Scene Snippets -- These are scenes or partial scenes that have occurred to me that I'm jotting down now, although it will be a while before we get to these scenes.
**********************************************
"It's so odd that you would open a comedy club," Thalia said, amusement rife in her voice. "You don't even have a sense of humor."
Polly frowned. Was that true? Yes, Thalia was the Muse of comedy, but Polly liked to think that she had a fairly well-developed appreciation of the absurd, and besides, -- she caught the twinkle in Thalia's eye and sighed. "Very funny," she said, with a reluctant smile.
**********************************************
"You seem distracted," Duke said.
"What? Oh!" Polly said, bringing her focus back to the man sitting in front of her. Her food had arrived and she hadn't even noticed. She picked up her fork. "I'm sorry, I'm just thinking about this -- project -- that I'm working on." She took a bite of her lasagne.
Duke laughed. "Ah, of course. You're writing a movie or something, right? Of course you are, we're in L.A."
"A movie? No," Polly said. "Why? Are you writing a movie?" she asked. Please say no, please say no, she thought.
"No. But if you're not working on a movie, what is the project you're so distracted by?" he asked.
"Mm..." Polly took another bite, relief washing over her that she'd never have to read his screenplay. She found that she wanted to talk to someone about her sisters but she couldn't. He would think she was insane. A movie would have been a perfect lie. She could talk about the situation hypothetically and he wouldn't know the difference. "I'm writing a book," she said.
"Ah," he said, leaning back in his chair. "What's it about?"
Polly took a deep breath. "It's about this goddess who screwed her sisters over a thousand years ago and she is trying to make amends."
Duke's eyebrows rose with interest. "Why did she screw them over?"
Polly was startled by the question. She'd expected him to ask how, not why. "Um. They -- they hurt her feelings, I guess." It sounded so stupid when she said it out loud.
"How?"
Now, he asked how? Polly kept her eyes on her plate. She got another bit of lasagne ready as she said, "She overheard them saying mean things about her." She shook her head. "It was dumb, she shouldn't have gotten so angry."
"I don't know." Duke met Polly's surprised glance with his gentle smile. "I have siblings and if I ever heard them say mean things about me, I'd be pretty hurt. I mean, my siblings have said incredibly mean things to me. But about me? I don't even know how I'd deal with that. What was it that her sisters said about her?"
Polly frowned. It had been so long ago and she'd been so infused by shame for so long her own actions that she'd forgotten about what had made her so angry in the first place. She thought back to the moment next to the pool. "They said that -- she -- that her genuine concern for their well-being was judgemental. They were so tired of her that they all met to have a party and didn't invite her." Sheer sadness made her body go numb, and she looked up at Duke, lost. She tried to shake the hurt away with a forced laugh. "Anyway, it's stupid. I think that's probably a dumb motivation for all of the stuff that she does. I may change it in the book," she added lamely.
His shook his head, his warm brown eyes serious. "I think that's motivation enough."
"But you don't even know what she did in retaliation," she said. "It was waaaaaaay beyond what they deserved. For them to deserve what she did, they'd have had to have cut up her body and bury the pieces in 11 different deserts, each in dung beetle nests."
He leaned back again. "I mean, if they'd killed her, then she wouldn't have to worry about revenge."
"True," Polly said with a rueful laugh. "But that wouldn't have killed her. It would have just taken a long time to get herself back together. It's very inconvenient."
"How would cutting someone up into 11 pieces not have killed her?"
Polly was confused. "What do you mean? Gods are immortal. Nothing kills them."
"Nothing?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"But there are stories about gods dying. Narcissus tried to kiss himself in a pool and fell in and drowned."
Polly snorted. "I wish."
Duke laughed. "I love how into this story you are. If you feel this strongly about the character, I bet the book is going to be really good."
Polly sighed. "Yeah. I'm very creative," she said. She shook her head. "Anyway," she said, sitting up. "What's the worst thing one of your siblings ever did."
"Threw a dead bird at me," Duke answered, with no hesitation.
Polly laughed. "What?"
Duke nodded. "I was in fifth grade, walking home from school. I was ahead of my brother and his friends, and this thing glances off my shoulder and I look down, and it's a dead bird."
"Wow," Polly said, horrified. "Why would he do that?"
