Ute Carbone's Blog, page 3

Tis a Gift to be Simple

At the very beginning of a story, when it's still just a seedling of an idea, I often think long and hard about place setting. Place and time are crucial elements to story--and they are often overlooked in favor of plot and character. Which isn't to say plot and character aren't important, they are essential. But where those characters walk around, where their story happens, is also crucial.
This is my very round about way of getting to the visit my husband Jim and I took this weekend to The Canterbury Shaker Village.
Tucked into a quiet corner of New Hampshire (only an hour from my house, as it turns out), is the kind of rolling farmland that makes my inner photographer say ah! Even in cloudy weather, it's a beautiful ride up a curvy road that leads to  a long stone fence and old buildings clustered together as a reminder of another time.
 There are, everywhere on this property, the  remnants of who lived here five or six generations back. You can nearly see the farmer standing behind his plow horses, nearly smell the apple pie baking in the ancient kitchen. 
Add to this a somewhat peculiar sect of Christianity, a communal people who wanted to live in simple way that honored their God in everything they did,  who vowed to remain celibate (in some cases dissolving their marriages to join), and you have what is commonly known in writer's circles as a plot bunny.  Well, not a plot bunny, exactly, but I can feel in my writer's bones that there's a story in there somewhere.

My writer's bones say story. My photography bones say great photo spot.

Whatcha Doing?

Some pretty bleeding hearts that I photographed over the weekend Here in the garret, there's always something in the works. Usually, it's a whole lot of somethings. On my messy desk this week is a chart of all the books and projects I hope  get written, finish revising,  and get out to you over the next few years.  There's a brand new tripod for my photography habit. Because I'm not mechanically inclined, it's taking me a while to figure out how to set it up.  There's my camera, ready to go. And my notebook, ready for the draft of the romantic comedy I'm currently working on.  The computer is open to a book called The Fall Line. It's the second in a series of three books I'm calling "The Wild Snow Series" because they all have a wintery ski theme. 
The Fall Line has a prolog. I like it really well, even though there's a huge argument in writer world about using them. The current consensus seems to be no--they should not be used and whatever needs to be said should be said within the story chapters. I don't normally use a prolog. In fact, of the fifteen or so books I've written or am working on, Fall Line is the only book that has one. It works as a way to set up the main character--and it lets me color outside the lines of the book's time line. 
I think, in this instance. It works.
I've shared the draft of this opening below. What do you think?
​ Excerpt: The Prolog of The Fall Line ​My last big win is burned like the brightest of memories into my mind. I can still hear the music, the hard beat of the grunge I listened to before each race, blasting thought my earbuds as I went over the course in my head. I can still remember the course, one of a million sets of slalom gates I’ve run in my life. If asked, I could still pantomime the movements through those turns, though each gate, as I had on that day.
I can see coach Marv signaling me, am still jolted by the sudden silence as I shut off the music and stuff the buds in my gear bag, I can hear the snap as my boot meets and joins the binding, feel the snow under my skis as I skate over to the start house my limbs willing and anxious, the short wait already too long. There were cowbells ringing, they’d announced Tin’s finish time and I remember thinking not bad, probably enough to push her into third place and being happy for my best friend and best rival. I remember Tin’s crackly voice on the walkie talkie  as I waited for Elena  Marks, the Canadian star, to finish her run.
"Let it all out at the end, Ice. You got this." Tin said.
"You got this. Just smooth out, don't miss and you got this," Coach repeated.
 I took my place in the start gate and clicked my poles together three times for luck. My name was announced over the speaker and the count began-- ten, nine-- at zero, the start bar bumped my shin and I was off. The world a blur of white, nothing but snow and ice and speed, my skis an extension of my body, my breathing in tandem with each turn.
One turn and the next and the next, I let out fast and hard, the sun on my back, the gates coming at me as I chased them down and devoured them. By mid-course, I knew I could win. By the last gate, I knew I would win. A final skate, a push across the finish, my heart racing now as I turned to stop and pulled off my helmet in one continuous motion. My name flashed on top of the leader board. I was ahead by half a second.
Tin rushed toward me, nearly bowling me over. " Hot damn, girl! "    She hugged me and I felt tears sting my eyes.
They announced Katya Hofstadter, the only woman who could still have beaten me out for the world cup, though she'd have needed a phenomenal run to do it. "I can't watch," I said, only half kidding as I buried my head in Tin's shoulder.
I looked up as her mid-course time flashed on the board. Two hundredths of a second slower than me, it was going to be close. Katya skied into the finish, and the five seconds it took for her time to post on the leader board seemed like several eternities. Her name popped up under mine. Three hundredths of a second slower than me.  And just like that, it was done.  I had won my sixth world cup
Everyone gathered around me, hugging me, congratulating me. I was so high with winning I flew outside of my body, light as air, turning somersaults in the brilliant blue winter sky overhead. 
If I had known what the next year would bring, I would have hung on to the feeling; I would have kept hanging on to it for all I was worth.

