The Young American viewpoint was substantially lowered by the angle
of a low winter sun and the obviated need to hide from such stark glaring
fact. Belinda harkened to her lovers' hushing tones and stayed parrallel with
him in movement and conversation: there was no question of gun law restrictions
in the state of-
"Grimsby" she thought he'd said. The scooter slowed and he shouted something else less audible from behind his helmet. She had figured out she could just about read large print books on the b roads they had to stick to...
The mid-west, dust bowl, far from the Connecticut killings,
farmland. The buffallo still roam - and God that thing looks so sexy tucked into his pants
she might have thought in celluloid dreamings.
She conflated bits of news with whatever was her current pulp buzz of romance, chaps and corsets - she'd discovered the imagination recently and mainly because of the inordinate boredom of pillion riding at low speed. Then there were the mechanical breaks... (over heating stops).
Why had she married him? Not a question to ask.
Today, it's the Lamberetta owners' club and a stop off for cream teas in Sandown. They've been back to the Isle of Wight for the past 5 years now... Him polishing his chrome for weeks before and spending whole nights on ebay looking for 'a fuse'.There's a full day and nights' travel ahead. She's on page 39.
She dreamed about images of Americana regularly. To envisage a pair of 501's astride some 1950's Harley gave her - well, something. He didn't know. It was his just payback for ignoring her. And she
had developed her imagination to such a point that he was no more than prosthetic. The only person she had ever shared her fantasies with was Jenie. That was why they went back to the Isle of Wight every year. The men believed it was about some kind of cameraderie. But it wasn't. It was about Jenie and Debs.
Debs was American. From Connecticut. Previously of Brooklyn. To Jenie, Debs was the gatekeeper to all her fantasies. Exotic beyond Jenie's wildest dreams. She fired her imagination in a way that no man had ever been able to. Debs had no idea, thinking herself to be the most prosaic of 'little ladies' (she'd grown up in Louisianna before moving north) on a regular vacation with 'her Bob'. They'd moved there for the 'neighbourhood', Connecticut, that is, and had said as much to the reporters. Just a neighbours assessment. Local colour or scene setting in journalistic terms. What they do to justify their expenses when no news is happening... Debs was a teaching assistant and dinner lady - 'lunch lady' - she would correct Jenie as they talked....
The fact that Debs had always assumed 'Jenie' to be a name of french origin (and maybe that France was a state in European england - for such musings were not beneath her) had never been corrected by Jenie or Bob or any of their other scooter pals. Mods - you could assume. The humour of this situation was not lost however and as Debs grew more confident with each passing year, she would pronounce 'Jenie' with a growing swish of classic french accent. No-one who knew had the temerity to tell Debs that 'jenie' should have been Jennie - or even Jenny - but for an uncorrected mistake on the birth certificate as filled in, un-usually, by her father. Fortunately, only Jenie knew. She kept it to herself, so there was no growing concensus of hilarity to be avoided and besides, Jenie actually thought it made Debs seem even more exotic...