So, I posted this story a while ago, after doing it in my creative writing class as an exercise in image and setting. Because it was such an exercise, there was a LOT more imagery than I would normally use, so much so that it kind of bogged down the story. I've now cut some of it out, redone some of it, and added a tad more dialogue. (It helps that now I don't have my original restriction - we had to describe the place in enough detail that people could tell where it was without our mentioning it. Since I don't have that restriction, I just tell the reader where they are. Anyway, my main question is: Is it still too much, or is this a good balance now? Let me know!
Sunlight streams in through the tall windows, illuminating the bright colors of the McDonald’s Playplace. A curved magenta slide burps giggling children out of the maze of plastic and Plexiglas. Children shove their tennis shoes into yellow cubbies against the wall, shrieking with laughter as they chase each other across the blue mat on the floor.
Four children clamber into the jungle of tubes. The youngest, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired snippet of five, flattens her nose against the first porthole she comes to and waves violently at a dark-haired woman below.
“Mama, look!” Her voice is muffled by the Plexiglas.
The woman looks up and finds her daughter’s purple t-shirt, the one with the image of Esmeralda smiling from the front of it. Esmeralda is her daughter’s favorite Disney character. Giving a tired smile, the woman waves back, a worn-out, three-dimensional version of the figure on the shirt.
She notices a pale pink sock on the floor beside her and sighs. Kaylie had lost a sock before she even left the table. She picks up the sock and then with her forefinger absently traces the big yellow M on her fry cup. It reminds her of distant birds in a painting.
She checks her cell phone. A quarter to four. He should’ve been here half an hour ago. She sighs but is not surprised. She piles her garbage onto a tray, walks it to the nearest trash can, and returns to her seat to stare at the one tall, white cup that remains on the table. One cup, because they share. Kaylie always insists on filling it herself. Her mother sips dutifully at the mixture of orange pop, Coca Cola, and pink lemonade that her daughter has concocted this time.
Now a shadow dims her table. A man stands over her, tall, with flaxen hair and blue eyes like Kaylie’s. He gives a small smile. She does not.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says.
“I sort of expected it,” she replies. “It’s alright. Have a seat.”
He slides into the seat across from her and folds his hands on the tabletop, gazing at her, waiting. She stares out at the children on the playscape, her head propped on a fist. Her daughter chases a younger girl across the floor. The man prompts, “You wanted to see me?”
She looks at him.
“You should eat something,” she says.
“I’m not hungry. I came from a meeting. We had lunch.”
“Oh.”
He waits again. Then he says, “Michelle?”
After a moment, she asks, “Did you ever want to have kids, Jeff?”
His eyebrows go up, but he considers.
“I guess so. I never really thought about it.”
She falls silent again. He asks, “Why?”
She points out Kaylie, with her jeans and her purple Esmeralda t-shirt, with her one bare and one pink-socked foot, with her flaxen hair curling at her ears the same way his does.
“That one’s yours,” she says.
Keep it up! What happens next?
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