Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 128

Cherry Saturday, April 18, 2020

Today is Piñata Day. That seems appropriate since at this point most of us are feeling beaten like one.

I went to Amazon to see if they had anything interesting in the way of piñata pictures and they did: a bright green corona virus piñata. Because nothing says “party” like widespread sickness and death. They also had a princess piñata so small children could take sticks and beat a woman to death. Even the llama piñata I eventually decided to feature was problematical: Don’t hit animals, you jerks.

I’m going to pass on the pinatas. Well, not all of them. If they ever bring out a line of national government figures, I’m in.

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Lily Notes 4

I was re-reading Thief of Time and found this:

“And if you want the story, remember that the story does not unwind. It weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space time, which is the perfect moment.”

That whole page is a great musing on story in general (it’s page 5 in iBooks edition), but that idea that everything rests on that one point, the perfect moment, the obligatory scene (in my interpretation) when the whole story universe completes itself, that, I think, is the key to fiction. (And Thief of Time does ends on the perfect moment.) The problem is that I don’t know what that moment is until I get there. Well, I know it for Nita, but not for Lily. I’ll never have to know it for Lily (not a book), but I kinda want to anyway.

And that means I really need an antagonist in here. Because the obligatory scene/climax needs an antagonist. And then maybe a resolution for an even more perfect moment, but still, an antagonist is key.

I have Sebastian, of course, but he feels like a minion. Which means whoever the Big Bad is, he or she is not on the page yet, because I don’t see Bjorn as a master criminal, and I want Cheryl to stay good and nuts. Vanessa is out, too. And I definitely don’t see Ferris as Dr. No.

So something to do with the Lily’s old job which was working in Seb’s department at the university’s teaching museum on the latest exhibit which was about Vikings, which is how she got hit by a reproduction axe. Of course, there’s always Seb’S Uncle Lewis, the head of the museum, but I don’t know anything about him except he feels like a minion, too. I’m thinking maybe a secretary, everybody overlooks her, expects her to do everything, so she does: graft, blackmail, theft of office supplies . . .

Okay, maybe not.

A Doppelgänger Antagonist would be good, but I don’t have a firm enough grip on Lily to play off her. Maybe somebody else who thinks he/she/they is reincarnated? Somebody with a Viking grudge? No. Leave the Vikings to Lily. But the doppelgänger idea is still good.

And then there’s the whole therapy thing. I still think that Nadia is like salt or a Greek chorus or a border on a medieval manuscript: She’s important but she’s not part of the narrative. I’m thinking there should be six Nadia scenes, no seven, for the six weeks (?) of the book’s timeline, the one at the beginning where Lily meets Nadia before she goes back to the diner and meets Fin (and talks to Seb, need him in there) and another six Nadia scenes, one at the end of each of the following weeks. It would be Lily talking to Nadia about what happened that week, getting re-oriented, going off to do better . . . Yeah, no idea what that would entail, but that’s what the Girls are sending up.

And then there’s reincarnation problem, except I think Thief of Time may have given me the key to that, too. There’s a bit in there about the universe recreating itself every moment, so that there is no past or future, there is only the now. That dovetails neatly with the reason I loathe flashbacks: There are no flashbacks in real life, there is no moment when we are transported back to see exactly what happened in the past (there is no past, there is only the now of the story), instead we have a memory of the past in the now. Or as Thief of Time has it, there is only the present and the memory of the past, there is no past because this moment is brand new so nothing came before it. I love this idea because it explains Lily’s reincarnation: She has the present and the memory of her reincarnations (not twelve, that’s too many); therefore whether or not she was actually reincarnated from a past life is irrelevant, there is no past, there is only now. That’s not just good philosophy, that’s good fiction craft.

I have really enjoyed re-reading Thief of Time.

Although now I have to figure out what to do with the damn cat. Really, this thing is a mess. Thank god it’s not a real book.

So what are you expecting next? What do you need/want? What the hell am I doing?

The post Lily Notes 4 appeared first on Argh Ink.

This is a Good Book Thursday, April 16, 2020

Alisa Kwitney and I were texting and trading book recs the other day and I found out she’d never read Terry Pratchett, a particularly egregious dereliction considering she’s friends with Neil Gaiman. So I told her to read Thief of Time. Then I realized it had probably been a year since I’d read Thief of Time, so I’m going back to it, too, and now, I’m eyeing the Watch series again, possibly the greatest detective series ever written, especially if you like rough justice and hard laughter. I also told her about Ben Aaronovitch because the Rivers of London series is just damn good. She recommended Lucy Parker, and I said, “Definitely Mhairi McFarlane.” About ten minutes into our fast-and-furious texting exchange, the phone rang and she said, “Why are we TYPING?” and we settled in for a this-is-a-good-book swap chat session with frequent asides about dogs and mothers. So this is also This-Is-A-Good-Friend Thursday, featuring Alisa Kwitney, who is also a Good Author and you should read her. Which I am going to do again after I read about Susan Sto-Helit defeating those damn Auditors and finding True Love.

