Back in the Pink (POW:PIN)

Welcome Play on Words members and anyone who should happen on this story.

"How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart."

Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

Back in the Pink (500 words)

Angela Chopin awakened with a gaping yawn and groping for her glasses, her fingers found nothing. Her eyes sprang open and she found jawdroppingly handsome Crispin cupping her chin lovingly. "Mmm this feels good" she said gasping before clamping her mouth over his. She remembered zipping her pink sleeping bag to his in the remote alpine chalet the night before. "Were they camping?" She wondered.

It was quiet. No, not entirely. She heard birds flapping and chirping. The sounds of nature intensified the backdropping noise of her everyday life. Angela headed the bookkeeping department at Spin Away, a casino/bowling alley/resort complex where the mechanical beeping, blooping, bleeping, cheeping, chirupping and whooping of slot machines and pinball competed with the human stomping, clapping, slurping, chomping and burping. That wasn't even counting the Tailspin Bowling Alley where the countinuous dropping of candlepins, fivepins, tenpins, duckpins and ninepins were commonplace.

Crispin Delpino (from the handicapping department) had caught his friend Angela limping off the dance floor the night before in the Spin City lounge. After helping her to the Spinning Donkey Café and dropping onto barstools she'd been grumping (over a heaping bowl of ciopino) that her spinster life was spinning out of control. She was grasping at straws, barely coping and just that day her Ford Pinto, Pinella, had died after gulping gallons of gas then hiccupping all the way to work. She was hoping to fix him without going broke.

While sipping pina coladas later, Crispin implored her to go away with him for a weekend. Escaping her bebopping, barhopping, power shopping, gossiping, bumping and grinding girlfriends for a couple days would do her a world of good, he opined. He had some beehives to set out, but after that they could hike or (entrapping her with her greatest happiness) ride horses. She was champing at the bit for galloping around whooping and hollering!

"I'm hoping I'm not overstepping our friendship here, but..." Angela began. "I don't remember my kidnapping."

"Relax! We were just sleeping together to conserve heat." Crispin pulled away from their enveloping embrace and rasping his whiskery chin over her cheek reminded her "wipe the sleepiness out of your eyes my bookkeeping queen. We have sweet work to do."

Angela clasping his head to her and wiping her eyes on his hair laughed, "Oh yes! I remember now my beekeeping kingpin!"

"But first, sustenance." he said as he spread out his breakfast delights. "We have spinach quiche, pineapple muffins, and piping hot coffee.

While Crispin tended to his beekeeping chores, Angela took a walk on Pete's Pinnacle; sniffing in the pine wood scent, clomping about on a rock outcropping, scooping up fresh water from a stream, and gazing at a patch of blue lupines.

Bumping over the poorly laid blacktopping on the way back down from the pinnacle, Angela told Crispin she was tickled pink with happiness! She was thrilled to go galloping on a real pinto pony. Crispin pinched her lightly saying to knock off the sappiness!

© Sue Barton 2008

Lupine: Any of numerous plants of the genus Lupinus in the pea family, having palmately compound leaves and variously colored flowers grouped in spikes or racemes.

This was written for the Play on Words Challenge. The word to be included this week (Week 13 - 2008) is "PIN" See playonwords.gather.com/ for further information. Join the group to join in the fun.

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