"I don't know. I was kind of a know-it-all back then and I had just sassed them a few minutes previously and maybe they were mad. I don't even know that my brother threw it. I don't think he did. He just let them throw it and -- you know," he said thoughtfully. "It still kind of hurts my feelings."
"Yeah," Polly said, with feeling. "So how is your relationship now?"
"Oh, we're best friends," Duke said, with a grin. "I was best man at his wedding. We have brunch every Sunday."
"Brunch?"
"Yeah."
"I didn't know that was a thing that guys do together."
Duke grinned. "They should. Mimosas and waffles. C'mon...! Right?"
Polly laughed. "I guess so," she said, trying to picture it.
"You're trying to picture it, aren't you?" Duke asked.
"Yes."
Duke pulled out his phone, did some business, and then held the phone out to her. She'd been expecting to see two short, stocky black men with champagne flutes, pinkies raised. Instead, he'd called up a photo of three men, all wearing tuxedos and enormous grins. One was Duke, of course. His brother must have been the taller, slimmer version of Duke. "Who is the third man," she asked.
"That's Prince's husband, Miguel."
"Oh, your brother's gay. That's why you have brunch."
Duke laughed. "Actually, brunch was my idea. I dated this girl for three years who dragged me to brunch every Sunday. We were not compatible and when I realized that my favorite thing about her was brunch, I broke it off. But I was addicted, so I invited my brother and we made it a regular thing. We go and play tipsy basketball after. It's the best day of the week for me."
"You're a lot more interesting than I thought you'd be," Polly said.
Duke laughed. "And you have a way of saying things that are incredibly insulting but that don't actually hurt my feelings."
Polly blushed. "I'm sorry, I didn't --"
Duke cut her off with a gesture and another laugh. "It's okay. I can tell that you're not trying to be mean. You just have a tendency to blurt things out."
"But --" Polly paused. She didn't have a tendency to blurt things out. Even for non-gods, words had power, so she was accustomed to thinking before speaking. She wondered what it was about this man with the laughing eyes that removed that barrier between what she was thinking and what she was saying. She found herself blushing and after a moment, just shrugged, meeting his grins with a smile that felt unsettlingly shy.
"How was the lasagne?" Duke asked.
Polly looked down at her plate. She'd managed to eat her entire dinner, even though she felt like she'd been doing all of the talking. "It was okay," she said, looking back up at him. "Plenty of mozzarella, not too much ricotta."
"You don't like ricotta?" Duke asked.
"Ugh," Polly said. "It's like dried up vomit, but without salt."
The waiter stopped by to drop off the check. "Was everything okay for you today?"
"Yes," Polly said. "I'm sorry, I was talking about something else. Bad timing."
"Okay," the waiter said, relief and confusion warring for dominance in his face. He gave up on either and left the bill on the table.
Polly glared at Duke, who was fighting laughter so hard that he had tears in his eyes.
**********************************************
"Okay, you never explained, so I have to ask," Duke said. "Why 11 deserts?"
"What?" Polly said.
"Why would you cut someone up into 11 pieces and scatter them through 11 deserts? It just seems excessive. There are only 4 main body parts -- arms, legs, torso, and head."
"Right, but you wouldn't bury two arms together. Plus you chop the hands and feet off of the arms and legs. So, one head, two arms, two hands, two legs, two feet -- and you'd chop the torso in half at the waist."
"Why?"
"Why?" Polly repeated, shaking her head at the inanity of the question. "I mean, it's just a really big piece to leave as one. Plus, it's just more inconvenient to the god who has to put himself back together. I mean, I suppose you could chop the torso into 4 parts, but that just seems a lot of work just to be a little extra petty."
***********************************************
"Does your goddess ever fall in love with a mortal?" Duke asked.
Polly laughed. "No, gods don't fall in love with mortals as often as you'd think."
"Why not?"
Polly thought about it. "Gods just live so much longer. A god falling in love with a mortal would be like a human falling in love with a goldfish."
"You mean because of the lifespan?"
"Yes," Polly replied. "Plus, you know, gods are beautiful and mortals are like, you know --" she waved her hand dismissively -- "cute in their own way...?"
Duke chuckled. "Alright, so why would a god ever fall in love with a mortal?"
Polly thought. "I mean, w -- they kind of fall in love with each mortal, to a degree. Mortals are clever and creative and -- often horrifying -- but I think it's the knowledge of their mortality that keeps them interesting. You have so much to do with so little time to do it.