Because Terry Pratchett was a genius, and Thief of Time is proof.

What did you read this week?

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Working Wednesday, April 15, 2020

It’s April 15 but taxes aren’t due. So much for the whole death-and-taxes rule. I have been throwing things out with a vengeance (not yarn or dogs of course) and scrubbing with less enthusiasm, and my yard is starting to not look so much like a blasted heath, so, hey, progress. Also more work on Nita (see proof below) and Lily, this time on the collage (more about that after the jump).

First, what did you do this week?

Now about that collage. Every time I do one for a book, I’m amazed at how much stuff comes to the surface: the Girls are fluent in Collage. This time I didn’t mean to go back to the general story collage, I just needed a placeholder for Sebastian that worked. I’d chosen an actor I didn’t like for Seb previously, and that obviously was not going to work: you have to like something about each of your characters or you’ll never get inside. So if found a different picture of somebody I didn’t know, and he was handsome and looked charming and I thought, “Okay, Lily might have fallen for that.” And then I tried to stick him in the collage and I realize the collage was all wrong.

First of all, the placeholder was too bland. Second, she was too small. Lily has to own that story so she had to own the collage, too. So I swapped out Lily’s placeholder and made her the biggest thing in the collage (which she should have been from the beginning) and that shifted everything else, and I started to put other things in and a lot more became clear. One of my favorite discoveries: if Fin meant “Viking” to Lily, there had to be some kind of image for that, so I went back to find Thor-as-Viking pictures and found the perfect one: a Thor action figure. I love that. Not quite real, but very lifelike. (And expensive; that sucker was several hundred bucks. No, I did not buy it.)

The collage is still a work in progress and will be until I abandon this story, and there are some troubling things in there, like why is the Thor figure trying to ax Cheryl in the head? So I went back in and divided what I had into logical groupings, and ended up with six: Lily and Fin, Cheryl and her not-behind-the-counter sign, Van and her we-are-not-open-24-hours sign, Bjorn (needs a hamburger image), the reincarnation/Nadia stuff at the top which weirdly includes Sebastian, and the title/axes/cat at the bottom. So that also is food for discovery.

At least now I know who Seb is. Progress.

And now back to the regularly scheduled post: So what did you work on this week?

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Creativity is Hard: A Nita Update

I read this piece in the NYT about the Broadway show of The Addams Family, and it was so reflective of what’s happening with Nita, that I was comforted. The underlying theme of the article is that sometimes it takes awhile to get it right, and even when you get it right, sometimes it’s a long way from where you started.

The article talks about how they had this wonderfully transgressive idea for doing The-Addams-Family-But-Different-New-and-Edgy (which god knows the original cartoons were) and how it bombed in Chicago and they retooled and it crashed in NYC and they retooled, and then they took it to New Orleans and retooled . . . and now ten years later it’s still going strong, the best seller four out of the past five years of the company that licenses rights to plays (it was second the other year). The musical they ended up with was not the musical they had intended, but, as one of the writers, Marshall Brickman, says, “A piece, in a sense, tells you what it wants to be. And the audience tells you what it would be willing to accept.”

That’s what I’m looking at in Nita.

I thought the original ms of Nita was pretty damn good. It was too long, but I could fix that, what I needed the betas for was to give me that audience reaction. And all of three of them said it was the best thing I’d ever done. I mean they raved about it. Then I sent it to NYC and it closed opening night. Both agents and my editor said, “No.”

That was confusing.

So I did what Andrew Lippa, the composer and lyricist of The Addams Family did, what any smart writer doesn’t when something isn’t working: “We ripped apart our show. We looked at the central conflict, and we looked at the score, and where we could make improvements.”

In my case, I looked at the central conflict and realized there were two, and the one that was the most compelling wasn’t the one I was spending page space on. It’s the romance, stupid. This is not just because I’m considered a romantic comedy author, it’s because that’s where the juice is for me, too. I just got distracted by Ideas, which, I gather from the NYT article, is where The Addams Family people went wrong, too. Sean Penn once said on The Actor’s Studio that film was too important to waste on entertainment, and I remember hearing that and thinking, “You moron, without entertainment, the message doesn’t exist, entertainment is the delivery system for the ideas.”

