Alex the youngest of the Johnson family is an interesting girl. By day she is the general manager of a clothing store, by night a wild party girl trying to navigate her way through the Lower East Side bar scene. One could always tell when she had a “great night”. She would stroll into work Sunday afternoon looking as if she had just crawled from under a rock. Her red eyes hidden behind dark shades and long black hair extremely disheveled; it looked as if her fingers were her idea comb. She wore a white sleeveless button up shirt with a peter pan collar, tucked into black wool high waisted trousers, complete with shiny black American Apparel dancing shoes. She was about 5’6” medium build, with a large derrière that was very hard to miss.
Alex murmurs “Hey” as she rushed passed her employees, trying not to spill her venti sized Starbucks coffee. The employees burst into a quiet laughter as she walked out of sight. Alex sat in her office, one would think she was watching the cameras to see if her employees were slacking off, but the most know she is just trying to recover from the previous night. She emerges after two hours of “working” and makes her way to the sales floor.
“How are we doing with sales today, has it been busy?” she asked the cashier.
“It’s been pretty normal.” the cashier replied.
“I like your boots where’d you get those?”
“Urban Outfitters”
“Cute but you know you can’t wear them. Dov (Charney) is stopping by tomorrow, so everyone needs to be “on brand.” Alex said looking at herself in the mirror. She used her fingers to sweep her hair up into a bun; she made a face that can only be described as “Blue Steal”.
“Okay Alex.” The cashier replied rolling her eyes. Alex does not notice as she was too busy getting lost in her own eyes. She was not the most stylish or competent of the store managers. Most would even say or bet that she was missing a few brain cells but everyone loved her for the hot mess that she was.
Although she did make that cashier wait for Dov who decided last minute that he was going to show up at the store at one in the morning, which wasn’t cool.
I really like this! You did a really good job. It's like if Capote worked at a general store, which, he would never do. Everybody knows an "Alex" and you portrayed her really well. I like the way you put the last line in italics as though you're continuing the story with a later comment. One thing is that the tenses got mixed up a little, but other than that, great!
ReplyDeleteHey Anselme, Good lede -- you had me and I wanted to know more. Also good use of dialogue to advance the narrative and reveal characters. One thing on this: In choosing the subject of your post, stop and ask yourself: What Would Capote Do? While of course it is not possible to write up something as dramatic as his subject for In Cold Blood, I think you will find that if you settle on something that is more inherently dramatic and your post can only contain more urgency. I also like the itals at the end -- what was the intention there? And Aleksa has a good point about tense: particularly in the second graph the tense was all over the place. But nice work, looking forward to reading more ... m
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