Friday Freewrite

Here we are, Friday again, time for another writing prompt! Here's what we do: Spend 15 minutes freewriting (writing without stopping and without thinking too much), using the prompt as a jumping off point. I changed the name to Friday Freewrite because, it doesn't have to be fiction.

If you play along (please won't you?), and you want to share your results, you can post it here in the comments or on your own blog. Let me know so I can come check it out!

Today's prompt is the first words from Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”: “It was late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat ..."

It was late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat in the bar, nursing a warm, watery scotch.

The woman beside him didn’t have anything to say. They sat here all night, never saying a word to each other. For a while I wondered if they were even together. Then at one point their eyes met, and they held eachother’s gaze for a few seconds. The waitress appeared and they each looked sad.

At first, I thought they were sad because of the interruption. But now I think they were sad because there was nothing to interrupt.

Further confusing me, she looked about 25, still young, but a woman. She didn’t have any make up on, her wore her hair in tangled ponytail. Yet, her beauty still drew people’s eyes to her, again and again, through the night.

When she stood and left so abrubtly, I thought certain she would come back, that she’d just gone to the lady’s room. When she left, the old man grabbed his glass and took a large mouthful. His arm dropped back to the table and his shoulder’s sunk. Roddy, the bartender, arrived right then, placed a scotch on the table, murmered “my compliments” and went back behind the bar.

The man’s stillness led me to grow excited at one point, urging my companion that the old man had died right in front of us. She looked down at her plate and told me, in a soft voice, that the man would most want us to stop staring at him.