And that in a nutshell is what storytelling is all about. The Addams Family had Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth and characters that weren’t just interesting, they were beloved. Rick Elice said that “We rewrote it to make the show more about the characters, not just the family characters but the new characters that we introduced to make it less bizarre and more human.” Oh, yeah, the characters. Not the ideas. (Although they cut one character I would have protected to the death: Bernice, a giant squid.)

I am not, of course, laughing at them for this blatantly obvious realization; I’ve been working on Nita for four years only to come to the same conclusion, so I do not throw stones from my glass laptop. But wading through thousands and thousands of words to dig my characters out of the rubble is not only back-breaking mentally, it’s depressing just from the amount of destruction going on. I’m not slashing through the jungle of this book just to meet a word count, I’m trying to free my characters from the vines, and I wrote some damn good vines. Too bad they’re strangling my people. (I know that’s two different metaphors: the rubble is in the jungle. Just go with it.)

It took The Addams Family five years to hack its way to wild success which it has maintained in the subsequent five. I’m just coming up on Nita’s year five, so there’s hope for her yet.

In the meantime, I’m having a little something on the side with Lily, and she is not tangled in vines (yet), plus there’s the weirdness we’re currently living through, so I am not sitting in vacant despair. The entire world is vine-covered rubble right now, so Nita can just nestle in for awhile while I cogitate and try to find bok choy.

Everything is going to be just fine. Eventually.

The post Creativity is Hard: A Nita Update appeared first on Argh Ink.

Lily 4

I know I have to figure out what Sebastian is doing in the plot, but I still have no idea what the plot is here. The characters are shaping up nicely in my brain, but they’re just milling around, serving and eating pie and burgers that I haven’t described yet, vaguely waving their hands in the air. So this week, I decided, Lily had to get a goal. (I did write scenes with Seb, but they’re awful because I don’t know what his problem is. So he just whines a lot. Not good.). Lily’s in some kind of conflict, and she needs to talk to somebody about that so the Girls have a chance to send up some story fodder. She doesn’t know Fin well enough yet, and anyway we already have a Lily/Fin infodump scene. Van and Cheryl know her life. It’s gonna have to be Nadia.

This is your reminder that Discovery Draft is all over the place since I’m just writing to see what happens. Don’t expect things like scene structure.

Also this is WAY too long. Therapy’s only fifty minutes.

***************

Lily got to the clinic at four on the dot and sat down in the waiting room to reconsider the whole therapy thing. The first three therapists had not been a help, and while she’d liked her first impression of Nadia, she was notoriously bad at first impressions. She’d pretty much fallen for Seb at first sight and look at how that had turned out.

A woman came into the waiting room and sat down, and Lily was distracted for a moment, wondering what this stranger’s problem was, hoping it wasn’t anything serious, thinking maybe therapy should only be for serious problems and not general confusion about life choices, both in this life and others. It was possible that getting therapy was self-indulgent, selfish, she should pull herself together, she was fine.

It was also possible that she was losing her mind and she really hadn’t been reincarnated and–

Ferris came out into the waiting room, and Lily stiffened.

“Hello, Anne,” Ferris said to the other woman, pointedly ignoring Lily. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

She said the same thing to me, Anne, Lily thought, turn back now, and then Ferris and Anne went into the hall, and a minute later, Nadia leaned into the doorway.

“Hey, Lily,” she said. “Come on back.”

She was wearing a loose white blouse and jeans today, Lily noticed, so no snarky t-shirt, and when she got to her office, she held the door open for Lily and smiled briefly.

“Are you so glad I’m here?” Lily said.

Nadia’s eyes went to Ferris’s door and then back to Lily. “Thrilled.”

“Me, too,” Lily said and went in.

She sat down on the couch and smiled at Nadia, thinking, What the fuck am I doing here?

Nadia sat down across from her and waited.

“You’re my fourth therapist,” she told Nadia finally. “This month. I thought the third time was going to be the charm, but the third time was Ferris.”

“Okay,” Nadia said. “Let’s start with what you want from this.”

“I don’t actually want to be here,” Lily said. “My boss, Cheryl, who is also my cousin, made me come because she says I have too much to deal with and I need somebody to sort things out for me. She says I need a psychic Marie Kondo so I can thank my issues for their service and let them go. She says I should start with That Bastard Sebastian, but I’ve already let him go, I’ve told him he tries to talk to me again, I’ll file a restraining order. And I’m recovering just fine from the head wound. The reincarnation stuff isn’t a problem because I’m dealing with it. And I can handle the Viking in the diner, he’s really very polite. Losing my job, that was a blow because I loved it, but until somebody fires Sebastian, I can’t go back there, so . . .” She stopped, realizing that she’d just kind of dumped everything on Nadia. “I don’t want anything.”

