Georgina lives in Queens, New York with her artist husband and musician son. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and was a stage actress for many years. Born and raised in the Southwest of the U.S, she went to school in New York City, graduating from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater.
Georgina writes The Time Mistress Series: romantic, time-travel novels, spiced with adventure. The first book in the series is The Time Baroness, set in Jane Austen's England. The next is The Time Heiress, which takes place in pre-Civil War New York City, and the third, The Time Contessa, takes the reader to Renaissance Italy. Georgina is also a screenwriter, journalist, film/theater critic and blogger.
Find Georgina online at georginayoungellis.com
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Consuelo Saah-Baehr
Dear David,
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Even though I should repent, I feel no remorse. If you called today, I would do whatever you said. It’s an attraction that is outside the boundaries of common sense, decency and loyalty. It would be hypocritical to confess, “Bless me Father for I have sinned. I would have committed adultery given the opportunity. The lover superseded my husband and could have been my husband had he not been distracted by success.”
When you responded to my wedding announcement, you included a note: “It would be wonderful to get a glimpse of you. Could we have lunch?” You put your private number in the note and we met at Café des Artistes. After three hours of picking at our food and guzzling our wine, we stayed long after the lunch hours were over. I visited the Ladies Room three times because of the wine. When you left the table to do likewise, two couples lingering at the next table asked me if it was really you and I said yes. It was.
I was wearing a fur bonnet that tied under my chin. That sounds excessive but it was just right for my face during that year. It had a Dr. Zhivago kind of drama and made me look glamorous. I was dressed in a black wool gabardine suit with a short double-breasted jacket and an a-line skirt. I had bought the suit to look business-like and reliable for an appearance before the design board in the village where my new husband and I were seeking a variance. Those Presbyterians would have been surprised to know the same suit was being used to unbalance a former lover.
“What are you doing now?” you asked when the second bottle of wine was opened.
“Recovering,” I said. I thought it was a clever answer but that’s exactly what I was doing. Recovering from the shock of marriage. Recovering from twenty-three days in Tuscany with a moody stranger.
“I mean job wise? What are you working at?”
“I write ads for a department store chain.”
“Really? What kind of ads? You mean clothes? Tell me an ad you’ve written,” you said, smiling.
“I just wrote an ad yesterday for very thick carpeting - Your friends will think you’ve struck it rich.” I had been ashamed of that headline but then I knew it would amuse you. The wine and the occasion acted like a truth serum. I was thrilled to tell you every nuance of my hard sell copy and I knew it made me more precious in your eyes. “Just the coats you want for spring,” I said slowly as if reciting poetry. “Real wool with generous balmacaan sleeves. On sale now. Just when you need them most.”
You stopped talking and looked at me. In the movies there are long close-ups of people looking at each other but in real life it’s hard to hold someone’s gaze. I thought you were going to ask me about my new husband. We held the gaze silently and after a while, it became so intimate I could feel my body going limp. You asked for the check and I knew we could make love that day. Who would have guessed that telling you a callous headline would help me commit adultery? In the cab we kissed repeatedly as we had in the old days when you were still an ordinary man. We melted into each other in an embrace that held all our wistfulness over how things had worked out for us.
I returned to my marriage apartment like a zombie. I knew if you had asked me to leave that day I would have done so without a backward glance but you had obligations and were leaving for California that afternoon.
I was doing freelance work at home and had an old typewriter that I used pushed against a wall. I typed facing the wall all the next day. I typed copy for miniature electroplated charms depicting the signs of the Zodiac. “Choose all twelve signs,” I wrote in the copy. “They are perfect stocking stuffers.” The psychiatrist who had his office one floor down came to my door and asked if I could type somewhere else because he could hear me and it was disturbing his patient. He said he could hear every key go down. “Why do you type so hard?” he asked. I said okay not knowing what I had agreed to do. Fifteen minutes later he came up again and said he could still hear me.
At one time, in popular songs and literature, women expressed their love obsession by saying they “ached for his touch.” I wouldn’t have believed that was possible but it happened to me. I felt a complete ongoing ache that was almost paralyzing. It was as if my arms were configured in a phantom embrace and I was stuck in that yearning and nothing but the actual embrace could ease my limbs. Nothing as thrilling or interesting has happened before or since. You went away and by the time you returned almost a year later I had been carried by circumstances to an expensive suburb. I had finally settled down and turned to the first page of The Joy of Cooking.
Yours,
CSB.