At the #Museum of Dead Things

It is, I suppose unfair to the Harvard Museum of Natural History a place for dead things. The same could be said of any natural history museum. Their function, after all, is to be a repository for artifacts, old bones, fossils, and the like.  The Harvard Museum is, by all accounts, an extraordinary repository. Housed in a large brick building just outside of Harvard yard,  the Museum is home to a huge collection of animal  specimens collected from all the corners of the earth. There is a special exhibit of flowers made entirely of glass; precisely and perfectly rendered, the craft of making and designing them boggles the mind. There are plenty of educational displays--a large exhibit on climate change, another that features the lives of insects, a third that uses fossils to illustrate the origins of life.  There is a display of rocks that would make any geologist swoon.
It was well worth the visit.  And yet...There is something in seeing mounted specimens that leaves me feeling  bereft. Which brings me back to the dead things theme of this blog.  The displays are comprehensive--growling tigers and bears, rhinoceros with long horns, a huge elephant. The monstrous bones of dinosaurs long gone from the world.  It is a fascinating display.  It is also static and inanimate. Right now, the critic inside my head (Zelda) is rolling her eyes and   saying "Of course they are inanimate. Can you imagine an actual Bengal Tiger on display under glass with five other large cats?"  I get it. Yes, of course they are. 
But after having photographed live animals, I realize the difference is more than simple animation. True, I've never come face to face with a grizzly bear--and quite honestly, I don't want to-- but there is a something in the real world of animals and plants that speaks deeply to me. Today I took a walk in my local park. It was a lovely, sunny spring day and like on most lovely sunny spring days, there were bunches of turtles sunning themselves on logs in a canal near a  pond.  I got as close as I could to a trio of them. Two, hearing me crunch over the forest floor, dove into the murky water. The third raised his head, acutely aware of me, probably acutely alarmed by me, too, he watched and waited. I could nearly see the throb of his pulse, his head frozen and still as he stared at me. I took his picture and left him behind. I'm guessing he was relieved to see me go.  The thing is, he was alive. And all around me, in the park, particularly at this time of year, there is life. Things budding, blooming, growing. You can feel the presence of life. It radiates outward and inward. It reflects the pulse of my own blood, my own life. 
All of this...this life...is missing from the specimens in the museum. It makes me feel sad, as though I am witness to demise, to something majestic that used to be but is no more.

Here are some photos of my museum trip--and today's turtle, too. 

Marathons #ISWG

There seems to be this  need, wired into certain human beings to challenge themselves. Marathoners run 26 miles, mountain climbers climb the highest peaks in the world. Sailors sail across oceans in boats not much bigger than canoes.  Hikers walk across continents. 
I've always admired their spirit, but I've never really thought myself one of their tribe. I am of the tribe of comfort, particularly as I get older. Sure, I  love going new places and discovering new things. But only to the point of enjoyment. Add pain and suffering to the mix, add adversity, and...well, not so much.
And yet. I am a writer. And we writers challenge ourselves regularly. It is a challenge to write a novel. Ask anyone who's attempted it. It takes time. It takes a certain amount of grittiness, too.  For me, somewhere in the middle, it becomes gruelling--the bright idea I had when I began doesn't shine so brightly anymore. In fact, it seems downright dumb or trite. The plot is out of hand, the characters have run amuck, and I've lost my way. I wonder if I will ever find my way again. At that point, I have to pull out all the fortitude I own, all the belief in my ability that I can possibly muster, and keep on keeping on.  If I do it and follow through, eventually the story starts to feel right again. I'm reaching home plate, the end zone, the finish line.  And crossing over to finish? Well, that's just about the best feeling in the world. I'm guessing that feeling is what motivates marathoners and mountain climbers alike. 
I recently finished another marathon of sorts. I signed on for the A-Z writing challenge--blogging every day  except Sunday for an entire month, with a different letter of the alphabet representing the theme of each day. On the first, when I started with A (for airplane) I was thinking of having my head examined for taking on the challenge at all. Yesterday, when I got to Z (for zoo) I was still thinking the same. I was tired. I was glad it was over. But I was also feeling pretty darn good about myself. I had met the challenge. I had crossed the finish line. 
For all of my fellow ISWGers who did the challenge this year, I offer up a virtual handshake and a great big cheer.  You've done it!!  Now go out there, and conquer that book you're working on. You can do that, too! 
Find more ISWG blogs here

