The Introvert's Party

It's a rather lovely Saturday night in Los Angeles, despite the fact that it's the middle of winter and we should be experiencing some variation of cold.  Alas, we are all wondering what happened to winter but I'm not complaining.  It's just the right weather for a quiet dinner outside on the patio I do not have.

My guest tonight is Belle, the beautiful and bookish protagonist from the Disney movie, The Beauty and the Beast.  This animated film was the last full movie that the late musical genius Howard Ashman worked on during the "Disney Renaissance" and it plucks all the right chords in my heart, save one.  The Beast will always be infinitely more attractive than the so-called Prince he turns into at the end of the movie.  It is that Beast, gruff and unsure, that Belle (and I) fell in love with, claws and all.

I digress.

She arrives late, stumbling through an apology about the traffic and the errands and then eventually confess that she had simply lost track of time.  The expression she wears is a familiar one; of a soul still savoring the last morsels of a satisfying read and not quite ready to be thrown into a world of sirens and dog poop.  Alas, urban living.

She's brought me a beautiful stack of vintage notebooks because she saw them and couldn't resist, though between us we have enough blank journals to last several lifetimes through.  A writer can never have enough blank paper, right?  And such lovely covers...

Tell me about the book, I say and she begins to recount a timeless tale and though I could probably recite the book myself, I let her wax on about the prince, the damsel, the paper-eating sheep.  It's the best kind of old to us; familiar like the lifelines on the palms of our beloved.  Or should I say paws (in my mind, she's still with the Beast).

Bowls of hot boeuf bourguignon are filled and refilled, glasses of bordeaux consumed under the twinkling of a few glass bulbs and a million stars.

Not tell me truly, Belle, I say.  When did you know that you loved the Beast?

Her laughter rings out through the garden.  The wine has brought a blush to her cheeks (while I have turned an unfortunate tomato red).  I still envy her beauty as I always have, her disregard for status quo, her quiet fortitude, and that castle.  My God.

When did I first know?  She smiles and drains the last drops of bordeaux.  When I saw his huge (hiccup) library, of course! 

No but really, she insists.  He spoils me.  I'll never get used to that lifestyle, coming from such a small town.  

I can relate, to the small town part anyway.  Not that my lifestyle is particularly lavish, but I was raised in a rather provincial part of Hawai'i (don't laugh, there are very "country" parts of Hawai'i and everybody knows everybody's business).

She has to run off before I have time to probe her more.  I want the dish on Gaston.  Is her life like an episode of Downton Abbey?  What does her dad think of the Sham-Wow guy?  Maybe what he needs is a pitch man! 

I sit there long after she's gone and scrape the last bits of beef from my dutch oven (though I always scold people for doing this) and hope she'll come around again.  The girl in me still looks to her as a hero of sorts with some of the best songs in the Disney canon.  But the air has turned a bit chilly and the coffee has gone cold.  Time to turn in and cuddle up with wool socks and a good book.