The Eyes of the Beholder

word count:299



         She picked through the bin searching for a lemon with a perfect shape; clear, bright color and blemish free skin with pores bursting with fragrance.  It took her over forty minutes to find ‘it’. 

         Then she searched for the most spectacular tulip.  She could see it in her mind’s eye—a deep purple velvet; exquisitely shaped and a long graceful stem.

         She had planned the still life carefully—the complementary color scheme with the shapes echoing each other.  One perfect photo and she’d ace her last art course and graduate with honors. 

         It took her a while, but at last she found ‘the’ tulip.  On the way home she picked up a meatball and garlic pizza.          

Her senses tingled from the aroma of garlic seeping from the pizza box, mingling with the wonderful citrus smells.          

Once home, she placed the lemon on a pristine cloth—first one way and then another.  She stepped back, munching pizza and nudging the lemon around.

         It took most of the pizza to get the scene ‘just right’.  But when she tried to focus, she was distracted by the awful taste in her mouth.

She was brushing her teeth when the phone rang and answered with the brush still in her mouth.

         “Herrow?”  She took the brush out and started over.  “Hello?  Wait, let me get a pencil…okay. Okay.  Yeah, I’ve wrote it down.  Bye.”

         She grabbed her camera and snapped photo after photo, each from a different angle and headed off to the university to turn in her work.  Three painful days later she got her grades. 

Yes!  Her ‘A’ and a comment from the professor about her insightful still life.  She flipped through the pictures—and to her horror, there in between the lemon and tulip was her clearly wet toothbrush.