Z is for Zoo #A-Z blogging challenge

Well, glory osky halleluiah, will you look at that? We made it all the way through the alphabet. Today's letter is Z, and the last but not least excerpt is from my latest book, Georgette Alden Starts Over, written under my pen name, Annie Hoff.  In  this scene, Georgette tries to talk Kent out of stealing penguins from the Bronx Zoo. She has some help, sort of, from her son's girlfriend Poppy.  “We meet outside the penguin enclosure right before the zoo closes. Then we liberate them!”

Georgette thought it best to let the old man talk on about his fantasy. “Who are we? Are there others?”

The old man sat down. “You don’t need to know.” He nodded again to Poppy who was staring at him openmouthed and twinkle-eyed. “It’s better you don’t know, less chance for snafus. The plan is simple—we climb into the enclosure and hand them out and put them into cat carriers. Then we bring them to Central Park and let them fly free.”

Poppy’s twinkle-eyed look had become a stare. “Release them in the park? Poor little blighters will get
run over, won’t they?”

Together, they could guide Kent back toward reason. Georgette was glad she’d thought to bring Poppy
along.

Kent considered. “You might have a point.”

“I mean, you have to bring them home, don’t you? To Antarctica?”

Georgette would need to get her hearing checked. Had the girl just suggested stealing penguins and
sending them to Antarctica? 

Even Kent’s smile faded at the suggestion. “Air travel is expensive.”

“Maybe you should raise some money first, then? Before you release them?” The girl was crazy like a fox.

Georgette’s faith in her returned. She offered up reinforcement. “Raising money is a wonderful idea.”

“But we’re all set to release them tonight.”

“They can wait just a little longer, don’t you think? We have the PA spot filming scheduled for tomorrow morning. Why don’t we work on that and then we can figure out how to raise money for the penguins?” Distraction seemed a good way to go. Kent took the paper with the studio’s address on it.

Poppy furrowed her brow. “Why do you want to free them anyway? The penguins?’

They had finally gotten Kent’s attention away from his lunatic cause and here Poppy was, bringing it front and center again. Kent began pacing. He lectured for quite some time on sentient beings, animal rights, and unlawful imprisonment. And just when Georgette thought the lunacy was winding down, Poppy said, “I’d never considered it quite that way. It’s unfair, isn’t it?”

Georgette saw it would be up to her to contain it. She went over to the old man and patted his arm. “Kent, you must put the breakout on hold. You do not want to endanger the poor creatures. Central Park is full of danger.”

Kent sat down, his agitation drained away and replaced by despair. He put his head in his hands. “How
will we ever get them home?”

Poppy sat down next to him and took his hand. “I’ll help you find a way.”

She would what? Comforting the poor old coot was one thing. Aiding and abetting was quite another. More A-Z Challenges More about Georgette Alden Starts Over

Y is for Yellow Fever #A-Z Blogging Challenge

When yellow fever spreads to the crew of the Sweet Lenora, the results are dire.  Only good news it was, more than I might have known. A few moments later, Rupert came knocking on the door. He stood at the threshold, anxious. “Sorry to disturb, sir. Maurice has taken ill.”
The stricken look of his countenance gave me to know it was more serious than a simple illness. I waited as I watched Rupert gather his words. Lenora put a hand to my shoulder and squeezed. “I fear we have a greater devil than Abercrombie aboard. Innis is out of his mind with fever.” Rupert looked down at the floor and swallowed. “He has the black vomit. I fear it be yellow jack.”

These words pounded a stake into my heart. I got up and went to the infirmary. Four now lay abed in that small space. One look at Innis left no question of his state and the dark doom that befell all of us. He lay screaming that his limbs had been set afire as the blood ran from his gums. I had seen the same delirium when my mother took ill. Her skin, too, had had the same sallow cast as Innis’. She had died within a week. “Yellow jack.” I closed my eyes against the evil of the words.

