Chapter 2: Vodka Water
The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous post titled, Chapter 1:
The next few days looked almost exactly the same as the previous weeks. I woke up late in the morning, went for almost an hour walk on the beach, ate a late brunch, read in the late afternoon, and if it needed it, I did some house work. Dinners were the most intricate affair of my day, involving homemade creamy pastas, or angel hair lemon pasta with a garnish of capers. My love for Italian food stems from the time I lived there in my twenties, but more on that later. Cooking made me forget about everything else in my life. For that hour or two I spent in the kitchen inventing new recipes, chopping anything from peppers to fillets of fresh fish caught just that day, to eating the final dish, I escaped from the world. I was creating something – something every human craves to do in this world, whether it's painting, writing, cooking – we all crave and need to create. Cooking was what I yearned to create at this time in my life. Years ago it was painting, and for majority of my life it was dancing. Oh how I loved to dance.
My evenings would usually end with back porch cigarettes and red wine. Sometimes, I would get creative and make myself a more interesting cocktail, which involved two ingredients: water and vodka. That my friends, is the key to every woman's trim figure. Wine is the dessert in my life, while vodka is the drink to get me through cocktail parties or bar outings. And the best part of a vodka and water, which of course always needs a lime, is you get to drink quite a few in one evening without needing to go for a 7 mile run the next day just to burn off the calories.
That was my usual routine for weeks. I frequently lost track of what day of week it was, and one time forgot what month it was. It was as if I had paused my life there in that tiny Florida house. I had paused my life refusing to move forward or look back on my past. No one here bothered me about my past, judged me for my mistakes, or the worst of them all, judgement of disappointment. I could see it in other people's eyes when I told them Henry and I were no longer together. Or people asked what I was doing with my time, and I said, "Oh, not much." It was the damn truth – I wasn't doing much with my time. Honestly, I wasn't sure what to do with my time. And people judged me for that. I could see it when they would nod their head after I would say, "not much," and they would instantly change the subject or drift away from me at a dinner party to make conversation with someone else. That happened for months, so I eventually stopped venturing to any type of parties.
The house next to me had been vacant since I had landed here in Florida, until that evening I saw a red mini van parked in the driveway and lights on in the house. It felt like it happened in an instant after I came back from my bike ride to the grocery store to start preparing dinner. A part of me was angry there were neighbors next to me – I had had my own little oasis here on this part of the island, and I liked having it myself. Since it was the thick of summer, most of the owners only retreated down here when it was much cooler temperatures. It would get up to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit during the day. The ocean breeze was the only thing that made this tolerable. Still, most people didn't stay here in the summer in their 5,000 square foot mansions, they would only venture down here during the winter months. I retreated to my home and went about making my dinner as usual.
I was washing fresh shrimp over the sink, when I glanced out the window towards the house with now all of the lights on. A part of me was curious who was inside that home. I presumed a family since there was a mini van in the driveway. I finished prepping my shrimp scampi dish, and took to my usual ritual of sitting on my back porch, with a glass of Malbec wine this evening. The palm trees were dancing in the wind as I smoked what I told myself would be my last cigarette, when I heard it. I heard laughter in the distance, coming surely from the new neighbors house. I realized at that moment I hadn't heard laughter in months, maybe years, and the sound surprised me.
The next few days looked almost exactly the same as the previous weeks. I woke up late in the morning, went for almost an hour walk on the beach, ate a late brunch, read in the late afternoon, and if it needed it, I did some house work. Dinners were the most intricate affair of my day, involving homemade creamy pastas, or angel hair lemon pasta with a garnish of capers. My love for Italian food stems from the time I lived there in my twenties, but more on that later. Cooking made me forget about everything else in my life. For that hour or two I spent in the kitchen inventing new recipes, chopping anything from peppers to fillets of fresh fish caught just that day, to eating the final dish, I escaped from the world. I was creating something – something every human craves to do in this world, whether it's painting, writing, cooking – we all crave and need to create. Cooking was what I yearned to create at this time in my life. Years ago it was painting, and for majority of my life it was dancing. Oh how I loved to dance.
My evenings would usually end with back porch cigarettes and red wine. Sometimes, I would get creative and make myself a more interesting cocktail, which involved two ingredients: water and vodka. That my friends, is the key to every woman's trim figure. Wine is the dessert in my life, while vodka is the drink to get me through cocktail parties or bar outings. And the best part of a vodka and water, which of course always needs a lime, is you get to drink quite a few in one evening without needing to go for a 7 mile run the next day just to burn off the calories.
That was my usual routine for weeks. I frequently lost track of what day of week it was, and one time forgot what month it was. It was as if I had paused my life there in that tiny Florida house. I had paused my life refusing to move forward or look back on my past. No one here bothered me about my past, judged me for my mistakes, or the worst of them all, judgement of disappointment. I could see it in other people's eyes when I told them Henry and I were no longer together. Or people asked what I was doing with my time, and I said, "Oh, not much." It was the damn truth – I wasn't doing much with my time. Honestly, I wasn't sure what to do with my time. And people judged me for that. I could see it when they would nod their head after I would say, "not much," and they would instantly change the subject or drift away from me at a dinner party to make conversation with someone else. That happened for months, so I eventually stopped venturing to any type of parties.
The house next to me had been vacant since I had landed here in Florida, until that evening I saw a red mini van parked in the driveway and lights on in the house. It felt like it happened in an instant after I came back from my bike ride to the grocery store to start preparing dinner. A part of me was angry there were neighbors next to me – I had had my own little oasis here on this part of the island, and I liked having it myself. Since it was the thick of summer, most of the owners only retreated down here when it was much cooler temperatures. It would get up to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit during the day. The ocean breeze was the only thing that made this tolerable. Still, most people didn't stay here in the summer in their 5,000 square foot mansions, they would only venture down here during the winter months. I retreated to my home and went about making my dinner as usual.
I was washing fresh shrimp over the sink, when I glanced out the window towards the house with now all of the lights on. A part of me was curious who was inside that home. I presumed a family since there was a mini van in the driveway. I finished prepping my shrimp scampi dish, and took to my usual ritual of sitting on my back porch, with a glass of Malbec wine this evening. The palm trees were dancing in the wind as I smoked what I told myself would be my last cigarette, when I heard it. I heard laughter in the distance, coming surely from the new neighbors house. I realized at that moment I hadn't heard laughter in months, maybe years, and the sound surprised me.
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