{"id":7734,"date":"2017-11-15T23:19:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T06:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7734"},"modified":"2017-11-15T23:19:24","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T06:19:24","slug":"after-lunch","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7734","title":{"rendered":"After Lunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Warner<\/strong><\/p>\n

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They walked out into the backyard. It was elevated, overlooking the lake, with an old-timey stone banister to prevent elderly patients from tumbling down into the water.<\/p>\n

They had had lunch, and now she held him by an elbow, leading him carefully past a flower bed and then past a bench. They went farther back, to where picnic tables were, with chess and checker boards.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight here, honey,\u201d she said, helping him into a chair.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t say anything. He hadn\u2019t been speaking for some months now. She doubted he realized where he was, or who he was, for that matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a simple game,\u201d she said, setting up checkers on the board. They played every time she visited, and every time she had to teach him. \u201cI\u2019ll go first, look.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did, absently staring at the board, as she moved a piece. She waited, but he did nothing.<\/p>\n

A couple passed them then, holding a picnic basket, and she smiled at them. They sat at a table behind them, close to the banister, about to have their lunch.<\/p>\n

She moved one his pieces.<\/p>\n

He was looking at her, or maybe past her. She hoped it was the former, because she had put on that dress he always liked, the blue one that left her shoulders bare.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, let me tell you how my day was, then,\u201d she said, and started speaking.<\/p>\n

Behind them, the couple was unloading their basket: fruit, a drink in a glass bottle, some snacks . . .<\/p>\n

A smile touched his lips, because this was the one thing he remembered. All those years ago, her sitting opposite him, talking. \u201cI went to the market,\u201d she was saying, \u201cand there was this small caf\u00e9, and music was playing, our favorite song and then there was this dog a greyhound and then\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He remembered glancing past her bare shoulder, and there were green apples on the table in the background, three of them, ripe and perfect. And there was a grinder, green and white, pulling the still life together, fixed in the moment. And the sound of pouring wine over her voice, like music to go with the image. He wasn\u2019t quite sure if it was a painting he\u2019d seen, the only picture that had stuck with him through all these years. But he knew now that it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

He looked at her, and she stopped talking, and then he smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSally.\u201d<\/p>\n

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DANIEL WARNER<\/strong> is a published comic book writer and a ghostwriter. He has been working as a ghostwriter for several years, writing in all genres, and has worked on the Masks<\/em> comic book series for Rats and Crows Publishing. He has also self-published two books — Masks<\/em> and Danny\u2019s Love Letters<\/em> — and studies Creative Writing in Orlando, FL. You can follow him at facebook.com\/danny00110010<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Warner     They walked out into the backyard. It was elevated, overlooking the lake, with an old-timey stone banister to prevent elderly patients from tumbling down into the water. They had had lunch, and now she held him … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":7732,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7734","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-20K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7746,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7734\/revisions\/7746"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}