“Yellow jack?” Lenora still stood behind me, her face gone pale. I thought to tell her to go; I needed her to be gone from this place of death.
I put my hand to her shoulder and steered her toward the cabin. “Aye, the yellow fever. ’Twas in Rio these past months. Some four hundred souls perished and yet it worsens. ’Tis the scourge of
the southern climes.”

She stopped to look at me, her eyes grown wide. “Surely there is something we can do.”

“Nay, love. Naught but pray. I fear ’tis too late for poor Innis.” I wished now I had opiates aboard. That vile black substance could be put to good use in easing pain in such a hopeless case as the crewman’s.

Tears ran down Lenora’s cheeks. She had more kindness for the men than they deserved. “We must be strong, mon amie.” I said, brushing the tear from her cheek.

“Aye, so we must.” She dabbed her tears with a handkerchief and went to sit by Maurice, who moaned lightly in his sleep. She took the boy’s hand. “Find me a cloth and some cool water. We must
bring his fever down.”

“You cannot stay here.” My voice came out as a demand. I wanted to stow her safe away in our cabin. It would not comfort me to leave her here among the sick. I was still learning her then, and had not yet come to understand the fullness of my wife’s compassion. Nor the strength of her will. She took a bucket of cold water from Rupert and dunked a cloth into it. “The crew is sick. You have but a handful to get us to port. You have no second mate to attend to the sick.” She wrung the cloth and placed it on Maurice’s brow. “You need all hands.” With this she held out her lovely, snow white fingers to me. “Including these two.”

I took her dear hands into my own. “I cannot leave you among disease and ruffians. Please, Lenora.”

She put those sweet fingers to my mouth. “Maurice is sick. You care for the boy and so do I. I do not mind being needed. All the men here are sick and in need of care.”

“My sweet girl, I wish the world were as kind as you make it out to be.” My heart swelled at her conviction. I wanted to lay her in the berth and love her with all the tenderness she deserved. I did not
want to leave her here. Yet, what choice had I?

“The world is as kind as you make it to be, Anton.” More A-Z Challenge More about the Sweet Lenora Series

X is for Ex #A-Z Blog Challenge

In Afterglow, India is set on divorcing her philandering husband. Her mother-in-law believes they can still work things out and so sets them up. For failure, of course.  Tom looked up from the menu and smiled brightly at his mother. Then he caught sight of me and the smile became a grimace. He put down the menu, clearly as anxious to escape as I was.

“Please, India.” Marissa indicated an empty seat. I considered wading back to the door. I really, really wanted to wade back to the door, run the five blocks back to the car, get in, break the sound barrier driving back to Tamsett, and lock myself in the house with Ben and Jerry. But the look on Tom’s face stopped me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of easy escape. I sat. Then I noticed that there were but two chairs at the table.

“Marissa,” I said or, more to the point, growled. I rose slightly. Marissa’s hand on my shoulder pushed me back into the seat.

“Now,” she said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You two need to talk. You’ve been married for over thirty years, for goodness sake. You can fix this.” And off she went, parting the water back to the door and leaving me stranded on Tom Island.

I stood and stared after my audacious soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law and considered my options. I stood there for so long that when I heard the sound of Tom’s chair scraping over the floor, it felt like a
jolt of electricity. “I’ll go,” he said, quietly to my back. “You sit. She’ll be back soon.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. You are not leaving me here to explain to your mother why we can’t make it all better.”

Tom sighed and sat back down. “You are bound and determined to make this difficult, aren’t you?”

“Difficult?” I rounded on him now. “You're sleeping with our son’s ex-girlfriend, and you think I’m being difficult?”

“India, please. Sit down.”

“Goodbye, Tom.” I waded back to the door, looking half as elegant as my mother-in-law had been. I wished I’d said more. I wished I’d made a scene. But it wasn’t like me to make a scene. I wasn’t a boat rocker. I marched back to my car. My cell rang halfway back to Tamsett. “India, why are you being so stubborn?” asked Marissa.