“And yet here you are,” Nadia said. “So let’s talk.”

“Okay,” Lily said. “How’s your day been so far?”

“Fair,” Nadia said. “More interesting since you showed up. So you’ve ended a relationship, suffered a head wound, realized you’ve been reincarnated, lost your job, and met a Viking. That’s all this year?”

“That’s all in the past four weeks,” Lily said. “I admit it’s a lot, but I have everything under control.”

“What happened first?” Nadia said.

“The head wound,” Lily said. “Which was an accident. I think. I really do not believe that Sebastian meant to hit me on the head with a Viking ax.”

Nadia nodded.

When she didn’t say anything else, Lily said, “It was like this. We were putting together a Viking exhibit and designing activities—we work at the Children’s Museum that’s attached to the university—and we’d just gotten in this reproduction Viking ax that was beautiful, long heavy polished wood handle, carved metal blade, just gorgeous, and I’d taken it out of the box and laid it on the table to take rubbings of the carvings so I could do something with them as part of an activity, and Seb came in and yelled at me for unpacking the ax—he was my boss, but he did not have the right to yell at me even if we were sleeping together, especially since we were sleeping together– and I told him I’d ordered the ax, it was part of my project, so he could just back off, and then I looked in the box, and said, ‘If you’re after the invoice, it’s right there,’ and reached for it, and he lunged for me, and I dropped the ax on the table and stepped back and tripped and fell, he barged into the long handle and knocked the ax off the table, and it hit me on the head and knocked me cold.” She stopped. “They make the reproduction axes dull so nobody gets hacked to death with one, but that sucker was heavy. I got a concussion.”

“Wow,” Nadia said. “That happened four weeks ago? How’s your head?”

“Pretty good,” Lily said. “Every now and then I get optical migraines which are trippy, and I have to be careful not to get hit again, and I have these memories I didn’t have before, but it doesn’t hurt. I should make a full recovery. Except I really can’t stand Sebastian now.”

“Understandable,” Nadia said.

“Cheryl tried to warn me about him. The first time I brought him into the diner, she pulled me aside and said, ‘Drop that bastard like a potato made of lye,’ and while I was figuring out what that meant, she insulted Seb, and he told her she was insane and left. After that she always called him That Bastard Sebastian. Of course, she was right, but you know she’s never said I Told You So. Cheryl has her odd moments but she’s a good person.”

Nadia nodded. “She’s your cousin.”

“Yes. She’s older than I am so she looks out for me whether I want her to or not. Which is how I ended up in therapy. I figured I owed her one since she’d been right about Seb.” Lily took a deep breath. “The thing is, I’m not sure I’m not wasting your time since I don’t really have a problem. Well, not a big one.”

“What’s the little one?”

Lily sat back and studied Nadia. Same calm face, same blue streaked hair, same steady eyes, everything that she’d remembered. No judgment. This could be good. This could be helpful. “So I just sort of throw up on you verbally and we sort it out?”

“Excellent definition of therapy,” Nadia said.

Lily nodded. “Okay then. Cheryl wanted Sebastian shot or at least jailed for life, but I told her to drop it, and when I got out of the hospital—I was only in for two days—I tried to go back to work, but Seb’s Uncle Louis—he runs the museum—told me to some time off to recover, without pay, and this . . . person named Jessica took over my Viking project, which I was not happy about because she was doing it all wrong, and when I tried to go back to work a week later, and I was telling her it was all wrong, and she asked me for my sources and I realized I didn’t have any sources, I was remembering it.”

Lily stopped to check Nadia’s reaction, and Nadia nodded at her, no reaction at all.

“And then I started remembering a lot, like ten centuries ago, a previous life with Vikings, and I tried to explain, and that’s when Seb said I needed to take more time off and his Uncle Louis insisted, and I got booted for a month. Except the month is up and they’re not taking me back. And Jessica totally fucked up the Viking exhibit and there were complaints which there never were when I was doing things, so it makes no sense, they should be dying to have me back.” She stopped again. “Okay, I know that sounds arrogant, but I’m really very good at what I do. And I’d fight for it, but if I did manage to get the job back, I’d be working for Seb again, and I’ve just told him I’ll get a restraining order if he comes near me, so I think I’m done.”

“You really liked that job,” Nadia said.

“I loved that job, it was perfect for me,” Lily said. “Art and history and literature and working with kids, it was great. And now it’s gone, and it’s my own fault for sleeping with the boss, but he was so smart and funny and really gorgeous, and I kind of couldn’t believe he was hitting on me so I went for it. I mean, I think I’m attractive, but I’m not in Seb’s league. Although I do have a great personality.”