"Gods are lazy. Why do you think it took so many millions of years for dinosaurs to evolve into birds? It's not hard, w-- they just can't be bothered. There's no urgency. That's one of the reasons gods are so curious about mortals. You all just move so quickly. It's like watching a squirrel scramble up a tall tree, build a squirrel-house, turn that into a tree-skyscraper, bomb that skyscraper for no reason, and then start building again."
Friday, December 21, 2018
Character List
Character List in Order of Appearance:
Polyhymnia/Polly Amory -- Main Character. She's one of the 9 muses. She has set up a small comedy club in the San Fernando Valley and works to inspire her comedians (and staff) to artistic greatness. A long time ago, she screwed over her 8 sisters and now spends her evenings trying to make amends with them. Nobody in her comedy club life knows her true identity.
Ares -- God of War. He helped Polly get revenge on her sisters initially and is mildly irritated that she's trying to undo their work now.
Narcissus -- Vain Greek god.
Melpomene -- The Muse of tragedy.
Thalia -- The Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry.
Calliope -- The Muse of epic poetry.
Erato -- The Muse of lyric poetry.
Clio -- The Muse of history.
Euterpe -- The Muse of music.
Urania -- The Muse of astronomy
Terpsichore -- The Muse of dance and chorus.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Muses-The-Nine-Muses-Goddesses-of-Greek-Mythology
Harley Nugent -- Polly's assistant. She has long, straight red hair and small-puppy-in-a-big-dog's-body kind of energy. She is an aspiring actress and a great assistant. Organized, loyal, and just a decent human being.
Duke Darnell -- Polly's love interest. Mailman without a scrap of artistic talent. He's the same exact height as Polly's current human incarnation, with dark brown skin, and a sweet smile. He likes being a mailman and doesn't have any ambition toward anything else. He spends a lot of time with his family (parents, siblings, nieces and nephews), plays guitar indifferently (he loves playing, he's just not great at it), and flips an okay burger.
Jane Johnson -- An incredibly talented comedian that Polly books in her club regularly. Although brilliant, Jane has severe insecurities about her talent. This is a result of having started doing comedy when she was 13, and therefore having little other life experience or job skills. Any career in which part of your job is to have people look at you is going to warp your sense of self a bit, but Jane manages to maintain a level-headedness that Polly respects.
Sam Hart -- the club's daytime receptionist. Think Tiana from The Princess and the Frog brought to life and even cuter. Also an aspiring actress with that odd mix of innocence and cynicism that only a career in show business can create. A fun fact about her is that the more annoyed she gets, the higher and sweeter her voice gets. Her enunciation becomes as crisp as a freshly-plucked apple.
Bryce Adder -- White male comedian, good-looking, with a decent amount of talent but not much self-awareness. Doesn't realize that half of his jokes paint him as a misogynist. Constantly pesters Polly for more stage time.
Prologue
Polyhymnia/Polly Amory -- Main Character. She's one of the 9 muses. She has set up a small comedy club in the San Fernando Valley and works to inspire her comedians (and staff) to artistic greatness. A long time ago, she screwed over her 8 sisters and now spends her evenings trying to make amends with them. Nobody in her comedy club life knows her true identity.
Ares -- God of War. He helped Polly get revenge on her sisters initially and is mildly irritated that she's trying to undo their work now.
Narcissus -- Vain Greek god.
Melpomene -- The Muse of tragedy.
Thalia -- The Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry.
Calliope -- The Muse of epic poetry.
Erato -- The Muse of lyric poetry.
Clio -- The Muse of history.
Euterpe -- The Muse of music.
Urania -- The Muse of astronomy
Terpsichore -- The Muse of dance and chorus.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Muses-The-Nine-Muses-Goddesses-of-Greek-Mythology
Chapter 1
Harley Nugent -- Polly's assistant. She has long, straight red hair and small-puppy-in-a-big-dog's-body kind of energy. She is an aspiring actress and a great assistant. Organized, loyal, and just a decent human being.
Duke Darnell -- Polly's love interest. Mailman without a scrap of artistic talent. He's the same exact height as Polly's current human incarnation, with dark brown skin, and a sweet smile. He likes being a mailman and doesn't have any ambition toward anything else. He spends a lot of time with his family (parents, siblings, nieces and nephews), plays guitar indifferently (he loves playing, he's just not great at it), and flips an okay burger.