“Ask your son,” I said. And, for the first time in my life, I hung up on Marissa Othmar. It occurred to me that I should have  done it a long time ago. More A-Z Challenge More About Afterglow

W is for Whale #AZ blog challenge

In the P-Town Queen, Nikki, who is an oceanographer, is asked to help remove the body of dead whale that's beached on the shore of Cape Cod Bay. She's ready for the job, but town officials have their own idea how to handle the situation.  There was nary a parking spot to be had at First Encounter. This was noteworthy because the parking lot is exceptionally large and a weekday morning in May is hardly prime time for beach goers. Add to this that the tide was out, which on the tidal flat meant you’d have to walk a mile to get to swimmable water.

“You think this is on account of the whales?” Parker asked, pulling the truck onto the sandy shoulder alongside the marsh.

“Duh,” I said. Of course it was the whales. Although the whales had been reduced to whale and dead whale at that. I couldn’t much see the point of bringing the kids out to gander at a dead whale.

“So we’re going to chainsaw a whale in front of all these witnesses?” Parker asked.

I gave him the evil eye. “The chainsaw is a last resort,” I said. Which was true, although being as most of the other avenues had been tried, I didn’t see we had much choice but to butcher the whale and cart it away. In front of all these witnesses. Even so, I left the chainsaw in the truck bed. For now,
anyway.

Parker and I made our way past the milling crowd, or gawking crowd to be more accurate, to the beach. The whale lay just inside the tide line. The boundaries around the carcass had been staked out and were festooned by crime tape as though the whale had been murdered by thugs and CSI would be sent in to investigate. As it was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a forensics unit had shown up. The place was crawling with every sort of official in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Parked on the beach were two State Police cars, several local police sedans, a host of fire trucks, and a van that said SWAT Team.

I saw Max Groper among the official crowd at the crime scene. “Can you believe this nonsense?” he said, flailing his arms like a sea gull trying to take flight in a stiff wind. “You’d think these bone heads would know better. You’d think they’d never seen a beached whale before. But no. Hell no. Don’t take any advice from someone who might actually know something. Oh no, let the cops handle it.”

“Quite the response team,” I said. “Did you dial 911?”

Max rolled his eyes. “Some woman called to complain about the smell. Made her beach walk less than pleasant, she said. I explained to them that it was a new moon and the tide just isn’t coming up very far. A week would do the trick. We could tow it out to sea once the tide situation changes. Next week. But God forbid it sit there a week. Then I suggested that you and I cut the thing up and cart it away. But heavens, then we’d have whale parts on the beach and we can’t have that, can we?” As Max finished his tirade, I glanced at the whale carcass. It was a massive thing, stuck on a sandbar not a hundred yards from the main beach. The birds had begun doing cleanup, though it was an awful lot of carrion for a bird feast. And, with the wind coming off the bay, the smell was, to say the least, unpleasant. Several onlookers had pulled their jackets over their mouths and noses. Parker looked like he wanted to do the same.

“Should I get the chainsaw?” I asked.

Max looked at me as if he thought I hadn’t heard a word he’d said. But they needed to dispose of the body and they wanted to do it today, so I didn’t see we had much choice.

“You aren’t going to be allowed to butcher the whale in front of the crowd.”

“So send the crowd away,” I said.

“Oh, no. Oh, no. These geniuses have got a better idea. They’re putting dynamite under the carcass as we speak.”

“What?” Now it was me who questioned my ability to hear.

Max nodded like a bobble head. “That’s right. Dynamite. Just try to talk them out of it. We have half a dozen ocean people here, but oh no, they’ve got it figured out.”

“Kind of gives a whole new meaning to ‘there she blows,’ huh?” Parker said. To which Max gave him an icy stare.

“Not funny,” Max said.

“Actually, it kind of was,” I said, to which Max turned the icy stare on me.  More A-Z Challenge More about The P-Town Quenn

