They Were Laughing - Patrick Sean Lee (good books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

     “There. Try it now.” I said shoving the camera back to him.

     Allen looked at it, then at me, and then back at the camera. He turned toward Jimmy and Carol who were sitting side by side, now, tossing handfuls of leaves up into the sky above them. Allen brought the camera to his eye, looked quickly over its top, back again into the viewfinder, and then clicked the shutter button. After that he bit his lip and tried to turn the knob. It made a click, click, click sound.

     “Wow! Skip, you are a mechanical genius, I must admit that!”

     “Oh shut up and take some more pictures. Wait’ll I get back there. Get one of me and…” I stopped. And then I jumped into the leaves with my best friend and…my girl. We laughed together and threw handfuls of leaves everywhere, Allen clicking and running around us in his private, Protestant hog-heaven, until the pile was returned to its natural state of disorder there in my front yard.

     Ever the inquisitive type, the tinkerer of the clockworks of the universe, Jimmy jumped up covered in an armor of dead leaves and ran to Allen. “Lemme see that thing, Allen. Is it a Polaroid?”

     “Oh, my goodness no! It’s the latest. A Brownie Starlet 127. Very cool, don’t you think?” Allen said.

     “Yeah, very cool…starlet, huh?” I heard Jimmy answer. “What hath Moloch wrought here?”

       I caught Carol’s eyes as Jimmy was certainly toying with the idea of changing the camera into some sort of bomb, and in the split second that was eternity, I lifted her glasses, folded them carefully, and then leaned forward and kissed her. She’d closed her eyes when my face neared hers, and when I slowly backed away, I saw her lips slightly parted, pouting, blind and waiting for my mouth to touch hers again. So the feeling, finally, of a kiss. So, finally, the feeling of Carol’s wondrous lips. Stars, galaxies, lightning storms across the endless expanse of the universe. So it was.

     Soon enough the clicking began again, and I anticipated many more explosions in the days, months, and years to come.

Text: (c) Patrick Sean Lee, 2010
Publication Date: 12-09-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To my wife, who believes in me.