Suzanne Beecher

Dear Reader,

"Time is more important to me than money." I caught myself saying that to someone the other day. Even I was momentarily impressed and silently commended myself for having my priorities in the right place. But then reality set in and I reminded myself that 'time' can't pay my light bill or make my house payment--unless Florida Power and Light or my mortgage holder will barter for some of my homemade chocolate chip cookies. (You know how I love to spend my time baking.)

But my comment, "Time is more important to me than money," did get me thinking about how much time I waste. Frequently I put off doing things, because I don't think I have enough time to do them. But the other day when I was baking cookies (the ones I'm hoping Florida Power and Light will take instead of cash) I discovered more time.

Eight minutes and thirty seconds--that's what I set my kitchen timer for when I put my cookie sheets into the oven. Usually while I'm waiting for cookies to bake I just "kill time." But the other day I didn't.

Instead I made the bed, put fresh towels in the bathroom (even folded the washcloths fancy like they do in the hotels) answered four emails, walked out to the mailbox, brushed my teeth, folded a load of laundry and put it away. I was amazed at the list of things I'd accomplished 8 minutes and 30 seconds later when the timer rang. Even my husband was impressed.

So now I'm wondering just how many household tasks can a cookie baker/writer get done in a mere 8 minutes and 30 seconds? (Maybe I can set a new Olympic record?) But if I'm going for the gold I need competition, so I challenged my husband and even gave him a list: wash the garbage cans, clean the litter box, scrub the toilets and I think I just heard the cat throw up in the other room..."Ready, set, go!"

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@firstlookbookclub.com

P. S. This week we're giving away 10 copies of the book Old Soul: A Novel by Susan Barker. Click here to enter for your chance to win. 

Taos County, 1982

August 1st

I woke before dawn to an empty mattress. Wrapped myself in a bedsheet & went outside to find E. on the bench in the clearing, staring out across the drought stripped plains to the Sangre de Cristo mountains; a jagged line against the shadowy blue sky. She was naked, near luminescent in the half dark. Hearing my footsteps, she spoke without turning.

I couldn't sleep.

The wooden bench creaked as I sat besides her. I could sense she didn't want to be touched & chilly though it was, I suppressed the urge to wrap her up with me in the bedsheet, or reach for her face or dark waves of hair. E. still didn't turn to me. She remained gazing at the low peaks, beneath the constellations fading in the end of night sky.

T: What are you looking at?

E: I'm waiting for Venus.

T: O Venus beauty of the night. To whom a thousand temples rise...

I faltered, embarrassed. I couldn't remember the rest.

E: The beauty's a mask. Venus was once like Earth, but now it's an inferno. Its oceans boiled away and the continents are just black volcanic rock and rivers of lava. The atmosphere is crushing, vaporising – sulphuric acid & carbon dioxide. Can you imagine it?

T: Not really.

Lately my imagination's limited to the block of Oaxaca granite I'm pounding away at w/ mallet & chisel for 10 hours a day in the studio.

E: Venus spins backwards, opposite to the spin of Earth or any other planet. And it spins slowly, at the pace of a walking man. A day on Venus is longer than a year. 'There'.

I followed the end of her pointing finger. A tiny sphere of celestial light was appearing in the dip between two low summits. Eerie. Haunted. Pale. We watched silently for a while.

E: I dream I'm there sometimes. Walking towards the sunset at the speed that Venus slowly turns, so the sun never disappears. It just continues to set, forever.

I shivered, pulled the sheet tighter around me.

T: Sounds lonely.

Venus shone at the lower edge of the dusky, purple-streaked sky.

E: No. It's not.

Testimony 1 – Mariko

It begins at Kansai International Airport, by the gate for flight KL378 to Amsterdam. I'd sprinted there through Terminal One, after realising at security the departure time I'd thought was 19.05 was actually 17.05. Sweaty, breathless and frantic from the repeated 'last call' of my name over the tannoy, I reached the empty lounge and ran over to the Dutch agent at the gate desk, pleadingly holding out my passport and misread boarding pass. She told me Gate 27 had just closed.

But the plane hasn't detached from the skybridge, a voice called out behind me.

A woman with a small wheeled suitcase was clipping towards us in low heels, her sleek black hair shimmering in the light streaming through the high Terminal One ceiling of glass and curvilinear steel. Her grey trouser suit, silk blouse and leather shoulder bag all exuded the wealth of business class.

The luggage is still being loaded on, she added.

Glancing through the glass wall at the Boeing 787, I saw she was right. The jetbridge was still connected and cargo containers were being lifted into the underbelly of plane. The portholes showed passengers shuffling up the aisle or reaching up to stow bags overhead. Tapping at her computer, the blonde chignoned agent frowned at the monitor and shook her head.

The gate's definitely closed, she repeated, and your checked baggage has just been removed. I can book you on the next flight to Amsterdam tomorrow. Change your connecting flights too if they're with us.

By now my heart rate and anxiety levels were returning to normal and I was resigned to the change in travel itinerary – it was my own fault for misreading the boarding pass after all. The other passenger however, small though she was, looked ready to throw some weight around. Though her demeanour was poised, her eyes flashed entitlement.

I fly business class with your airline several times a year. I have over four hundred thousand frequent flyer miles and an important meeting in Paris tomorrow. The skybridge is still attached and I see no reason why you can't let us on.

The gate's closed, the agent repeated evenly, her professional veneer showing no signs of cracking. The re-booking fee's 20,000 yen, but I'll waive it this time.

Informing us where to collect our suitcases, she scanned our passports and printed out new tickets for the following morning. Sighing, the woman accepted her ticket and cast a disdainful eye over her new itinerary. Then she left without a word, pulling her wheeled cabin bag over the vast and shining marble floors to navigate her way out of the terminal.

I took the express train one stop back to Rinku Town, checked into a budget hotel and WhatsApp called my partner to tell him what an idiot I'd been. Then I headed out towards the seafront and ended up on the white pebble beach across the water from the manmade airport island, three kilometres out in the Seto Inland Sea. The orange sun was setting in the polluted sky, turning the cirrostratus clouds pink and gilding the waves so they scintillated towards the shore. I sat on the desolate stretch of pebbles and watched the blinking trajectories of planes taking off with a weird sense of being split in two – that a more functional version of me had made the 17.05 flight and was now crammed into economy, soaring over China or Inner Mongolia at an altitude of 35,000 feet, leaving the foggier, more hapless version behind.

The tide was coming in and I inched up the beach to keep the water from my Converse. It was chilly and dusk was falling, but something about the place exerted a pull on me, keeping me watching the half- sun vanishing beneath the dark gleaming waves as my backside numbed through my jeans. The giant Ferris wheel in the nearby Rinku Park lit up a lurid green, and as the wheel and its many passenger cars turned in slow revolutions, I remembered the time me and Lena got stuck on the Big Wheel in Southend-on-Sea. We were fifty feet up when it broke down – just the two of us shivering in one of those barred cages, Lena's long black hair whipping about in the freezing wind coming off the gull shrieking North Sea. All she had on was a denim jacket over a vintage dress, so I lent her my jumper and we swigged Lambrini, smoked roll-ups and danced about to The Cramps on my discman, listening through one earbud each, the cage creaking and groaning as we tried to stay warm. It wasn't long before Lena was half bent over, crossing her legs because she needed to pee.

Please, Lena, I said. Can't you hold it in?

I can't... she laughed. I'm bursting.

(continued on Tuesday)

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