From this bundle, which contains poems and one short story, you can read the short story below.
Berry-picking
(September 2011)
He tiptoed around the toadstool and knocked on the door. “Are you up yet?” “Depends on who you’re asking, the toadstool or me,” she yelled and opened the door in the angled toadstool, tiara in hand. “Yes?”
“I thought maybe we could go berry-picking today.” “You’re right, it’s a marvelous day for it. Let me put some shoes on and I’ll join you.” When she came back to the door, he was no longer at her toadstool’s doorstep. Where’d he gone off to? She looked around and spotted him, when he yelled from the garden around his parents’ toadstool. “My mom wants me to have a decent breakfast first.” “Okay,” she hollered back. “Meetcha in an hour!” And she went back inside, did the dishes, brushed the cat and checked her e-mail because she’d already had breakfast.
“Are you ready?” he asked an hour later, impatiently jumping up and down on her doorstep. “Yes, but let me quickly close the kitchen window,” she replied, and went inside to close the window. When she stepped outside, he was nowhere in sight. Where’d he gone off to this time? She looked around and then spotted him when she heard him yell from the garden around his parents’ toadstool. “My dad wants me to go fly-fishing with him. Shall we go berry-picking this afternoon instead?” “Okay,” she hollered back. “See ya at two!” And she went back inside, posted an update on Twitter, did her bookkeeping, and made a mushroom omelet for lunch.
“Come on, come on!” He was pacing up and down and around her toadstool impatiently while she wrapped up an exchange in one of her Facebook groups, and paused the new track she’d been listening to on MySpace, grabbed her berry-picking satchel and walked toward the door, where she was met with an icy silence. She turned her hands into fists and put them on her hips. Where the devil had he gone off to now? She looked around and spotted him, yelling from the garden around his parents’ toadstool. “My mother wants to teach me how to bake cookies. I suggest we go berry-picking tomorrow.” She grumbled and didn’t holler back “Okay!” but “Enjoy your cookies!” and went berry-picking all by herself. The pattern repeated itself day after day, until one day, her toadstool was gone and the door no longer there to knock on. She had turned the berries into jam, used the jam in cakes, and started selling cakes from her toadstool. But she had remembered the “Location, location, location” chant from her college days and had the toadstool moved to a prime location in town, while preserving its precarious yet precious angle, as it made her toadstool so easy to recognize from a distance. He had to go on Twitter to find her, and found she had thousands of followers, all wanting to go berry-picking with her.