“Yes, you do,” Nadia said. “Is there anything about this that strikes you as odd?”

“Besides the reincarnation?” Lily said.

“Yes.”

Lily took a deep breath. “You mean the fact that Seb went bananas when I reached for the receipt?”

“That did strike me as significant,” Nadia said.

“The ax was $569 from a reproduction catalog and I was the one who ordered it,” Lily said. “Try as I may, I cannot see a path to major graft there. Even if Seb double-billed the museum, we’re still talking only an extra $600 bucks, not really worth risking his job for. And he never did anything havey-cavey in the six months we were together. Okay, it’s was a little hinky that he got the job since there were other people more qualified, but his uncle is head of the museum and nepotism is a thing and he was actually good at it. Very organized, very efficient, learned fast. I mean one of the things I found most attractive about him was how smart he is. The most attractive thing was how attractive he was, the man is gorgeous, but the smart part sealed the deal.”

“Do you miss him?”

“No,” Lily said, and then thought, The Viking in the diner is better. There was irony for her, she got an ax to the head and it wasn’t from a Viking. Of course, that didn’t mean the Viking didn’t have an ax, too. Maybe there was another ax in her future. Maybe two. Things did come in threes–

“Hello?” Nadia said.

“Sorry?”

“You went somewhere.”

“I was thinking about the Viking in the diner,” Lily said.

“Is he the reason you don’t miss Seb?”

“No, the ax to the head is the reason I don’t miss Seb. He handled that very poorly.”

“Right,” Nadia said. “The Viking in the diner. Is this a memory from a reincarnation or an actual person? Just trying to keep this all clear.”

“Actual person. There are two of them, Fin and Bjorn, and they’ve come in for dinner every night this week.”

Nadia nodded.

“That’s all.”

“What made you think of them when I asked about Seb?”

Lily shrugged. “Just that I like him better, even if he is a Viking. But he’s just a customer. The only reason he’s even in this is because I now have this loathing for Vikings, but he’s confounding that conviction.”

“Which one?”

“Which conviction?”

“Which Viking?”

“Oh. Fin. Bjorn is very nice, too.” Lily thought about it. “They’re really big which should be sort of threatening but they’re not obnoxious about it. Of course, considering their father, they probably have all sorts of deep issues, but then my father is a nightmare, too, and I have no issues at all.” She looked up and met Nadia’s eyes. “Do I?”

“Define issues,” Nadia said. “Never mind, don’t. When we met last week, briefly, you said the problem was reincarnation. Are the memories from your reincarnations affecting your life?” She paused and then added, “Beyond the loathing for the Vikings in the diner.”

“I don’t loathe the Vikings in the diner,” Lily said. “I like them. I just loathe Vikings in general. So there’s some cognitive dissonance there.”

“How do you know they’re Vikings?”

“You can tell,” Lily said darkly. “I mean, Fin says they’re Ohioans, but they’re just shot through with Viking DNA.”

“Yes, you have issues,” Nadia said.

“I know,” Lily said. “The thing is, I don’t have a plan. I had a plan when I had a job, but now I’m just back to floating through life, working at the diner with my cousin and my best friend, taking my cat to the park, no purpose, no meaning. I don’t have anything to grab onto.” Except the Viking. She shook her head. Grabbing onto men was not a purpose. “I need to find another job, get another purpose.”

“Whose idea was the Viking exhibit?” Nadia said.

“Mine. Kids love Vikings. And the art is really wonderful, the carvings and illuminations in the manuscripts . . .” She slowed, thinking about the drawings Fin put on the menus. Definitely a Viking, she thought, but she also thought about how she could have gotten him to show kids how to do that, how to add to piece of writing, give it another dimension—

“Lily?”

“Fin illuminates our specials menus,” Lily said. “With vines and dragons . . .” and waitresses. “I googled his name. He’s actually a fairly well-known illustrator. His stuff is really good. But the menus are . . . wonderful.”

“He puts dragons on them?”

“And cats. And . . . all kinds of things. He’d have helped with the Viking stuff at the museum. He’s like that.”

Nadia nodded.

“I am very confused,” Lily said.

“If it was your idea to do the Viking project,” Nadia said, “getting hit in the head with the ax is not what put Vikings in there.”

“No,” Lily said. “I didn’t think it was.”

“So why were you thinking of Vikings before that?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said. “There was just so much potential there. And Pangur Ban.”

“Pangur Ban?”

“My cat. There’s a very old Irish poem about a cat named Pangur Ban, and I named my cat Pangur Ban, and then when I remembered my first death, Pangur was with me. We went over the cliff together. It’s possible we’re being reincarnated together, but that seems insanely specific.”

