby, left the island, and hadn’t been back since.

--Barbara

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