Frances had put an advertisement in the local paper,"For sale, wedding dress, never used." She was looking at her Ad that morning, sipping her coffee while twirling her reddish brown hair around her fingers. She thought to herself,"Eight hundred dollars would be so nice to get out of that dress....the rent...the electric bill...the water bill and maybe even some ribbon for my typewriter and a pizza with the rest." She flipped a page of the newspaper to the employment section. She sighed as she saw the same jobs were listed....nothing at all new.
Frances was unemployed and unmarried at twenty seven years old. She was about to be married three months prior but her "man to be" stopped by her apartment after his bachelor party. He confessed to her in a drunken stupor that he was really attracted to men.
Frances was heartbroken because she wasn't heartbroken. She had talked herself into marrying a man she not only didn't really know....she didn't really love him either. It frightened her deeply her that she almost blissfully made what could have been a very serious mistake.
Her tacky pink, plastic high heel shoe phone rang. She giggled as she thought of how the phone was all that was left in her possessions of her Knight in Shining (a bit too shining) Armor, she had almost married. She picked up the phone and answered while still giggling a little,"Hello." The voice of a man came on and said,"Is this the person with the wedding dress for sale?" Frances thought of how deep, soft and sexy his voice was. She hadn't had sex for months because her and her failed Groom decided the honeymoon would be much more exciting if they waited.
The man said,"Hello...are you still there?" Frances came out of her flash daydream and said,"Oh...sorry...yes...I was...I was feeding the cat." She didn't have a cat but it was sounded like a good excuse and it was the only thing that popped in her mind.
The man said,"You must read Hemingway...your advertisement is like his shortest story." Francis said,"Hemingway...what...oh yes....OK...the baby shoes." She giggled saying,"I do love Hemingway but I didn't even think of that when I placed the Ad."
She could almost hear the smile in his voice as he said,"You have a sweet voice and laugh." She blushed a little and said,"Thank you." He asked her to describe the dress. She told him it was strapless...layered with white Victorian lace and lined with tiny pearls in spirals. The dress size was 38/26/36. She had designed and made much of the dress. After her description...he told her that it sounded like what he was looking for. He told her that the dress was for a friend who was going to be a bride in a play.
Frances thought it was silly to spend eight hundred dollars on a dress for a play but any buyer was a good buyer to her. He arranged to come to her apartment at 3:00 that afternoon. She felt a little afraid of meeting a stranger and told him a little white lie....her father was going to be working on her bathroom and it would be fine for him to come at that time. Frances hung up the phone and instantly went into a daydream of this guy with the dreamy voice. He sounded so nice and was such a gentleman.
She sat at the table...sipped her now cold coffee...grimaced and realized her apartment looked like a dump. A row of empty Chinese food cartons lined beside a pile of dirty dishes. Her shoes and socks were scattered throughout the apartment. Panties and bras were hanging to dry on a curtain rod from the broken ceiling fan to an open door on the kitchen cabinets.
Frances became frantic when she looked at the clock and saw it was 11:44 AM. She jumped up and rushed towards the kitchen! "Ouch....damn...oh darn...oh darn oh damn darn" she screamed out in pain! She had stubbed her left little toe on the edge of the kitchen partition wall.
She immediately sat on the floor...grabbing her foot and rocked back an forth until the pain eased a little. She puckered her lips sadly as she saw her little bright red toe. Even though the pain was throbbing, Frances had to get her apartment cleaned up. She also had to get a shower...shave her legs....do her hair and make up along with nursing what might be a broken toe.
Frances eased back up on her feet and limped on into the kitchen. She shoved the dishes in the dish washer...tossed the food cartons in the trash can while claiming points for her doorway field goals and pulled down the curtain rod full of panties and bras.
She finally got the apartment straightened up and it was time to take her shower. As she dropped her clothes on the bathroom floor.....she daydreamed again about the man on the phone. Remembering his voice seemed to enchant her as she stepped into the warm water. As the water splashed on her skin...she turned and smiled with a melancholy heart....until she bumped her sore toe on the side of the tub. "Dammit...darn it...darn ohhhh darn" she whimpered as she leaned on the tile wall and held her foot. Francis finished her shower...sat on the edge of the tub to shave her legs and finished getting ready by 2:45 PM.
