Hospitality Inn Page #4

• Short story

								

     Sheli paused for a moment and then declared, “I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna keep a log! I’m starting right now!”
     The doctor looked away with a meditative smile.
    Galvanized, Sheli set out on her mission to take the woman’s advice and achieve her goal with baby steps, as she had originally attempted, but this time in an organized fashion. At the local card shop, she found an ornately traditional, leather-bound blank journal that she thought would be a charming addition to the cabin and could fit on the shelf next to a small wooden box. She checked out of the inn and moved back into the cabin along with a large refrigerator and more of the type of hearty nourishment she was used to.
     She immediately began journaling her progress. On the first page of the journal, she logged the distance she had walked and the type and amount of her consumption and detailed how she felt at each moment. She included many of her goals for the next year and speculated on how long it would take to achieve them.
     On the next day, she walked a little bit longer and ate a little bit healthier. She recorded her progress very precisely and improved every day. 
 
The sky took on a bright blue as the sun rose above cold mountains of blinding white that was softened by bluish shadows of the tracks of the white hare and the shadows of the solemn, pointed evergreens gently receding uphill, and sunlight turned the ice to sapphire. On the other side of the slope, contorted wood, jutting up conspicuously out of the vast whiteness, showed, like a sundial, the time of arrival.
     Out of an obscure corner of the silent, white December came Sheli running along the wet footpath meandering to the village and the frozen lake. She had changed.
     The front door of her cabin marked the end of the minimum duration of her daily run, after which Sheli curled up in a large rabbit-skin blanket by the fire and took a look at her cellphone. One snowy morning, she noticed photos her long-estranged friend Katherine had posted. She saw the convent that they had visited once years before and saw that it had become abundant with cats of a variety of colors, and Katherine had become a nun riding a horse she called Calla Lily.

The purple sunset spoke of Januaries gone by. Her journal and a few other books, held upright with a broken brick, shared the same shelf with a flickering candle in a small glass jar, a wooden box of trinkets, and a paper box of tea sitting on top of a smaller one.
     At 4 am, she woke and had her jog around the frozen lake. She arrived to her physical training ahead of time and followed a grueling routine. Her favorite time of the day was the afternoon when she went exploring and re-exploring the village. Her meals were light. 
     The round shape that had once punctuated her vertical friends was now also rather vertical. Her new figure, she suddenly realized, no longer disgusted her when she looked at it in the mirror.
 
In early spring, after about four months in the log cabin, she whimsically packed a light suitcase, strolled out into the cool mist, and, without any destination, hopped onto a train.
     Soon after the train left the station, her cellphone lost the signal. She opened a picture book and started doodling in it while she sipped her hot tea. The sun shone through the window, and she closed the curtains. She finished her tea. “That tea went right through me.”
     She sauntered down the aisle and was suddenly overtaken by a self-consciousness she’d never felt before. People were staring at her, staring at her in a way they never had before.
     Sheli was now an angel with innocent eyes that sparkled of childhood dreams. She wore a tight-knit sweater and elastic pants that revealed an alluring figure just like the ones she had seen in the media, maybe better. She was now the type of girl who made people gawk.
     A passenger woke her when the train ended at the terminal in a strange metropolis. She almost didn’t recognize her scintillating reflection in a glass door as she left the station. She walked aimlessly down the street. 
     On the city streets, in the brightly colored, flashing lights, on gray asphalt, in the monotonous patterns of lines and dots, Sheli commanded attention. Passersby, throngs of shoppers, marveled at her in her tight designer dress and stiletto heels.
     On the city streets, in the nightclubs, up on a rooftop, venturing into a world of varied life with genuine meaning, she wandered alone on the streets. She passed the hardware store not far from her hotel where she half noticed, on the sidewalk, the same black chewing gum stain with the same ambiguous shape every time she came and went on her way to sip espresso in a secluded corner of the same pink café where she discovered she had become more apt to chat with strangers.
     On her way back to her hotel, she thought maybe the chewing gum stain looked like a black angel wearing the undulating long-sleeve dress on the bald, faceless mannequin in the dress shop window. The brightly colored petits fours of the elegant pastry shop, with their black lines and rounded edges, somewhat imitated the minimalist style of the dress shop’s logo and packaging and the suit worn by the sales clerk who appeared suddenly from behind a partition. She noticed Sheli standing in the coat section and then positioned herself behind a pile of wool sweaters.
     Sheli’s eyes roamed the room until they came to a black headless figure wearing a yellow silk blouse and green cotton skirt that looked suitable for an evening social that she should happen upon. She took a few of the same skirts in different colors into the fitting room, slid into them easily, and buttoned them comfortably around her waist. The skirt came to just the right level and would look nice with the blouse. 
     As Sheli was returning the skirts to the rack, the salesclerk approached. “Can I help you?” she asked in an unexpectedly enthusiastic manner.
     “Do you have these in other colors?”
     “No, those are discontinued. Did you try one on?”
     “Yes, but none of them really match.”
     “You mean it’s too much color. Take a black belt. That’ll quiet the colors down.”
     The salesclerk showed Sheli a wide, black leather belt with a black, oblong buckle. She insisted that Sheli try on the blue skirt with the belt and the mannequin’s yellow blouse.
     Sheli stood in front of the full-length mirror and contemplated her new self. She pulled back her hair and raised her head. She thought the belt with her high heels would make the outfit look dignified. She would wear her hair in a bun.
     She saw the salesclerk smiling behind her and smiled back.
     When her shopping was finished, she went for a long walk invigorated by the cool wind on her thighs. She tossed her box of petits fours into a trashcan and returned to her hotel room. Petits fours were now just another frivolity like colorful clothes.

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