Writing Exercise #4 Jonathan D. W.

Lauren walked into the cave-like, dimly lit restaurant, and slid her way down the isle and into a booth; hidden away in the back where the only illumination was the many candle sconces decorating the walls. She walked toward her moment; a man with a disarming face, ominous in its brazen gentility, and bare, alluring, fiery auburn eyes. She sat next to him after he offered her his hand in courtesy. She immediately scribbled three sentences on an elegant cloth napkin. The first was what she wished to eat: Turtle Soup and Crawfish Monica. The second was her middle name. The name no one but her family knew and therefore, no one was allowed to call her. The third was her price. The man's eyes glistened as he contemplated the implications of the text before him. He was not a man to suffer the petty distractions of mediocrity, and this girl, confident beyond her station, dared to intrude upon his invaluable time and offer her services for something that even he was afraid to accept. The smell of richly seasoned Louisiana cuisine wafted out of the kitchen and hovered over their table like New Iberian mist in a late fall evening. The brown, orange, and reddish light transformed the restaurant's ambience into a sultry and surreal place of consequence. Lauren never took her eyes off of his face. This made him uncomfortable, but somehow he relished it. She was different. She made his work exciting again. After years of wasting his time with amateurs, he was now irrevocably engaged in a primordial battle of wills with a youthful provocateur. The dichotomy of his emotions ran counterclockwise, and she seemed to know it. Although he could not have known it, she was positively salivating. She had dreamed of this; this moment, this meeting. And now, in that peculiar sort of way that dreams have of obscuring reality, she was experiencing the thing she had so often lived in the desperate annals of sleep. It was instinctual. Keener than that of a wolf, she was now exactly that. The wolf had become the prey. The prey had become the predator. How do you like it? She thought. Will you succumb to me? I wonder what you would look like prostrate before me like an old pious adherent. Her mind wandered, making her eyes flicker in a way that made him uneasy. Yes, his eyes appeared to say; and her heart raced and trembled at the thought.