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Dreaming of the Netherlands by Jennifer Companik

4/1/2019

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I noticed her heel-click-hip-twist hourglass silhouette as we walked toward bright light at the end of a long corridor between Terminal B and Terminal C. My husband, teenage son, and all the other travelers flowed past on the electric walkway: She and I the only ones who'd chosen to move on our own locomotion. She clicked along a good twenty feet ahead of me, blonde hair in a chignon, a few locks flying loose around her face. She trod with long-strided purpose. But her heels could not outpace my flats. I caught up, though I did not overtake her. That's when I noticed the zipper pull on the back of her uniform: a little silver plane-shaped pendant hanging three or four inches from the top of the zipper on a blue jeweled chain.

Did the dress come that way? I asked.

No, she said.

I like it.

Thanks, she said. She smiled with dimples.

I blushed.

The winged pin on her chest, which I'd hoped would say her name, said, "The Netherlands."

I'd never been. So many places I’d been... But not there.

I slowed my stride to match hers. She noticed me noticing.

You should come, she said.

We both walked more slowly. She brushed the inside of my palm with her fingertips.

I should, I said, blushing harder.

My men hailed me from the end of the hall like a pair of foregone conclusions: I hurried to rejoin them.

I didn't know then we'd be on the same flight; where she would serve me water and champagne, coq au vin, strawberry tarts, honeydew like a plate of crescent moons, and for breakfast an omelet and rose-petal tea; where my men would sleep, one row up, snoring, farting, oblivious; where I'd spend the eight and a half hours between Paris and Boston awake, dreaming of pulling her zipper; where she would offer, in the dark, on her break, somewhere over the Atlantic, to “tuck me in”; and where I would, foolishly, decline.
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​​​Jennifer Companik holds an M.A. from Northwestern University and is a fiction editor at TriQuarterly. Her accomplishments include: Pushcart Prize Nominee, Border Crossing; first prize, The Ledge’s 2014 Fiction Awards; and work appearing or forthcoming in: Adanna, Muse, and Northern Virginia Review. By reading her work you are participating in one of her wildest dreams.

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    FLASH GLASS: 
    A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF FLASH FICTION, PROSE POETRY, & MICRO ESSAYS


    Categories

    All
    A Grave Duty
    Amy Sugeno
    Atlas Sweating
    Audrey DuBois
    Christina Harrington
    Consider/A/Caretaker Of The Dead
    Cori Bratby-Rudd
    Daniel Dagris
    Davis-s-osgood
    Dennis-finnell
    Directions-lost-and-chosen
    Dreaming-of-the-netherlands
    Elisabeth-preston-hsu
    Flash Fiction
    Gingko
    Hammonasset-mica
    Heidi-richardson
    Howard Nemerov's After Party
    I-find-my-death-in-a-corn-maze
    Jennifer Companik
    Jimmy Hollenbeck
    Lenny Dellarocca
    Lisa Romeo
    Micro Essay
    Poetic Entanglements
    Prose Poetry
    Resurrecting The Warbird
    Robin Lewis
    Sandra Cimadori
    Saved By A Scott's Oriole
    The Day My Tia Maria's Face Fell Down
    To Be Wrong Or To Be Whole.
    Vanessa Zimmerman
    What I've Drawn And What You've Done
    Winded


    Cover Image: "A Peaceful Coexistence Part II" 
    Laurie Borggreve
    ​Issue 18


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