Bob, your story has an excellent level of loopiness. I swear we're all just a snowflake away from needing to go away with the men in the huggy coats. Me too, and I was gone for a month! The mid-winter crazies are more contagious than the flu. I like your little piece, especially how grumpy and irritable the narrator is.
Mona walked slowly between the craft market booths set up on the town square across the street from the Town Pier. Whenever a cruise ship was docked, the little band of artists and entrepreneurs set up their tables and laid out their wares. Mona wasn't a cruise ship passenger, never had been able to face the prospect of being trapped in what amounted to a floating hotel with a couple thousand strangers for a week, steaming from island to island striking each a glancing blow. Spending just enough time on each one for a hot cab ride to see the highlights and take a quick tour through the upscale shops that line the ports. The whole cruise idea seemed so artificial to her. She had endured dinner conversations with avid cruisers who insisted they were familiar with nearly every Caribbean island. Judging by the majority of the people around her and the things she overheard, the packaged view of an island they was just that--packaged. The real life of the island went on around the Disney-esque sanitized experience that was trotted out before the ship docked and carefully folded away until the next ship was due. Even worse, Mona bet that ninety percent of what was for sale around her was made in Taiwan. Pathetic. And where was Jack? He was supposed to meet her at City Cafe for lunch.
See you tonight. Got your exercise ready? I got mine.
--Barbara
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