WHO Mo Cortez OT Lila Burke WHAT Two potential friends meet for the first time. WHERE In/around Willow Creek's town center WHEN July 31st, 2016, late afternoon WARNINGS TBA
Shimmy.
Gloria Estefan, goddess, once sang ‘feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger, don’t you fight it ‘til you tried it, do that conga, come on, shake your body baby, do that conga beat’. Monica had heard that song once when she was three and forever since, she’d worshipped at the shrine of Estefan and followed her holy direction.
It didn’t require fancy clothes or a formal ballroom floor; a partner or an audience. It could be any song that made you feel that beat; a molten stream that flowed through the veins like a river or erupted and carried the spirit until it was impossible to stay rooted to the ground. The conga was an option, but not the only one. That was the thing about the rhythm; it was an indisputably liberating force. When the music strengthened, it was a hammer that struck in tune with the heartbeat until it weakened the constraints trying to restrict you to choosing one thing or the other, life was too short to feel pressured, and the soul was too instinctive to be controlled. The rhythm was unselfconscious and joyful.
Slide.
Mo’s shoes skated across the pavement while she made her way down Main Street. A leopard print blouse flowed across her skin, heart-shaped sunglasses shaded her eyes, and a black fedora covered dark waves of hair. Music was playing in her ears, but not loud enough that she couldn’t hear the cars rushing by or the hurried steps of the businessman three steps back who didn’t quite know how to walk around her.
To say that she was happy to be back home in Willow Creek wasn’t exactly an all-encompassing truth. She was, really; her affection for the small town had only grown since she’d first moved and there was a familiarity that she found comforting, after having escaped from home too young. It instilled a certain kind of craving; she was an adventurer who liked regularly scheduled movie nights with her neighbors, what could she say? Reese Witherspoon must have been magic, because she’d sure put a spell on Mo, thank you to the drunk frat boy who’d tried that line on her sister forever ago and inspired Mo to google others like it. She liked everyone; she loved a lot of people she’d met since moving to Oregon. Whenever she traveled, Mo looked forward to coming back.
She’d been really excited about being back in time for Jake’s birthday.
It sucked when happy occasions became sad.
Not that Mo didn’t think that there was a chance that he would be awake within a week. There was a lot of beautiful possibility in the world and Jake didn’t just know how to recognize beauty, he knew how to memorialize it in unforgettable ways. But if Mo was a betting person, she’d say that she wasn’t sure that the first week of August was going to be in Jake’s favor. Maybe closer to September, although if Jake could see his sister, Mo might adjust her prediction.
There were other things pulling at her focus that didn’t make this feel like a typical homecoming, but she’d learned that when you stared at enough dots for long enough, it was hard to see a dot for anything other than a dot, even when you knew it was something more. Sometimes it was necessary to take a step back and let the pictures reveal themselves; forced connections only took a person so far.
Anyway, it was a gorgeous afternoon and Mo had a couple of free hours to enjoy it.
Spin.
She twirled away on her tiptoes when the man behind her lost his patience and moved past her; she blew a kiss at his back, her lips curving into a smirk when he stopped at the crosswalk they’d both been walking towards. She paused at the corner and waited until he’d moved on, before deciding to cross the other street.
It was there that she noticed a young woman standing at the same corner. She tilted her sunglasses down until she had a better view; after a moment, she pushed them back up and her smile became more genuine. “Tourist or newbie?”