Ambitious Sashay

Ron Koppelberger

Ambitious Sashay

Anticipating the hour of promise and wedded victory, she acknowledged the passing seconds and the breath of a momentary pause. Prudence Array prayed in abeyance to the passing rhythm of her heart, her exhalations, “ I must be patient.” she whispered to the empty chair. Shifting in her seat the silk shirt clung to her bossom in a provocative curve of definition.
She touched the corner of her slightly down turned lips and thought. The phantom sanity of a dream, the substance of a real spirit, was it worth the wait, would her careful patience reward her with the treasures of a sated heart she pondered.
The clock on the wall read eleven fifty-five, exactly five minutes to midnight. Prudence adjusted the hem of her skirt and sighed. The day had been spent fervently endeavoring and preparing, a touch of cinnamon and a daisy in stew pots of ripe wine. She had sipped the concoction with thirsty desire and expectant drama. The potion and the essence of magic desires, the potion had to work, work for her and in gentle passions cured.
Prudence fingered the gold locket about her perfumed neck. It was shaped like a heart and latched in two unfolding compartments, each containing a picture. She opened the locket and stared at the photograph of her and her late husband. He was encouraging a gentle smile and an expression of boyish affection, trim with a rose in his lapel, he had been a handsome man. Prudence snapped the locket shut and looked at the clock again, one minute had passed, eleven fifty-six.
Candles in scarlet bouquets of mist burned in the tiny living room, enveloping the wants and aspirations of Prudence Array in shadow and dark flickering silhouette. She inhaled nervously nearly gasping, the magic of the potion, the potion made by careful hands, descried by the leather bound witches Grimoir, had to work, she had to have her husband, her love, the substance of her existence.
The spell promised the return of loves lost, crossing the boundary, the fray of what breaths and what sleeps in patient concerns of soul. She leaned close to the tan leather recliner, it had been her husbands favorite. She could see him, a glass of brandy and a cigarette burning in the crystal ashtray her mother had given them as a wedding gift. He would trace the line of the glasses edge with the tip of his finger, humming, sometimes reading the Sunday paper.
She looked at the clock again, another minute, another waiting second of desire for the smoke of the past. The potion had to work, it had to.
He had clutched at the velvet robe he was fond of wearing. A hiss of air had escaped from between his lips and in an instant he was dead. Prudence had struggled, struggled to coax his cooling body into the canopied oaken bed they shared. She saw herself and denied the vision as an illusion, the difference spoken of by her guilty apathy and suspicions of murder by petty collusion with tonics and secret flourishes of nightshade.
Prudence denied the deed as she prayed for another minute to pass. The witches potion had to work, she had to be with her husband again. The seconds passed and near midnight she fell unconscious with the hope that her husbands ghost would appear to forgive her, to grant her peace and the sanctity of an unbetraying heart. She slept and she dreamed in confusions of rose colored shadow, she dreamed the visage of her husband in alabaster and angel wings. He waved and a mixture of scarlet tears and fresh rain shower rained down and around her; in that moment, sometime after midnight, she was cleansed of her guilt.
She awoke the next morning and amended her stature to an ambitious sashay, a certain step in time with the forgiving nature of an angels heart and the lines of fate, more attuned to the love of a devoted wife.