Chapter 2
Jane Johnson -- An incredibly talented comedian that Polly books in her club regularly. Although brilliant, Jane has severe insecurities about her talent. This is a result of having started doing comedy when she was 13, and therefore having little other life experience or job skills. Any career in which part of your job is to have people look at you is going to warp your sense of self a bit, but Jane manages to maintain a level-headedness that Polly respects.
Sam Hart -- the club's daytime receptionist. Think Tiana from The Princess and the Frog brought to life and even cuter. Also an aspiring actress with that odd mix of innocence and cynicism that only a career in show business can create. A fun fact about her is that the more annoyed she gets, the higher and sweeter her voice gets. Her enunciation becomes as crisp as a freshly-plucked apple.
Bryce Adder -- White male comedian, good-looking, with a decent amount of talent but not much self-awareness. Doesn't realize that half of his jokes paint him as a misogynist. Constantly pesters Polly for more stage time.
Chapter 3
Tom Goodman -- Casting Director for NBC. He brings Jane Johnson in to pitch a sitcom about her life. He's faithful to his wife, a good father, and is only as sleezy as the entertainment business forces him to be. Hollywood is not kind to just men, but Tom hangs in there because he loves art and believes in his artists.
Douglass Laste -- Chairman of NBC. Around 60, chubby due to bad eating habits that have developed from too much stress and the fact that he never stops working. He would probably be considered self-important if he wasn't regarded as so important by the people around him. Not a Harvey Weinstein or Les Moonves type in action but never challenges that behavior in his peers. He's on his way out due to ageism rather than a lack of vision, and he knows it, but wants to leave on his terms. He's looking for the next big show that will cement his impact on the network so that his retirement will be felt as a loss to the entertainment business.
Saturday, August 11, 2018
Chapter 3?
Jane was waiting for Polly in the lobby, which was a bad sign. She flashed a relieved smile at Polly. "They didn't even seem mad that I was late," she said. She glanced around and then leaned toward Polly. "I told them I wanted to wait for you and they said that was fine."
Polly nodded, her expression neutral. If they'd been that interested in Jane, they would have swooped down on her like vampires and had her mesmerized by now so that Polly's guidance would have been rendered moot. Jane's meeting was over and it hadn't even started. She would be lucky to get 5 minutes before she was booted out of the building. Politely, of course No reason to burn bridges, just in case Jane turned out to be a huge star after all.
Jane's expression was focused. She knew exactly what she was going in there to pitch. Polly mentally shrugged. No reason to say anything that would psych Jane out. There was a reason she'd been called in, after all. Besides, Jane's talent was like a crate of old dynamite; it was the tiniest spark away from exploding. If Jane was allowed into it, who knew what would actually happen in the room?
"Jane." A good-looking white guy with features slightly too bland to allow him to be an actor strode across the lobby toward Jane, with as genuine a smile as a career in entertainment would allow. "Tom Goodman," he said, shaking Jane's hand. He had dark brown hair and eyes, and a slim frame that saw a gym at least 3 times a week. He was short for a man but tall for Hollywood. Jane was half-an-inch taller and Polly saw the flash of resentment as he registered that. Jane didn't notice either his height or his resentment and tossed him her open, fresh-off-the-turnip truck grin. His own tight smile relaxed slightly.
"Jane," Jane said, and then flushed. "I mean, you knew that already."
Tom laughed and placed his hand on her back to guide her toward the elevators. "It's nice to meet you in person. I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting, you know, it's crazy around here today."
Polly followed, refraining from rolling her eyes as the lie wafted oilily in the air. She followed the two into the elevator and settled herself behind them. Tom was so focused on Jane that he hadn't really fully registered Polly's presence, which was fine with her. As the elevator rose, Tom chatted amiably about the weather, the traffic, etc. His energy was nervous but Polly sensed a genuine interest in developing Jane's talent. He hid his anxiety well, and for Jane's sake. It was obvious to Polly that Tom knew that Jane's chances today were slim to none. However, like Polly, he refrained from mentioning her chances, on the breath of a hope that slim would win out.
"Is there anything I should know before I go in there?" Jane asked.