April 24th, 2019

In the novella the Whisper of Time, Gwen buys a farmhouse sight unseen in the hills of Vermont. She may have bought more than just a house. Here's how the story begins. ​It figured that I would get lost. Kyle was always telling me I had a terrible sense of direction. “Turn left,” I would say, and he would answer “Which left, Gwynn, yours or mine?” I used to think everything Kyle said was charming.
I’d since found out that Kyle, like GPS, had a limited range. Out here, in the middle of Vermont farm country, my GPS had stopped functioning. A signal kept insisting the phone was searching for a satellite, but it was becoming pretty clear that the satellite was nowhere to be found. It was hiding, perhaps, from the snippy woman’s voice that commanded me to turn left when I wanted to turn right.
Luckily, the real estate agent had given me directions. I’d scribbled them down on the back of an envelope and was now trying to decode them. The agent’s name was Vera Applegate, which I thought sounded like Vermont. I could almost hear Kyle, “What, exactly, does Vermont sound like?” And I might try and explain that it sounded like rolling green hills and stone fences and cows lying under huge old maple trees. None of it would have made sense to Kyle.
“Take route 153 from West Rupert town center and turn left on Witches Hollow Road,” I read aloud. My bulldog Tyrone cocked his head from where he sat in the passenger seat of the VW bug. “I know, right? Which was town center, the shopping plaza or that quaint green with the historical marker and the gazebo? And how far from town center?” Tyrone lost interest in my pondering and went back to doing what he does best, sticking his head out the window and letting the wind blow his jowls back. Miss Kitty, my tabby, was pacing the back seat with a bad case of nerves. I’d let her out of her carrier back in Saratoga, because she was yowling up enough to raise the dead. She stopped complaining aloud, though the prowl wasn’t much better. I kept waiting for her to land on top of my head so that she could navigate.
The road wound this way and that through the hills. I slowed to a crawl, nearly coming to a stop at each intersection to read the road signs. Some of them looked like they had been posted in the eighteenth century and never updated and some were missing all together. An old truck with a huge toothy grill eased up behind me, the grill nearly kissing my VW’s back bumper. I hated tailgaters, so in defiance I slowed even more. The truck beeped, making Miss Kitty jump and then the driver throttled up the engine and roared past me. I caught a glimpse of a good-looking sandy-haired man with a Jack Russell terrier on his lap. In that instant, I got the notion that the dog was driving the car.
“Don’t get any bright ideas,” I said to Tyrone. I went back to searching for Witches Hollow Road. A wonderful name, isn’t it? I could picture a trio of old crones stirring a steaming black cauldron, throwing in mysterious ingredients like eye of newt and chanting spells.
That the farm was on Witches Hollow Road was only one in a long list of features which made me take the leap and buy the place. I could hear Kyle saying it was an impulsive thing to do. At least it wasn’t compulsive, I argued back to his voice in my head. More A-Z Challenge More on The Whisper of Time

U is for Uncle #AZChallenge

In Afterglow, India's best friend Eva seems determined to set her up with every available man in the town of Tamsett.  She may have out done herself when a celebration dinner turns into a double date with Eva's current man, Dave and Dave's Uncle Henry.  Arlan’s Martini Bar was the new hot spot in eastern Massachusetts. The Boston Globe, in an article in the Sunday Living section, had described it as intimate. Which, looking the place over, Iconstrued as meaning tiny. It had all of ten tables. Apparently, people drove from the far reaches of New England for the privilege of sitting at one of them. As Eva had said, even on an ordinary Wednesday night like this one it was nearly impossible to get a reservation.

She shepherded me over to a table near the window. Two men were already sitting there. I recognized Dave. Across from him sat an elderly gentleman with a hooked nose and no hair to speak of except for the ones growing from his ears. I gave Eva what I hoped was a dirty look. She kept her hand squarely against my back and gave me the tiniest of shoves.

“India, my sweet. You know Dave. And this,” she made a flourish towards the elderly man, “is Henry.”

Henry, it turned out, was Dave’s uncle. He was eighty-two years old, he was a widower, and he lived at a place called River View, which he described as a community for mature adults. I might have known. How could I expect any less from Eva?

I did my level best to curtail my anger. I smiled, made polite conversation, and toasted Eva’s success.
Henry was, it turns out, not so easily fooled. “You seem a little preoccupied,” he said. We had finished dinner and moved to the famous martini bar for a farewell famous martini. Eva and Dave were snuggled together a few stools down, whispering like a pair of  teenagers.

“Do I?” I said, giving Henry my best charming smile.

Henry put his hand on my thigh, which did nothing to decrease my level of discomfort. “No worries. I’ve got a little present for you.”

I could just imagine. A picture of Henry in boxers jumped into my head. I put my hand on Henry’s, moved it gently away, and said, “Oh?”

Henry reached into his pocket and pulled out a baggy. “Open your purse,” he whispered. He buried the baggy under my wallet and winked at me. “Prime stuff,” he said. “Maybe you’ll share it with me
later.”

Flustered, I pulled my purse into my lap and put my arms around it. What exactly, does one do when an eighty-two year old man hands you a packet of weed? Did Miss Manners have some protocol for this? More A-Z Challenge More on Afterglow