HOMEWORK FOR WEDNESDAY:  Using the “Framework for Judging,” pp. 11-12 of Burroway, and the suggestions on the syllabus under “Guidelines for Participating in Peer Critique,” comment on this story as thoroughly, trenchantly, and diplomatically as you can.  Note that you don’t have to answer ALL the questions I’ve given you – that’d be busywork – answer them in your head and use them to figure out when the piece is doing something particularly strong or weak.

Un-Accounted For							

Mister Smith, with his crisp, blue shirt and his crisp, blue tie stepped out into the crisp, blue morning. Mister Smith was a small man with small shoes and small eyes, but unusually large ears and a large nose, which was presently attempting to clue him into the fragrance of jasmine in the summer air. His brain, most regrettably, was too preoccupied with the morning's stock prices to take notice. He stepped his way stiffly to a small, green car and got inside. As he turned the key in the dashboard, the engine whined its sleepy reluctance before hiccupping into motion. Mister Smith led the car along the road and around the corner, left and right and straight, into a driveway, and then into a parking bay that was sign-posted, “Mr J Smith, Accountant”.
“Good Morning, Mister Smith.” The secretary greeted him from her desk. He nodded. 
“Good Morning.”
	Mister Smith spent his morning sorting through the Ledger, matching up the numbers. It would not have been correct to say that he particularly liked numbers, but he had something of a mutual understanding with them: While they were not particularly exciting, they were constant, and he could be sure that, even if he left them alone for a few hours while he slept, one and one would still equal two when he awoke. And that morning was no different.

Fleur's mind was engulfed in the scent of the morning, the tendrils of floral sweetness wrapping themselves around her warmly, and the sunlight ran along the surface of her skin. Still tingling with its tenderness, she let herself into the door.
“Good Morning.” The greying woman with tired, bespectacled eyes greeted her wearily.
“Hi,” She replied, “I have an appointment to see Mister Smith.”
“Of course, please, go straight through.”

The Client was late, Mister Smith observed – precisely seven-and-a-half minutes late. And it was just as he turned away from the clock to columns of numbers in the newspaper, that the door opened. He looked up.
What he saw, he was not entirely able to comprehend. Numbers, certainly, he had an agreement with, but words had never been quite so courteous towards him: they meshed themselves together badly, or flitted off at inconvenient moments, and at this particular moment they did not seem to want to serve him. He tried to find the right ones, in his mind, to properly classify the woman's honey skin and delicate green eyes, to assign a category to her hair, to number the peculiar cramped feeling that had taken hold of his chest. The words did not comply, but seemed to hover, just out of reach, beyond his vision.
She laid down her bag and sat, not waiting for him to speak. Taking his stunned silence in her stride, she held out her hand. “I'm Fleur Landau.”
“Jacob Smith,” He said, taking hers, and then realizing that she almost certainly knew that.
The rest of the conversation was quite unclear to him, afterwards. Stiff talk about taxes and insurance costs, quite familiar to him, yet somehow veiled by the strange presence of this beautiful woman, and then without him being entirely aware of it moving, time passed, and she was gone. He sat back for a moment, attempting to replace his sensibility, but it seemed that a part of the strange faerie remained with him in the room. And in fact, it did: for her handbag lay on the seat before him.
Without thinking – an entirely foreign state of mind for him – Jacob snatched up the bag and raced from his office. The alarmed secretary watched him run, out the door, down the driveway and into the street. Running down the hill, he tripped, fell, and dropped the bag, so that its contents scattered across the pavement. Looking up, he could not see Miss Landau anywhere, and, in silent bewilderment, he thought to himself that numbers, though he had long depended on them, had finally failed on their side of the agreement, for he was quite convinced that one and one were no longer satisfied to remain two. 
<div style="font-size:12px;"><hr /><p>Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on unofficial pages of California State University, Dominguez Hills faculty, staff or students are strictly those of the page authors. The content of these pages has not been reviewed or approved by California State University, Dominguez Hills.</font></p></div>