Tom shrugged and said the thing that everyone said that couldn't possibly be considered helpful but at the same time was the only advice that was worth a damn. "Just be yourself." He laughed as Jane groaned and patted her shoulder. "You got this," he added, as the elevator doors opened.
He and the receptionist exchanged nods and he led Jane and Polly past the receptionist's desk and down a long hallway. Tom tugged open two doors made of wood so dark they looked almost black. He indicated that Jane should enter and he turned to close the doors again. Polly sidled in, still without really entering Tom's radar.
The conference room was a typical big-dick-compensation, red-Porche of a room. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of the room looked out over the city, with vistas of green and brown hills dotted with homes. Behind the hills, mountains hovered protectively in the distance. Smog or fog, or both, gave them a blue-ish hue. The room even had that new car smell, probably due to a combination of the chemicals in the carpet cleaner and the leather chairs that lined the conference table.
In the chairs, sat about a dozen middle-aged frat boys, one woman, and one black man. The front two chairs of the conference table were empty. Polly took a spot standing near the croissant station at the back of the room as Tom led Jane toward the paunchy older man standing at the head of the table. The man, framed by the view of the city, looked and felt like its God.
The air in the room was not encouraging. As she approached, the paunchy older man looked Jane up and down in a manner that both assessed and dismissed her immediately.
Jane, too focused on her mission to register his look, just flashed him her middle-America, homegrown, kewpie-doll dimples at him. He smiled back, genuinely. Any mortal would have. Everyone in the room seemed to take his cue, and the air in the room warmed perceptively.
Tom approached the older man and they shook hands. "Douglass, this is Jane Johnson, Jane, this is Douglass Laste, CEO of NBC," he said, turning and stepping aside to allow Douglass to shake hands with Jane.
Jane let out a pent up breath, and said said, "Wow, it's nice to meet you. You've greenlit every show I've ever loved." Her enthusiasm might have seemed sycophantic if her genuine excitement hadn't echoed in the bones of every person in the room.
Polly wasn't sure if it was a possible for a man hardened by 40-plus years in show business to blush but if it was, he did. "Well, young lady," he said, his voice betraying none of the self-consciousness he might be feeling, "Thank you very much. We're all very interested to hear what you have to say today."
Jane bounced a little out of nerves as Tom took his seat in the empty chair at the front right of the long table, while Douglass sat in the empty seat at the front left. This left Jane framed in front of the San Fernando Valley. With her smaller frame, she should have seemed less important, but the charisma that kicked up with her nerves made her seem bigger.
She glanced slightly at Tom before addressing the group. "I'm not sure exactly how much you know about the project we're proposing," she said. "So, I'll just start at the beginning. We're looking to create a multi-cam sitcom about my life."
A murmur ran around the room. "Multi-cams are over," the token woman said. She had glossy black hair and long white fingers tips with blood-red fingernails that Polly could see as the woman twirled a pen in one hand. Assent sussurated around the table.
"Yes!" Jane hopped on this answer, and pointed at the woman, indicating a connection based on mutual agreement. "But it doesn't have to be. Most multi-cam shows suck either because they're dumbed-down, generic messes. "Or," she added, pacing a bit in front of the window, "because they were created as multi-cam shows for budget reasons but they would have done much better as single-cam shows. The advantages to shooting multi-cam over the past decade have all been approached from a budget standpoint, but people ignore the things that made multi-cams magic from the beginning."
"And what are those things?" A random white guy asked.
Jane grinned at him. "I'm so glad you asked! So, the obvious thing is the connection between the audience and the performers, right? There's nothing like a live performance, for either party. But laugh tracks break that connection because an audience is pumped up to laugh, even if what they're watching isn't that funny. And then later, editors, kill any decision the audience at home gets to make as to whether a joke is funny or not by adding in canned or exaggerated laughter to even the lamest statements. It breaks focus and trust on the part of the audience that a real audience used to generate for the viewer at home. I suggest that we do a multi-cam show without mic'ing the audience and editing out any laughter from them."
The room erupted in outrage. "You can't do that!" Polly heard one white man exclaim amongst otherwise indistinguishable mutterings.
