Chapter 9 #2
Hazel crossed her arms. “Look. You gave up a lot for me. You lost your job because of me. You’re living here because of me. You’re the best friend and best agent a woman could have. I just want to show you how much I appreciate you.”
“If you write me a pity best friend check right now, I’m going to be seriously pissed while I deposit it.”
“I have a wedding and a honeymoon to plan. I’m not writing you a check.”
“Fine. Help me move, and we’ll call it even.”
“I think I found a new client for you,” she announced.
“Uh-huh. Does this mean you’re not going to help me move?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Okay fine. A new client. Where did you find them? At ultimate bingo?”
“Here,” she whispered gleefully.
“Like here here? In this class here?” I turned to eye up the prospects. In addition to Levi, Hana, and Scooter, the only other OG Story Laker was Kitty Suarez. The rest were retirement community residents with a combined age of probably close to five hundred.
“Please tell me it’s not Menace on Wheels George,” I whispered, recognizing the troublemaker from the bookstore and town meeting.
Today he was wearing track pants, a sweatshirt that said I Will Put You in a Trunk and Help People Look for You, and—if my eyes were not deceiving me—a pair of $1,400 Dior sneakers.
“It’s not. But I am going to make you guess.”
“You know I hate guessing games.”
“You’re not going to get this wrong. Trust me.”
I hated when people said that. As if only a true moron could miss the obvious and then I would proceed to do exactly that. Then everyone always had to pretend that “oh just kidding. It actually was kind of tricky,” so I wouldn’t feel like a big dumb idiot.
“Is it Levi?” I asked hopefully. I could definitely exploit his handsome face to sell a few books.
“He’s only shown me a few chapters. He’s good and getting better, but there’s someone else I think you’re going to want to talk to.”
“Can’t you just tell me?” I begged. My brain was already too tired to play games today.
“Are we starting class today, or are you gonna wait until one of us has an old age–related medical emergency?” a woman with an impressive gray bouffant demanded from a table against the windows.
“It’s nice to see you again, Mildred,” Hazel said, unruffled by the complaint.
“Who’s your friend? She single?” asked a man in a large cowboy hat. He used the finger and thumb of his left hand to smooth down the hair of his fluffy white mustache. His right hand was a cool, robotic-looking prosthesis.
Hazel grinned wickedly at me. “She’s definitely single, Terrance, and if you sit tight, I’m sure she’ll tell you if you’re her type.”
“I hate you,” I whispered.
“You could never,” she shot back with a flutter of eyelashes.
I reluctantly tromped over to the empty seat next to Levi. It was closest to the door so at least I could fake an agent emergency and duck out if necessary.
“Hey, let’s maybe never talk about what you overheard to anyone ever,” I suggested to Levi.
“Never talking is my favorite,” he said.
“I like that about you.”
He grunted.
Hazel turned to the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Last time we met, we discussed world building…”
“All I’m saying is back in my day, we didn’t go shouting it from the rooftops,” George harrumphed from his scooter.
“Back in your day, you didn’t have rooftops. Everyone still lived in caves,” his friend Opal shot back.
The rest of the class snickered appreciatively.
“Thank you for those…interesting thoughts on…whatever that was, George,” Hazel said from the front of the room.
“Your characters are the foundation of the story, but the world is the foundation for everything that happens to your characters. I love the samples you chose to share from other authors. Especially you, Mildred, for picking a scene from one of my books. You’re definitely my favorite.
But now it’s time to be the writer. For the next ten minutes, I want each of you to write a short scene, paragraph, or even just a sentence that shows, not tells, what kind of a setting your characters are in and what it means to them. ”
While everyone settled in to tackle their assignment, I scanned the room.
It was an eclectic group of students. So far, I wasn’t having any luck identifying the potential client Hazel had teased me with. Half of them seemed to be taking the class seriously, and the other half were treating it like the last class before lunch.
Handsome, hard-to-read Levi sat quietly, his fingers moving methodically on the keys of his laptop.
Town councilwoman and renowned hat knitter Kitty Suarez was filling a spiral-bound notebook with words and doodles.
The guy with the cowboy hat was frowning at the ceiling, fingers perched on the tiny Bluetooth keyboard for his tablet.