“Cliff?” Nadia said. “I thought you were killed by a Viking ax.”

“No.” Lily frowned. “It was a Viking with an ax, and I’d picked up Pangur to run, and the Viking was chasing me, and I tripped and fell over the cliff as he caught me, and Pangur and I died, and it’s possible I took the Viking with me, for which I feel no guilt.”

“Understandable. Did this Viking look like your diner Viking?”

Lily blinked. “Well, big, bulky, blond, so a little bit. I don’t remember his face. Fin’s hair is more brown than blond. He wears glasses. Hasn’t shown up with an ax yet. His brother’s blond, but no, not him, either. Bjorn’s more of the drinking and whoring kind of Viking than the raping and pillaging. Put food in front of him, he’ll drop whatever else he’s doing.” She thought for a moment. “That would be really weird, Fin and Pangur and I all caught in a reincarnation loop. I don’t see it.” She looked at Nadia. “You think there’s a pattern in this.”

“I think there are a lot of variables,” Nadia said. “But I think all your events are linked because they’re the events you’re remembering. Other things happened during that four weeks, but the things you brought here were Sebastian, the head wound, reincarnation, the job loss, and Fin. You don’t like Jessica, she’s one of the reasons you lost your job, but you didn’t mention her at first. Your father is a nightmare, but you didn’t bring him up as a problem. Your cousin Cheryl seems to have a major impact on your life, but she isn’t an issue, either. So you’ve selected certain things, and they are all related. If nothing else, they’re all linked by Viking aspects. Your relationships with men, your job, your memories. I think that’s where we work.”

“Do you think reincarnation is real?”

“I don’t know,” Nadia said. “But I’m willing to believe it enough to discuss it as real with you. You don’t have to prove anything to me. We’re just thanking your issues and letting them go, we don’t need to get them papers.”

“You think Fin is significant,” Lily said. “Because he’s not, he’s just a guy in the diner.”

“Really.”

“I do not need a Viking in my life.”

“So we’ll talk about that next time.” Nadia stood up.

Lily stood up, too. “I’m not wasting your time?”

“What do you think?” Nadia said.

I think I have to go serve a Viking a hamburger, Lily thought, but what she said was, “I’ll let you know.”

On the way out, she passed Anne, who looked puzzled. “Nadia is an excellent therapist,” she told her and went out to her car.

***************

“How did it go with Nadia?” Van said when Lily came down into the diner.

“I’m not sure,” Lily said, tying her apron on. “It was really just me filling her in on the situation, so you already know all of that, but it was . . . unsettling. I’m beginning to wonder if I did just imagine it all.”

Van flipped a burger and turned around. “Nadia talked you out of believing in reincarnation?”

“No, she wouldn’t do that,” Lily said. “It’s just that she thinks there might be a pattern there–”

Cheryl came into the kitchen. “Lily! Remember when you used to waitress here? Good times.”

“I’m on it,” Lily said and went out to take orders.

Thanks to the dinner crush, it was almost seven before she realized that Fin and Bjorn weren’t there. Not that she assumed they’d come in—

The door opened and Bjorn came in alone, and Lily felt a flood of disappointment.

Then she kicked herself. Of course Fin didn’t eat at the same place every night, although evidently Bjorn did, and anyway she’d just gotten finished telling Nadia that Fin wasn’t significant. I’m ashamed of you, she told herself and handed Bjorn a menu.

“Fin’s not here?” he said, sitting down.

“He’s supposed to be here? Now?” Lily stopped kicking herself to worry. If Fin had said he’d be here, he’d be here. “Do you think something happened to him?”

“Naw, he’s just running late.” Bjorn looked at the menu. “I think I’ll go with the deluxe burger–”

“He’s never late,” Lily said. “Maybe somebody–”

“Unlax, kid,” Bjorn said. “People do not happen to Fin, Fin happens to people. Now about my burger–”

Lily took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I . . . What can I get you?”

Bjorn closed the menu. “The usual. He really is fine, Lil.”

Lil? she thought as she went to put his order in. Fin called her Lil. Maybe that’s what he called her when he talked about her with Bjorn?

Why would he talk about her with Bjorn?

You have bigger problems than Fin, she told herself, and kept busy for the next half hour, ignoring the nagging little voice at the back of her brain that said, This is not right.

When Bjorn pushed his empty pie plate away, she went back to him and said, “It’s been half an hour. Now are you worried?”