Jane held up a hand, laughing, and the room quieted, more out of curiosity than anything else. "I know, I know. It's just a thought, but I think it would be worth experimenting with. At the very least, we should put faith back into the audience to allow them to tell us if it's funny or not. The great thing about working live is that if a joke doesn't work, doing another take is not just a chance to force the audience to have the correct reaction this time, but to actually re-write based on their reaction. It forces us to be on our toes so that by the time it makes it to a home audience, the jokes have been vetted. Some of the funniest moments of television history were unplanned -- that's what performing live, and in front of a live audience, gets you."
Less outrage this time, but the room was definitely unsettled. Polly, who'd heard Jane's opinions on what would make a great multi-cam show too many times was more interested in the reactions Jane was getting from the room. Yes, nobody in the room was on board, but every last one of them was invested in the conversation. Polly wondered if these people were all so out of touch that Jane's thoughts were actually revolutionary. Nothing she was saying was outside of conventional thought on the subject. Maybe what was so shocking was that somebody was saying it out loud in a room like this.
The one black man in the room spoke up. "Live performances feel magical in the moment," he said, "But that rarely translates to film, if ever. That's one of the reasons for the laugh track in the first place."
"Yes!" Jane shouted. She reached out toward the man. "Exactly!" She flung up her arms. "That's why you still need for the show to be good. You need the characters to be multi-dimensional, you need the stories to be compelling. A lot of bad sitcoms rely on the fact that no one and nothing ever changes. That's another reason that single-cam sitcoms work better -- because you get to see the characters grow and change throughout the season. When you tune into a multi-cam sitcom, week after week, you know that you're basically going to be getting the same show that you got last week -- that's why people don't tune in. They don't feel like they're missing out on anything.
"The limitation of working in front of a live audience is that they need context. They need to walk in and know who the characters are, what the setting is without any previous familiarity. You can't get too weird because the people who are unfamiliar with the show won't understand what's happening. That's why you get stock characters in stock situations with stock jokes and stock storylines."
"Exactly." This was Snow White again, her long fingernails flicking her pen. "So how do you get around that?"
Jane sighed. "By not using that as an excuse. You don't need to write a pilot episode every week in order for people to get that they're looking at people dealing with the issues of being human. Again, we have to trust the audience more here. A sitcom is basically a funny play, but if you walk into a play you've never seen before, you don't expect to see something you've seen before. It's okay that you don't know these people and what came before this span of time that you're watching them or what will happen after You can still be invested."
"Alright," Douglass said, leaning forward. "But all of this is format. What is your show actually about."
Jane let out an excited breath and then drew in a deeper one. "Okay. Again, I don't know how familiar you all are with my stand-up but essentially, I talk about what it was like growing up in over 20 foster homes. I've lived with every social class, every ethnicity, been raised in every religion. And at the end of it all, I've Frankensteined together a mother, a father, and multiple siblings along with all kinds of nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. So, not only would we be able to explore what a family is, which is a definition that changes constantly these days, but also, even though I'm white, we can still cast diversely and explore all kinds of different aspects of what 'American' life is." She used finger quotes to emphasize this last part.
"Also, like, yes, on the road, I can talk about my life for an hour at a time but in New York or LA or any other larger city, I'm generally relegated to 5 minutes, 10, or 20 if I'm lucky. So I'm accustomed to focusing on specific aspects of my life and relationships in shorter amounts of time. And if I'm able to get an audience invested in who I am in 5 minutes -- and to be real, in a 5-minute set, if it takes me that long to get the audience invested, that was a bad set -- then being able to focus on one story at a time is actually not that difficult of an adjustment to make."
Jane's pitch over, she let out a quick laugh and then curtsied awkwardly. A gentle laugh travelled around the room.
"I guess that answers whether or not you can make these subjects funny," Tom said with a grin, to more answering laughter.
"Exactly," Jane said. "There are so many things that we can talk about, and if we hire diverse writers, then these stories can be told by the people who are the most invested in telling them and portrayed by the people who are the most invested in portraying them not just correctly, but in a way that offers hope. The best comedy comes from pain, and we have a huge legacy of that to mine from."
Silent white guilt made a trip around the room, but was mostly shrugged off. "So, what is an example of a sensitive subject that you would be able to broach with humor?" A white man asked.
Jane, aware that she'd lost the room a bit, but undaunted,
"Even if nothing else comes out of this meeting, at least I get to say that I met you," she added.
The only people who have a chance to make anything weird and different work are people who are passionate about that thing.
