Final Draft #1  
Fiction Writing Workshop
Ami Regier

     The room was warm, soft, and delicate with beige walls decorated with mauve, peach and pale pink flowers painted on them.  There were long windows along an entire side of the room with mauve curtains flowing downward, stretching from the textured ceiling to the soft cream colored carpet.   The furniture was a dark and polished wood, making the drawers heavy as she pulled out all thirteen of them in admiration.  Her mouth dropped open as she glanced from one piece to the next, gliding her palm across  their smooth, cool tops. The bed was more fabulous than any she'd seen; big, soft, with a canopy towering above the mattress and matching the ornate walls.  She admired her young, delicate looking features in a full size standing mirror and caressed the gold frame.  Her image was blurred in the smeared glass but, she was still beautiful.  The house was a dream to her and she ran to thank her husband but, could not find him.  
     She wandered around the house and then to the stables where she was told that her husband had returned to his work.  Maria was  disappointed that she would not spend the day with her new husband and decided to accustom herself with the house and all of its wonderful mysteries.  She covered all of the rooms on the first two floors seeing a parlor, tearoom, dinning area, kitchen, reading room, library, music room, five bedrooms and six bathing rooms.
     The library was filled from floor to ceiling with shelves of books.  There were many
authors she recognized; including her favorite-Robertson.  She spent hours looking at the different collections.  The books looked like a thousand rainbows with each collection a specific color.  She studied every detail of her new home carefully and quickly, with the eyes of an active child, all the while smiling and commenting on the beautiful decor.  Maria thought that she would forever be happy in this new house so much larger than any she had ever seen: until she discovered the third floor.  
     Upstairs, she found another reading room, bedroom, and an open attic area.  The bedroom  puzzled her.  It was filled with personal belongings of her husband-his wedding clothes were laid on the bed and there were pictures of people from times past hanging on the walls.  Her mouth dropped open as she saw a beautiful record player on a short wooden table.  She quickly walked over and glanced through a stack of jazz records lying next to it. Maria hummed a song off one of the records.  Daddy used to play this record and dance with mom after dinner.  The music freed them.  Nothing mattered.  A smile came across her lips but, she did not have time to think, for the afternoon sun was falling and she anticipated the arrival of her husband.
     
     Travis returned and the couple dined together over an elaborate meal:  soup, salad, chicken, dinner roll, sherbet and wine.
     "How was your day?  I looked all around the house and met
      the cook-is her name Mary? and the older maid.  
     Everyone is so nice and the house is wonderful.  I love
     the bedroom and the library has so many wonderful books!  
     Where did you get them?  I saw that you had the complete
     Robertson collection.  It must have cost a fortune.  Even the early
     pieces from his travels to England.  So rare-and they're all here,
     in our house.  Thank you for saving me;  bringing me here.  
     Thank you,"  Maria smiled at her husband.

"Stay away from the top floor.  It's mine.  I have work to be done.  Please do not disturb me this evening.  I will call upon you later,"  was his only reply as he left the full plate and the room.
Travis retired to the library, leaving Maria to an empty room and the feeling of loneliness that soon would become part of her routine.  
     Travis had met Maria soon after she had fled her parents' village to escape a life of Christian service through the catholic church.  He was four years her elder and  had social, economical and political standings in the village he had lived all of his life.  They were married only three days after their initial meeting and Maria's dreams of married life were soon crushed.
     The evenings have remained the same since that first evening; Travis retiring to the library and Maria sitting alone in the dining area.  Maria always trying to talk to her husband, he rarely responded.  The couple spent little time together and never spent an entire night of sleep in the same room.  Travis spent his nights upstairs sometimes sleeping, sometimes reading his collection of Carlos Fuentes, until the sun stirred.  
     
     Travis had been out in the field all day; the hot sun had begun to take over his thoughts.  The day started as every morning; a cup of coffee, a packed sandwich, and canteen of water to help make it through the day.   A simple life, careless about the business of the village around him.  He walked the mile and a half to the field, then worked from sunrise to late in the afternoon.  He worked alone although he owned the most land of the village people and had several workers living at his homestead to care for his horses, chickens, and pigs.

     He had been working for eight hours when he decided to take a break for lunch.  The sun was intense and his mind was wandering to places he had never been.  Maria.  He kept thinking of Maria; it made his head was pound.  He had never in the twelve years of marriage thought about his wife.  He sat down under a large oak tree and ate his sandwich, still thinking of her.  Images from the first night they made love and how he felt a few days earlier when he discovered that she had been in his room.  Ungrateful bitch.  The sun is so hot...he removed his shirt.  There was no breeze to cool him and the shade was hot, he closed his eyes.  

     His house on fire.   He panics.   Run.  He runs around the house,
      finds workers but, no Maria.  Inside and upstairs to her
     room-she's not here.  A faint noise above the crackle of the
     fire below. The bedroom upstairs.  Door locked.   Music.   
     Pounds on the door, begs Maria to come out.  No answer.
"Come out now.  I will not allow this.  You are acting like a child.  Come out."  Travis banged on the door but, there was no response but, he could hear her counting... "1,2,3; and 4...1,2,3;  and 4."
"Then die" he screamed as he moved a trunk in front of the door.
     
Travis runs to the parlor rescues a tea set and expensive chair.  He yells at the workers to help him.  Some are ordered to work on putting out the fire, others are told to get the most valuable items from the house.  Mary runs upstairs to save Maria but is stopped midway up by Travis.  
"Forget about her.  Get the Robertson collection from the library.  Now!"  he yelled at her when she opened her mouth to  protest.
"But, Maria...."
"Do as I told you or you will join her!" he pointed downwards with an estranged look upon his face.
     
     The workers made trips in and out of the house grabbing anything that looked of value.  Travis stood and watched holding the wedding picture delicately as though he were far away from the burning house.  
"What the hell are you doing?  I told you to get the Robertson collection.  That's Fuentes. Can't you read?  Put that down now and do what I said" Travis screamed at Mary!
"I thought you would rather this one.  This is the one you read.  I will get them both.  I will save all of them."
"Leave the Fuentes!  Now!  Get out of here."
The smoke was rapidly building up.  Travis threw down the picture, herded everybody outside, kicked a Fuentes' book that Mary had dropped inside  and blocked the front door with the porch swing.  
     The fire had been put out by the workers and luckily, much of the house was saved. The rooms that were destroyed were soon rebuilt to mirror the houses' original form.  Travis moved back into the house but, he had his bed put in the library and he never went past the second floor.  He remarried only weeks after the fire-to a young girl who had brown excited eyes and hair long and dark:  like Maria.   
     The workers left after this marriage except Mary;  she hid upstairs until Travis returned from his work.  The wife would sneak around the house and go up to the forbidden third floor.  She read Fuentes' "The Doll Queen" to one of the new workers.  She had found the book upstairs and struggled to read the early stories that were damaged in the fire.  Mary was scared in the house and would run from a room if the wife entered it; on the top floor though, Mary would scream and throw things at the woman when she discovered her there. Long after the fire died, the sounds of an old jazz record could be heard throughout the night and sometimes, it sounded as though somebody was dancing on the third floor.