I’d tell you about Egg Barrel, the website at bat for this week’s Featured Friday, but their description is so perfect, I just have to use it instead: “Egg Barrel is a place to find and share creativity in all forms. You don’t have to be a professional journalist, photographer or writer. Come here to get inspired, to form healthy opinions or just to pass the time.”
Awesome, right?
Even awesome-er (yes, it’s a word), Egg Barrel has published not one but two tiny tales on their site! So, in the spirit of Featured Friday, I’m re-posting The Figaro now (check out my other published story, A Terrible Day And A Tree after that). Why? Because it’s almost the weekend and you might need something to read and because Egg Barrel was kind enough to put my little words in their creativity-filled corner of the Internet and that is a very beautiful thing. Thanks Carter and team! Read on …
The Figaro
Of all the details to remember, her hands were still the clearest in his mind. Unpolished nails of otherworldly innocence, intoxication by way of ten fingers and smooth skin and a wrist circled with Rolex Sky-Dweller gold, limited edition. Back to her hands. What did he later call them, windows to her soul? They appeared in stark, shimmering contradiction to that glassy skeleton known as the Makuhari Messe, an oversized structure built on the edge of Chuba City, where the 28th Tokyo Motor show was housed.
If such a thing as young love existed, it was born for her from the 1989 air-conditioned air of the Makuhari Messe and there grew to become a nervous child of mumbled ‘hello’s and ‘what is your name’s.
“Duke Raskipper.” (Perhaps.)
“Mirabelle Quick.”
She was in town to sing Shirley Bassey songs at a Japanese karaoke lounge then purchase her very first car, he to begin a four-month backpacking expedition from Tokyo to Kagoshima and look at foreign vehicles he might never afford.
“My friend had a free ticket,” Duke shrugged.
They were from the beginning two separate ends temporarily bound beneath lofty ceilings and between shiny automobiles, fuel-injected symbols of a fate just beyond his cunning reach. A small vehicle at the center of the showroom kept them together with the strongest force …
This was a Figaro, boasting enough retro panache to take its lucky driver “back to the future,” at least according to the salesman Hayate, his narrow face overpowered by a smile more syrupy than sincere.
The Figaro was Nissan’s newest, latest and greatest, Hayate explained, a car constructed by brilliant engineers – the Pike Factory group – to be something special. He emphasized this word as if, in the centuries-long history of its use, it had never been spoken with such true meaning before. A pause. A beat.
Continue reading this tiny tale on Egg Barrel here.