“No,” Bjorn said. “Fin handles things. He’s been the guy in charge since Mom kicked Dad out.” Lily blinked, and he added, “He said he told you about that. He probably didn’t tell you that he’d been handling things before that, too. He’d tell us to do things, and we’d all do them, even my sisters, who do not follow orders well. Probably because he looks so much like Dad. You know, I don’t think this single burger idea is good. I’m still kind of hungry–”

“He looks like your Dad?” Lily said. She’d been picturing their father as a weasel-like creature who told horrible jokes and laughed at people.

“Spittin’ image,” Bjorn said.

Well, that explained why a great woman like their mother had fallen for him and stayed long enough to have five kids. Anybody would fall for somebody who looked like Fin–

“Fin thinks you’re in trouble,” Bjorn said. “So he thinks he has to save you. That’s Fin’s MO, saving people. People like you. And me.”

“Oh,” Lily said, and realized she’d just slotted Bjorn into the picture as “the guy who comes in with Fin,” instead of “guy fighting his own demons.”

“He would die rather than let anybody down,” Bjorn said. “Literally. I’m pretty sure that goes double for you. So don’t play him, okay?”

“I wouldn’t,” Lily began and then started over. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, you better,” Bjorn said, and the door opened, and Fin came in, calm as ever, and she felt all the worry-tension go and the other tension kick in.

This was no time to go attaching to people. Vikings.

“You’re late,” she said, trying to sound I’m-just-kidding perky, but it came out wrong, and he slowed at little before he sat down.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Nothing’s wrong. You’re late, we were worried.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Bjorn said and Lily glared at him.

Fin kept his eyes on her. “What happened?”

“You know, I’m not a basket case,” she said, exasperated. “I can take care of my problems on my own, especially when I’m not worrying about you being dead in a ditch.”

“There was no ditch.” He sat down. “What happened?”

“He’s gonna need a burger,” Bjorn said.

“I don’t want a burger,” Fin said, his eyes still on Lily, and she was so fed up with him that she went back to the kitchen before he could bully her into telling him her problems, which she was not going to do because she was perfectly capable—

“What’s wrong?” Van said.

“You, too? What is it with you people?” Lily sighed and got a grip. “I’m sorry, please forget I said that. Bjorn wants the usual again. Fin wants a kick in the ass.”

“I’m assuming you’ll be serving Fin.”

“He–”

She stopped because Fin was in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Did you see the sign on the wall?” she said. “The one that says ‘No One Allowed Behind the Counter?’”

He stood there, calm as always. “Come outside with me. You can yell at me out there.”

Lily exhaled through her teeth. “I’m working.”

Fin pointed toward the door. “Out.”

“Hey. I am not one of your sisters.”

“Thank god. Out.”

“Take a break, Lil,” Van said, “I’ll take care of Again again.”

Lily looked at Fin, standing in the doorway like a boulder, Stonehenge, Finhenge, immovable, implacable, undeniable, and gave up and followed him outside.

*********

Yes, I know this is all over the place without going anywhere. DISCOVERY DRAFT.

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Happiness is Connecting

You know those friends you have that you’ve lost touch with but have never forgotten? The kind that when you speak again, it feels as if you’ve never been apart? Krissie and I have always stayed in touch, but in the past weeks Julia and Alisa and Gretchen have parachuted back into my life to my intense pleasure and gratitude. I’ve talked with my brother and sister-in-law, the kind of family you cherish, even if you never see each other. Mollie and I check in more often. And then, of course, there’s Argh and all of you. I am so blessed with good people that it makes me happy just to think about you all and fills me with joy to connect.

What filled you with joy this week?

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Cherry Saturday, April 11, 2020

Today is Pet Day, which happens during Active Dog Month. I’m going to go with Pet Day because my dogs are all seniors, and while they have short bursts of activity, those bursts end in naps. Sort of like me. Lots of people are adopting or fostering pets these days, which is great as long as they don’t turn them back to the shelters when the apocalypse finally ends. These are living creatures, people, they attach.

This reminds me of a piece of story that sort of floated by a brain cell the other day. I have no idea who these people are, they don’t even have names, but by god the chicken got a name. Animals (and birds) are people, too. Hug a pet today.

*******

She thought seriously about throwing something at him, he was being such a pain in the ass, but he was also going to make soup, and despite his grave shortcomings as a human being he was an excellent cook, so she stifled herself until he went out the back door. Then she went back to work on the kitchen, rehearsing scathing things to say to him after the soup was done and they’d eaten and she was full.

Ten minutes later he came back, vegetables in hand and a chicken at his feet.

“Shoo,” she said as the chicken strutted across her nice, newly clean floor.

He shook his head. “Don’t shoo, that’s dinner.”

“Dinner?” She looked down at the chicken who looked back at her, dumb as a rock but definitely alive. She almost said, “You’re going to kill that chicken ???!!” but she knew that would get her nothing but contempt. Of course, he was going to kill that chicken. Chickens were where chicken soup came from.

