Pam Painter Story With A Twist
Word count: 447
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| A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, by Édward Manet |
She despises her job, working late
nights and long hours, dealing with rude and touchy customers. The look of her face says everything. Her
low, dazed stare, her closed lips, and her hands resting on the bar explain how
she feels; she’s exhausted from lack of sleep and having to cater to ungrateful
customers for hours at a time. She works every night of the week until around
3am and has to come back the next day at 4pm, which doesn’t give her much time
to rest or do errands that must be done during the day. She only has this job to save up enough money
until she and her family can leave their home country, England, and travel to
America, the land of opportunities. She dreams of the day when she finds a
loving husband, owns a huge farm with him, and has three children of her own.
Until then, she is stuck with this dreadful job that does not even pay well. Almost
every night, she catches men, and even some women, staring at her cleavage and making
comments about them, but earlier tonight, a man who was obliterated from
drinking glass after glass of whiskey for at least three hours, reached over
the bar and groped her breast. She never slapped a man so hard in her life, her
hand was red and in pain afterwards. She stepped away from the bar and went to
the washroom to calm herself down. While crying in the washroom, she noticed a
bouquet of flowers and was struck with an idea. She was beyond over people
staring, making comments, and now groping her, that she took some flowers out
of the bouquet; stuck them in her cleavage in order to cover her breasts. Her
manager, the man with the top hat and mustache in the background did not even
care, which enraged her even more. He told her to get over it and has been
flirting with another lady ever since. She is so done with this shift and job that quitting is actually a thought
in her head. She knows she cannot quit though, because her family and her will
be stuck here for an even longer time. Finding a new job is nearly impossible
right now so she cannot afford to lose this one. She is going to keep reminding
herself about her future of living in America and continue to push her problems
and thoughts to the side. Her feelings don’t matter when her dreams are right
around the corner. She will now wear flowers in her cleavage every night and go
about her nightly routine until she has enough money to leave.
A lovely, lovely painting and a lovely, lovely interpretation of what the barista is experiencing in her role. I really like how you stick with the particular and you challenge yourself to come up with a reason for the bouquet in cleavage. That shows that you are thinking like a writer, with curiosity and imagination. You're also using sensory details well ("he never slapped a man so hard in her life, her hand was red and in pain afterward"). I like that you use the known actions she takes in the story (slapping someone and being inventive enough to try to hide behind the flowers), to illustrate that she has fight left in her---she is trapped, but not helpless. She has a plan, and if this were a novel, I would most certainly turn to the next chapter to keep reading to see what she is going to do next. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteI really loved what you brought to that painting. I was interested reading the backstory that you gave her and hearing about her hopes and dreams. The conflict was interesting as well and it was a very creative way to explain the flowers in her cleavage. I enjoyed reading this very much and you did a good job of keeping it interesting from beginning to end.
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