JUNE 2005 GUEST AUTHOR

MIKE BROEMMEL

The Shadow Cast  by Mike Broemmel

Book Description

Each tale in Mike Broemmel's new anthology, The Shadow Cast, can proudly stand alone in the greatest
tradition of story telling; but read in sequence his painstakingly ordered works pack the punch of an epic novel.


The Shadow Cast  by Mike Broemmel, begins as follows:



                                                The Ladies of Eden Roc


"He did what?" Teda Fineberg asked her nearly constant cohort, Lilly Rosenthal.

"Umbrellas," Lilly replied. Both women had solid, stout, New York accents.

"What?" Teda rejoined.

"Umbrellas," repeated Lilly.

Teda and Lilly sat under a pale blue and white striped patio umbrella on the deck around the pool at Eden Roc
Hotel on Miami Beach.

"Umbrellas," Teda repeated the word of her friend, pointing directly upward at the canvas contraption covering
them both from the sun's late morning rays.

"Not umbrella-umbrellas," Lilly explained, raising her hand in front of Teda's face while holding her thumb and
forefinger about an inch apart. In a slightly lower voice Lilly added: "Umbrella-umbrellas."

Teda mimicked Lilly's hand gesture and said herself: "Not umbrella-umbrellas but," and in a lower voice,
"umbrella-umbrellas."

"Right," Lilly chirped, smoothing a hand over her shellacked bouffant hairdo. She kept her hair dyed fall apple
red. A widow for five years, and in her sixties for seven, Lilly spent a month each winter at Eden Roc with Teda.

Teda, like Lilly, had a puffed and well teased hairdo, hers dyed jet black. At sixty-six, Teda was a year younger
than Lilly, although she had been a widow for a year longer.

Teda asked: "Do you mean umbrella-umbrellas?"

Lilly nodded.

"Like the tiny paper things in drinks?" Teda asked.

"Uh-huh," replied Lilly. "That's right."

"And he invented them? This fellow you met invented them?" Teda, part impressed, part skeptical, enquired.

"Uh-huh, that's right."

"Those little umbrella-umbrellas in drinks?"

"That's right," replied Lilly. "Uh-huh."

Solemnly, Teda noted: "I like those umbrellas."

Equally somber, Lilly herself remarked: "Oh my, so do I."

                                                           
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The Shadow Cast  by Mike Broemmel, ©2004.  All rights reserved.  

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©2004-2005 Terri Kay.  All rights reserved.  Terri Kay, PO Box 2861, Elkhart, IN  46515  main@terrikay.com