George was flipping through a magazine. The white-haired woman next to him was asleep. At least I hoped she was sleeping.
Movement in the courtyard caught my eye, and I felt a knee-jerk zing of excitement that I immediately tried to extinguish.
Gage was outside with a helper, and they were muscling some large timber beams into the open space.
The midafternoon sun was apparently warm enough for short sleeves, which meant biceps.
Nice ones. That was what had caught my attention.
That was what had caused the spark. It wasn’t excitement, I decided.
It was a generalized appreciation for the fine male form. Yeah. That was it.
Crisis averted, I dragged my eyeballs away from the manly, muscly scene through the window and tried to read Levi’s screen.
In true author fashion, the man shifted his body and screen to block my view.
Against my will, my gaze returned to Gage, who was shouldering another beam into place. A small crowd of female residents had already gathered outside to watch. I couldn’t blame them. The view was…pleasant.
Something flicked me in the ear, and I snapped back to reality to find Hazel behind me. She tossed a folded piece of paper on the desk in front of me. “Two more minutes, everyone.”
I unfolded the paper and rolled my eyes.
You liiiiiike him! Don’t be such a… I peered closer at the rudimentary sketch and squinted.
What the hell is this? I mouthed, pointing at the drawing.
Hazel stopped behind Levi, tucked her hands into her armpits, and waved her elbows like chicken wings.
I pretended to dig something out of my eye with my middle finger as she moved on. I wasn’t actually into Gage. Was I? No. Of course not. It was just a good ol’ forbidden fruit situation. The second he’d said I wasn’t his type, my lady parts decided his man parts were worth a closer look.
This was just a boring, grown-up version of that time my parents had insisted that the nineteen-year-old dog walker by day, bass player by night from the eighth floor was a bad idea. Trip had only gotten hotter in my eyes after I was forbidden from seeing him.
This explained it all.
Two minutes of definitely not peering out the window later, Hazel clapped her hands from the front of the room. “Okay. Time’s up. Who wants to go first?”
Three hands shot up. Every class had their teacher’s pets, I supposed.
We sat through Terrance the cowboy’s paragraph describing his sock drawer in vivid if not riveting detail.
Hana was next with a descriptive scene set in a restaurant kitchen during the dinner rush.
Mildred followed, painting a wordy picture of the Wisconsin gas station where she met her second husband.
“Every time I smell the salty, hot scent of rotisserie hot dogs, I think of my Norman,” she concluded with a bow.
My stomach growled on the words hot dogs, and I realized it had been a long time since breakfast.
“That’s wonderful, Mildred,” Hazel exclaimed. “I think you took everyone there in their minds. Levi, how about you?”
The man looked as if he wished the ceiling would collapse on top of him so he’d have an excuse to disappear.
“Come on, Chief. Don’t be scared. We’ll only be judging every word,” Opal teased, smugly placing her hands behind her head and leaning back in her seat.
On a sigh that bordered on a growl, Levi began reading, keeping his head down, eyes on the screen. “The fallen leaves created a carpet of reds and golds. A bed for the body lying twisted and broken atop it.”
“Now we’re talkin’,” George said, slapping the table.
“Zip your lips, George,” Hazel ordered.
“How many people had walked the tree-lined trail, eager enough to get to the overlook that they missed this final resting place? How many families had soldiered on, sandwiches in backpacks, binoculars around necks, excited for their next great adventure, while behind a mossy boulder not ten feet away, a killer finished his job?”
I pursed my lips. Not bad for a newbie. I shot Hazel a questioning eyebrow wiggle, which she returned with a smug smile that told me nothing.
Levi shut his laptop screen and crossed his arms over his broad chest.
Why wasn’t I into him? He was big and broody and clearly not looking for a relationship. Yet here I was, thinking about Gage’s stupid monogamous biceps. There was something wrong with me.
“Really great work, Levi. You gave us a sense of time and place while showing the reader how close danger lurked to the innocent. How about you, Opal?”
Across the room from me, Opal in her black stretchy pants and gray tunic sweater blew out an aggravated sigh. But instead of arguing, she licked her finger and paged back in her yellow legal pad.