Assignment 2: Character

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Stephanie lounged on the luxuriously soft velvet sheet, working out her porcelain-perfect pair of slender legs casually as she read this delightful advertisement in Elle's magazine she bought only last night.

After carefully scrutinizing the model's eyelids and overall effect, holding out the page and tilting it at different angles, Stephanie nodded approvingly, satisfied with the increased luminence this magic powder did for the model. She had started to grow tired of the Chanel Eyepowder her husband bought for her last month, its once lustrous-green sheen now looking to her remarkably like fungated bread. In her opinion, cosmetics come with a 3-weeks' expiry date.

"Well, this shall be my agenda for today!" Stephanie told herself resolutely. Feeling much cheered after setting her goal-for-the-day, she laid the magazine on the bedside table, and proceeded to execute her mandatory thirty crunches.


Twenty.

Twenty one.

Twenty two.


Just as her taut obliques started to emit a satisfying ache, the door burst open.

"Honey, I can't believe you're still in bed!" An exasperated man glared reproachfully down at her. He was wreathed in a crumpled black shirt and pants, and the heavy eyebags beneath his swollen eyes completed his look.

Stephanie shifted her eyes to meet her husband's as she continued her crunches, not intending to break her workout routine for anything in the world, least of all her useless husband who had just lost his job at Merilyn Bank, and who even had the audacity to demand her presence at his mother's funeral wake later.

"As if he didn't know how many times his dumbass mother criticised me. Like what has my hot red fingernails done to warrant an hour-long of dressing down?" Stephanie recalled the latest in an endless series of fiascoes she had with her mother-in-law a month ago.

Probably the one that provoked the stroke, which killed her.

This uninvited thought jabbed at her guilt momentarily.

But right now, the harsh tone that her husband had dared speak to her with made all the virtuous emotions she had within her disapparate.

Thirty

Laying down to rest, she yawned and replied," I'm not going today. I've got somthing to do."

"What? Honey, you have to be there. What would Bob, Susan and the rest of my colleagues think if they see me there by myself?"

"That I've finally wisened up and have decided to divorce you. Oh and by the way, did you mean ex-colleagues?" Stephanie retorted with her in-built knack for cruel sarcasm.

Her husband cast his eyes downwards. He was used to her cutting remarks. Since his courtship, he had developed an admirable threshold of tolerance. Afterall, wasn't it her devil-may-care attitude that he found so sexy in her? But this time, he wasn't so sure. Ever since he was fired, along with many top-notch fund managers from Merilyn, Stephanie had been much less conciliatory than ever before, which said a lot given that this word never entered her mind other than those times it went in (and left immediately) during services.

He sighed. Today was not the day to tidy his relationship with Stephanie. He would have to book a marriage counsellor to undertake the job instead.

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