[Good Evening, friends! Call me lazy, but what follows is an excerpt from my June 2012 Camp NaNoWriMo novel. I'm ALMOST too tired to set it up at all. The people in this scene have gathered at the beach at the request of their dead longtime friend. It's the first morning. Some of them have hangovers.]
Saturday morning scampered up from the Atlantic
Ocean with a sparkling blue sky, little fluffy cloudlets and a warm southerly
breeze. It was the kind of day for which
beaches, boats and convertible cars were all invented. With the house situated on the west side of narrow
strip of salty land that is Southern Shores, morning has to work its way over
several blocks of houses and trees in order to reach it. The sun had tried to wake Nicole when it
first shot through her bedroom window, but she had hit snooze, by way of a
pillow over her head. From the third
floor suite, she couldn't hear anyone stirring, but by nine-thirty she could
smell them. Someone was cooking, and it
was filling the house with aromas that simply would not be ignored.
She showered, pulled on her swimsuit, shorts and a
tank-top. Wait. Swackhammer is here, she
thought. Over the tank went Bobby's old Ocean City t-shirt. She fought with her
makeup for a few minutes, but her eyeliner was in a mood, and refused to
cooperate. She tossed it aside, said "meh" to her reflection, grabbed
her beach towel and trashy beach book, took a couple of deep breaths, then
headed downstairs.
Almost everyone else was already up. The girls were on the deck with Dean, who was
trying to teach them how to operate his remote-controlled helicopter, but they
were quickly losing interest, because they were girls and it was boring. Nicole zombied over to the coffee maker, but
found it to be missing its pot. She
turned and surveyed the kitchen though half-open eyes with uneven
eyeliner. "Coffee," she
grunted.
"Here it is Nic. Maybe two minutes old." Chloe held up
the pot, but before she could get up, Nicole was at her side, holding out her
mug like a beggar.
She inhaled the caffeinated fumes hungrily, then
took that first, too-hot-but-I-don't-care sip. "Coffee," she
sighed.
"Good morning Nic," Ted whispered,
recalling from their last reunion the 'don't engage Nicole before her first cup
of coffee' rule. He gestured gently in the direction of an unoccupied chair
next to Astrid.
"Coffee," she smiled, and sat. "Coffee, coffee."
They let her drink her beloved elixir, while Astrid
and Chloe finished working out a rough plan for the day, which left Chloe
visibly relieved. Ted was cooking, and
cleaning as he went.
"Mmmm... coffee," Nicole sighed. She stopped and looked thoughtfully at her
mug, as if suddenly realizing she had picked up someone else's by mistake.
"Good coffee. What is this?"
"Some rich-people coffee," Astrid said.
"Swack brought it. Probably just
bought the most expensive thing he could find and assumed it would be
good."
"That's true, except for the assuming. It's a blend of some blue Java and organic
Ethiopian beans, and I know it's
good, baby." Swack announced, stepping into the kitchen. He was clean, but looked rather like he'd
been water-boarded for the past 60 hours.
"Morning, Nic. Sorry I missed
you, last night." He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.
"Coffee," she said. "Morning. Thank you.
Coffee. Fabulous."
Swack smiled. "She still on her first
cup?"
"Yes," the others chorused softly.
"Got it," he whispered with a wink. "Wow, Ted - did you make all
this?"
"Yep.
I'm about to do another batch of French toast. There are a couple homemade waffles left,
fruit, fresh juice - and banana-nut muffins should be done in about five."
"And coffee!" Nicole added, pouring
herself a second cup, and finally beginning to meet people's eyes.
"So, Ted's gonna be the house bitch, this time,
or what?" Swack laughed, pouring himself some of his expensive coffee.
"You know what - maybe you'd prefer the corn
flakes, sir." Ted snapped.
"All right, all right. Easy there, Martha Stewart. I can't not
give you a hard time. It's my role
in the group, and I take it very seriously."
"Well, that's true." Chloe agreed.
Nicole was coming to life. "Seriously, Ted -
when did you become such an amazing cook?
Before yesterday, I don't think we had ever seen you take on more than a
frozen pizza."
"Well when Sarah and I were together--"
"Ooh - She Who Shall Not Be Named!" Astrid,
Chole and Nicole said to each other, with wide eyes.
"Yes. She
used to complain a lot about my uselessness in the kitchen, and she was
right. I couldn't boil water. When we split up, she waited until the
divorce was final, then told me that she had been seeing some other guy off and
on for years, because he could cook."
"And by 'cook,' I assume she meant 'bone,'
right?" Swack said.
"Shut up, Swack!" the room shouted.
"Ow, " moaned Astrid.
"Hello? Coffee."
"Whatever, Swack. You're just sad because you're the only one
here who can't get anyone to sleep with you more than once." Ted almost
felt bad saying it, but Swack laughed it off, so he figured it must have been okay. "Anyway, I had all
that free time. I took a couple of classes, bought some cookbooks and just
started trying stuff. It's been a lot
harder these past two years, with the unemployment and all, but I kind of like
it. I'm considering trying to get a line
cook or sous chef job, now that my benefits have run out."
"The hell you are!" Swack bellowed.
"Aaaahh... No yelling!
Coffee. Coffee..." Nicole
had resumed a defensive posture, holding her mug in front of her face with both
hands.
"Sorry," Swack said. "Ted's going to
be the new spokesman for my friends at Smithfield. Right, Ted?"
"What? Are you serious? When did this
happen?" Astrid nearly shrieked, flinching at the self-inflicted pain of
the first word, and whispering the rest.
"I said I'd think
about it. Swack's just going to get
me an interview. I doubt anything will
come of it."
"Think about it, my ass. I'm telling you, that job is yours for the
taking. Even you can't screw this
up."
[Thanks for reading, guys. Join us next time, when I will hopefully have something written less than 5 months ago...]
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