Harbor: a Freeze-Dried Fiction Contest Entry

Harbor

She calls herself Marla.  Immediately Gwyneth disbelieves her.  Names should be worn smooth, like polished stones.  Hers is spoken as though she’s conjuring an obsidian blade.  Its two syllables are sharper than they have a right to be.   

There’s something disconcertingly familiar about this Marla.  Gwyneth wishes she could finish this thought with a “but I just can’t place her.”  Unfortunately, she knows exactly where she can place her.  Come to think of it, Marla isn’t so much familiar as she is familial.

Gwyneth takes a sip of wine, watching from the doorway as Marla’s blond head bobs up and down.  She giggles along with the half a dozen other women seated in her friend Beryl’s living room.  Her laughter draws the others’ attention.  She says something witty and another round of laughter ensues.

Marla’s actions are obvious—obvious and infuriating because Gwyneth has been able to figure her out in thirty minutes while her own husband has fooled her for years.  It’s not right.

Beryl introduces her to Marla at one of Beryl’s ladies’ nights.  She hosts these get-togethers monthly in order to vent about whatever horridly trivial thing her perfect husband and/or her over-achieving kids have done to her during the previous four weeks.  This particular ladies’ night, however, Beryl’s mind isn’t on her husband’s browser history or her daughter’s new eyebrow piercing.  This night, it’s all about Beryl’s mysterious and stunning new friend Marla.

Beryl pulls Gwyneth into the pantry as soon as the pleasantries have commenced. “Well, what do you think of her?”

Gwyneth thinks a lot of things but isn’t about to relate them all to Beryl.  “She seems nice.”

She does seem nice, though Gwyneth is perfectly aware that seeming nice and being nice are two different things.

Beryl’s nose scrunches up. “You’re nice.  I have plenty of nice friends.  Don’t you think there’s something exotic about her?”

Gwyneth hates when the word exotic is used to describe women, as though they’re some sort of rare breed of parrot.  “I don’t know about that.”

Beryl frowns. “Well, you’ve never been the best judge of character.”

“Meaning?”

Beryl doesn’t elaborate.  “Talk to her, okay?  I want your opinion, such as it is.”

Beryl met Marla at a wine bar in Leslieville a few weeks back.  The two had bonded over their shared love of marinated squid noodles paired with Sauvignon Blanc.  In Beryl’s book, a sommelier-level knowledge of wine was enough to consider Marla a friend, thus securing her an invite to Beryl’s next ladies’ night.

Despite Beryl’s prodding, Gwyneth doesn’t talk much to Marla, but she does listen.  Before the evening is through, she understands why Beryl thinks of her as exotic.  Marla is a story without exposition.  Her life, or what she relates of it anyways, is exciting, fast paced and lacking of all substantive background material.  Gwyneth watches as Marla draws in the other ladies, draws her in in fact.  Marla is a jet setter, an heiress, a world explorer, a philanthropist.  She wears these titles as unconvincingly as her name, and yet no one else seems to spot her ruse.  Gwyneth isn’t supposed to either.  What she is supposed to notice are Marla’s ruby earrings.  She’s supposed to notice them, ooh and ah when Marla tells her they were a hush present from an oil baron in Qatar and then laugh when Marla cautions her not to tell her fiancé. 

She is not supposed to notice what a load of crap it all is.

Gwyneth has heard this before, the let-me-let-you-in-on-a-little-secret-because-you’re-just-that-special kind of story.  Of course, it was antiques instead of earrings, and truth masked behind blue eyes instead of hazel, but the intent to deceive was very much the same.