Laura Stamps: Actually, She’s The Friend Of A Friend Of My Best Friend

“Don’t worry,” he says.  “It’s true.  I’m older than I look.”

How does he know what I’m thinking?

I study his face again, the smiling face of this stranger I’ve just met.

Maybe I missed something. Maybe it’s that odd ruggedness lurking beneath his youthful features, those sharp edges softened by playfulness.  They tug at me.  It’s as if he’s experienced more hardship than he would ever admit.  Although maybe he just did.  Maybe this comment about his age is a confession.

Still, he doesn’t look a day over thirty.

“You can read my thoughts?” I ask.

“No.  It’s your eyes.  They’re very expressive.  You’re easy to read.”

I snort.  “Hardly,” I say, as I begin to gather up the magickal cat toys in my booth.

It’s after six o’clock, and the Mayfest Arts and Crafts Fair is officially closed for the day.  When it’s done, I’m done.

“Are you a Witch, too?” I ask, grabbing the plastic storage tubs hidden beneath my display table.

“Not me.”  He sets the bag of cat toys he just purchased from me in an empty chair.  “But my brother is married to one.”

“Really?”  I fold the tablecloth and tuck it into a tub.  “Who is your brother?”

“Drayton Manigault.”  He turns the display table on its side to collapse the legs.  “He married Sara Gadsden last month.”

I smile.  I guess he was serious about helping me pack up my booth.

“Ah,” I say.  “I heard about that.  Sara and I have mutual friends.”


Laura Stamps is a Pagan novelist and poet living in South Carolina.  Her fiction and poetry have been nominated for seven Pushcarts and published by Texas Review Press, Ninety-Six Press, and McGraw-Hill, among others.  She enjoys creating experimental forms for her prose poems, blurring the line between fiction and poetry.  http://www.pw.org/content/laura_stamps