Don't wait, act now -5minutefreewrite (x3)

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/the-weekend-freewrite-5-11-2019-part-3-the-dramatic-twist

White pelicans are gregarious. What one does, they all do.

The largest of all the pelicans preened. The rest of the pelicans preened. The smallest of all the pelicans preened. The rest of the pelicans preened. The medium sizest of all the pelicans preened. The rest of the pelicans preened.

On the coast of Amalfi, Jean watched pelicans preen. She had two hats on her head. The beret she'd been wearing every day, and the in-n-out burger cap she'd put on just the day because her little cousin from California had brought it special for her to wear to remind her of home, he said. He was a precocious little scamp. More of a scalawag than anything else, and he probably knew that she wouldn't enjoy wearing such a tacky memento. She humored his good-tempered cruelty, though, just to demonstrate to him that adults were above such petty squabbles. He'd been 13 when she'd left, full of her adulthood, ready to take on the world. Ready to experience a GAP YEAR. Now he was 15, and she could choose not to be annoyed by him. She had more adult concerns. She was hosting her family abroad!

"We really think that Jonny doesn't want to move from Nebraska to Main."

She probably meant to finish that with "-street", since her pronunciation of Main left the silent e at then end off, so it couldn't have been Maine, thought Porcelain.

Oh, Porcelain's head spun with the thoughts of what had just happened. Had his brain betrayed him and made his gratitude sound obsequious? What did "obsequious" even mean!? And where was Jean?

Jean had moved back from "Abroad" just in time to fall in love with him, a hick teen ready to settle down in his old hick town, with nary a thought to her, a world traveler. They were young for adults who went to Europe to settle down, but just the right age for adults who never left their home town to settle down. The weight of one day no longer existing weighed on him. He was afraid that there was a piece of him left in a pocket in a London train station. He hadn't been there, but she had.

Get a fine pen free.

That was what the sign said. That was what Porcelain thought the sign meant, but when he went in to get the fine pen free, he found that it came with signing up for a time share talk. Not much else to do today. Jean was home with his mom, and they were planning their bowling night that he wasn't invited to. Everybody else was at the school field cheering on the Hawks, but he'd discovered that watching high school football made him inexplicably sad. Like the weight of age grew with each successful touchdown observed and not lived.

So he went ahead with the time share talk. They were asking him all kinds of questions about his income, but he wondered that they couldn't ballpark him at least by the fact that he was the kind of person interested in a free fine pen. So he lied. He tried not to lie too much, but there were times when he was just annoyed enough with a stranger that he made up a different person for himself to be.

Today, he was still Porcelain, of course, because they needed proof of identity, but instead of working at the Walmart, he worked at the Costco, so instead of minimum wage, he made a living salary... enough to buy a piece of property for part of the year along the Amalfi Coast... Would he like an all-expenses paid vacation there to try it out, just him and his wife, before he bought? Yes, he would.