“Is that a problem?” he said, and she knew he was waiting for her to say something dumb about not killing chickens which was going to get her nowhere because he’d seen her tear into a chicken sandwich the day before.

“Well, it’s certainly a problem for Margaret.” She stuck her chin in the air, not sure where the “Margaret” had come from, but committed now. “She’s been producing eggs all these years like a champ and now you’re just going to off her because you have a hankering for poultry stew. No loyalty for the working class.” She looked back down at Margaret and had an insane moment wondering if Margaret had any organizing skills. If Margaret and her biddies went on strike . . .

Well, no, if they stopped producing eggs, they’d all be soup.

Also Margaret looked like she wasn‘t sure she could find the back door again. Organizing a chicken co-op was clearly beyond–

“Margaret,” he said.

She nodded. “Margaret is the sweetheart of Sigma Chick. Heart of gold.” She smiled down at the chicken.

Margaret looked back at her blankly.

Not a lot of personality, she thought, but clearly . . .

Clearly Margaret was a chicken and that was the extent of it.

He dumped the vegetables in the sink and said, “Wash those,” and walked back out the door.

Margaret followed, a feathered puppy at his heels.

Idiot chicken.

We who are about to die have no clue . . .

She began to scrub the dirt off the veg, feeling vaguely sad because now that she’d named the chicken, the damn bird really was Margaret, and Margaret had just strutted out the door to her death. From now on, don’t name the chickens, she told herself. Don’t name anything, and then she looked at the carrot in her hand and thought, Fred.

Fred couldn’t look back, no eyes, so that had no impact.

Don’t name the potatoes.

Half an hour later, she had the vegetables scrubbed and stacked on the cutting board, no names, and the dishes washed and the pots scrubbed, and was getting ready to leave when the back door opened again, and he came in, looking grim as always, a plucked chicken corpse in his hand.

“Oh, god, Margaret,” she said, only half kidding.

“No.” He pointed down at his feet.

When she looked down, Margaret was there, still dumb as a rock, but definitely still breathing, too.

“This,” he said, dropping the carcass into the sink, “is Portia.”

“Portia?”

“I found her dying of old age in the henhouse.”

She blinked at him, and he met her eyes, sober and stern-faced as ever. “Her last words were ‘I want to be soup.’”

She bit down hard on her lip. Making jokes about a dead chicken. What was wrong with him?

What was wrong with her? She’d alnost laughed.

Instead she shook her head. “That Portia. Always a giver.”

Then she escaped out of the kitchen, leaving him alone with Margaret and the last of Portia, so she could laugh where he wouldn’t see her.

It was what he deserved.

*************

Tell me you didn’t make chicken soup today. IT’S PET DAY.

Have a nice salad. No eyes.

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Lily Notes 3

So now I’m thinking about the diner and its specials menu, not because it’s crucial but because it sounds like fun and I get to read about food.

I’m thinking there are the standards, which I’m going to ignore because boring, and then there are the specials, maybe five things that change every week? Trying not to make this more complicated than it needs to be while emphasizing the off-the-wall fun part. I figure variations on a burger, a salad, a soup, a club sandwich/BLT/whatever, some kind of eggs?, and maybe a dessert. Just this week only, never to be seen again? Vanessa comes up with the recipes, Cheryl names them, and then Lily describes them (and double checks with Van), printing them out and paper clipping them to the regular menu.

It just seems like a good time to be coming up with recipe variations, especially burger variations Cheryl has named (not the week she’s a vegan, Van and Lily will block her on that one). And at some point, of course, there will be a Viking Burger, or possibly a Viking Club, or maybe both. The Viking Axe Burger: extra thick chopped beef with sharp Gruyere-some cheese, blood-red tomatoes, and Danish scallions, with sea salt and Sriracha for edge. You know, only better than that, although that actually sounds good.

But that wouldn’t come until much later in the story. Maybe the first week in the story, Cheryl calls one dish “Nobody Died for This Soup” because it’s vegetarian. Maybe not. Over to you Argh. (This reminds me of the time I said, “I need hell-inspired business name, and got “Motel Styx,” “Beelzepub,” and “Pins and Sins.” Good times.)

Also, any requests for Monday’s scene? Wants? Needs? Stray thoughts?

EDITED TO ADD: Any kind of burger, soup, etc., not just Vikings. I think the Viking burger comes at the end. Also feel free to brainstorm Cheryl’s next obsession. They have already lived through the Feng shui debacle.

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This is a Good Book Thursday, April 9, 2020

I read a book about Vikings this week. Those guys were bastards.

What did you read?

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