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Rated: 13+ · Fiction · Melodrama · #1320743
Fitzgerald as in a writer with alcoholic depression and chronic heart ache for a woman
Dante awoke slowly, feeling a warmth on his face. He opened his eyes lethargically, finding his bed awash in a bath of sunlight lancing through the wall-sized window standing naked to the east. Wondering why he had not put the blinds down the night before, Dante roused himself from bed, knocking over a bottle as he stood. Gold liquid sloshed raucously in the glass, and he was thankful he had remembered to put the cap back on. He did not remember remembering this, but he considered it a testament of his capabilities in the moment that he could accomplish such a feat.
He crept through the proliferation of pages strewn about the floor, like illegitimate sons he had cast aside after the spark of their fruition grew stale. The small kitchen was not cluttered this morning, bringing him some relief as he rummaged through the barren fridge, producing a carton of honeyed hued apple juice, which he quaffed readily from, the torrent of juice soothing his arid throat.
He heated his weathered cast iron pain,slicing in hunks of creamy butter and tossing on four slices of French toast when the hot iron was sufficiently oiled. He admired the homey yellow which the fusion of eggs and milk produced, leaning down to engulf his senses in the warm, delightful aroma of the sizzling toast. The sensation led him back into memories of childhood he had spent in summer-soaked fields, watching the rooster haughty rooster struck about his herd of concubines, a scintillating monarch in the bright day.
Once the toast was done, he tossed the steaming bread onto a plate and journeyed back into the room, pleasantly ignoring the graveyard of papers which tried to stick to his feet. Dante sat upon the bed, basking in the sun's glow as he feasted upon the soft flesh of the toast. He considered in the serene quiet of the morning that he might resolve to wake with the sun each morning, to face the mind-encumbering leviathan of work with the promise of the sacred orb's virgin rays at his back. It was a pleasant thought, and he let it float around lightly near the top of his consciousness, until it occurred to him that it was Friday, and now that the column could rest a few days he ought to finally call the girl.
Dante meditated on it in glum silence as he finished the rest of his meal and downed the carton, remembering their days in sky blue France, when they had both lived life at her frantic pace and he had wallowed in that blessed chaos where only they existed together in the twisting cosmos. He recalled the complete sensual joy of her fleeting commitment to him, the memory brilliant like a topaz in his mind, and wondered how he had let the two quick weeks slip by without her. There had only been the column and immaterial speculations since then, it seemed.
He turned abruptly from the light streaming through the sill, leaning over the bed to scrabble about on the floor until his hands grasped glass. He did not look as he unscrewed the cap hastily, letting it fall to the side as his lips met the tan, fiery liquid which clamored down his throat. After a moment he held it away, like a strange-faced lover after the moment of conception, until he felt the rum pulsate rapturously in his mind and he sunk back comfortably onto the bed.
Ah yes, the numbness, he thought, the euphoria from past nights stringing away into time burning freshly anew in his mind with thoughtless wonder.
Dante took another pull, and glanced with dull eyes at the pearl grey cellular lying motionless on the desk. He lurched for it but froze in mid-motion, envisioning Veronica's wretched selfishness that often came about in the morning; likely another's hands were about her sleeping form anyway.
A third time and he finished the bottle, casting it aside carelessly and wondering if he was drunk yet.
“Its splendid really,” Dante said loud, thoughts of her fading with the arrival of his old friend.
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