Clever Magazine, Vol. V, #6, Spr. 03 "The Rose Taboo " (www.clevermag.com)

Wanna read the latest from Clever Magazine?
Click here and return to the coverpage!

The Rose Taboo

by Helen von Ammon

Ellen had never been a beauty, but her style, never in, was never out. She seemed naive, fey, as if she emitted musk, attracting men and other polecats. Recently on her seventy-fourth birthday, never intending to live beyond sixty, Ellen reflected.

She had moved to San Francisco, got a secretarial job. Her boss charmed her with lunch, dinner, drinks atop Nob Hill, cable cars and homosexuals in the Black Cat. Divorced from her Naval Officer husband, she remembered his
thoughtfulness. The day after the divorce was final he brought the prospective Mrs. Naval Officer to meet Ellen.

Then there was the dentist. Following a dental procedure, he administered a shot of who knows what, easing the pain, making her sleepy. Gratefully she accepted his ride home. He had meant his home. Laying her on his bed, quickly he began divesting her of garments. Ensuring that she was cozy and warm, he lowered his body onto hers. Ellen, groggily sleepy but not stupid, fought like a wildcat and slept off the drug, alone in her own tiny territory.

Now at her tender (read fragile) age, she sipped a Stoly in Baccarat’s most expensive jelly glass, reflecting on years gone too fast. Survived three dead husbands, and suicides of two men friends, for which she claimed no credit.

Men in her age range were hopeless. They don’t, or shouldn’t, drive at night, their noses have become twice the younger size, their flaccid members are an embarrassment, and who wants to kiss, entangling dentures.

Her ruminations were interrupted as the phone rang imperiously. She extricated her small behind from the Eames chair, noting that it seemed to have grown deeper, harder to get out of -- proving that we really do get shorter with age. Got there just before the answering machine took over.

An invite to lunch at Caribou’s. “Oh great! I can hardly wait to surround myself with noisy socialites upstaging each other, and the senseless din of the piano, but it’s an opportunity seldom received these days.” They agreed to meet at one o’clock the next day.

Dazzled by the diamonds on her Rolex, she misread the time, gauchely arriving before her host. Soon there he was, on time, smiling at her and carrying a beautiful long-stemmed red rose, sheathed in cellophane, tied with a ribbon.

How dear of Earnest to bring me a rose, she thought, but waited for its presentation. Earnest smiled warmly at the slim, tall, blond, beautiful, seductive hostess.

“Hello Earnest.” Her voice would melt Alaska’s Portage Glacier. “How nice to see you again. OOOOH, it’s for meeee? How lovely and thoughtful. Thank you! Your table is ready. Right this way.”