Polly nodded, her expression neutral. If they'd been that interested in Jane, they would have swooped down on her like vampires and had her mesmerized by now so that Polly's guidance would have been rendered moot. Jane's meeting was over and it hadn't even started. She would be lucky to get 5 minutes before she was booted out of the building. Politely, of course No reason to burn bridges, just in case Jane turned out to be a huge star after all.
Jane's expression was focused. She knew exactly what she was going in there to pitch. Polly mentally shrugged. No reason to say anything that would psych Jane out. There was a reason she'd been called in, after all. Besides, Jane's talent was like a crate of old dynamite; it was the tiniest spark away from exploding. If Jane was allowed into it, who knew what would actually happen in the room?
"Jane." A good-looking white guy with features slightly too bland to allow him to be an actor strode across the lobby toward Jane, with as genuine a smile as a career in entertainment would allow. "Tom Goodman," he said, shaking Jane's hand. He had dark brown hair and eyes, and a slim frame that saw a gym at least 3 times a week. He was short for a man but tall for Hollywood. Jane was half-an-inch taller and Polly saw the flash of resentment as he registered that. Jane didn't notice either his height or his resentment and tossed him her open, fresh-off-the-turnip truck grin. His own tight smile relaxed slightly.
"Jane," Jane said, and then flushed. "I mean, you knew that already."
Tom laughed and placed his hand on her back to guide her toward the elevators. "It's nice to meet you in person. I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting, you know, it's crazy around here today."
Polly followed, refraining from rolling her eyes as the lie wafted oilily in the air. She followed the two into the elevator and settled herself behind them. Tom was so focused on Jane that he hadn't really fully registered Polly's presence, which was fine with her. As the elevator rose, Tom chatted amiably about the weather, the traffic, etc. His energy was nervous but Polly sensed a genuine interest in developing Jane's talent. He hid his anxiety well, and for Jane's sake. It was obvious to Polly that Tom knew that Jane's chances today were slim to none. However, like Polly, he refrained from mentioning her chances, on the breath of a hope that slim would win out.
"Is there anything I should know before I go in there?" Jane asked.
Tom shrugged and said the thing that everyone said that couldn't possibly be considered helpful but at the same time was the only advice that was worth a damn. "Just be yourself." He laughed as Jane groaned and patted her shoulder. "You got this," he added, as the elevator doors opened.
He and the receptionist exchanged nods and he led Jane and Polly past the receptionist's desk and down a long hallway. Tom tugged open two doors made of wood so dark they looked almost black. He indicated that Jane should enter and he turned to close the doors again. Polly sidled in, still without really entering Tom's radar.
The conference room was a typical big-dick-compensation, red-Porche of a room. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of the room looked out over the city, with vistas of green and brown hills dotted with homes. Behind the hills, mountains hovered protectively in the distance. Smog or fog, or both, gave them a blue-ish hue. The room even had that new car smell, probably due to a combination of the chemicals in the carpet cleaner and the leather chairs that lined the conference table.
In the chairs, sat about a dozen middle-aged frat boys, one woman, and one black man. The front two chairs of the conference table were empty. Polly took a spot standing near the croissant station at the back of the room as Tom led Jane toward the paunchy older man standing at the head of the table. The man, framed by the view of the city, looked and felt like its God.
The air in the room was not encouraging. As she approached, the paunchy older man looked Jane up and down in a manner that both assessed and dismissed her immediately.
Jane, too focused on her mission to register his look, just flashed him her middle-America, homegrown, kewpie-doll dimples at him. He smiled back, genuinely. Any mortal would have. Everyone in the room seemed to take his cue, and the air in the room warmed perceptively.
Tom approached the older man and they shook hands. "Douglass, this is Jane Johnson, Jane, this is Douglass Laste, CEO of NBC," he said, turning and stepping aside to allow Douglass to shake hands with Jane.
Jane let out a pent up breath, and said said, "Wow, it's nice to meet you. You've greenlit every show I've ever loved." Her enthusiasm might have seemed sycophantic if her genuine excitement hadn't echoed in the bones of every person in the room.
Polly wasn't sure if it was a possible for a man hardened by 40-plus years in show business to blush but if it was, he did. "Well, young lady," he said, his voice betraying none of the self-consciousness he might be feeling, "Thank you very much. We're all very interested to hear what you have to say today."
Jane bounced a little out of nerves as Tom took his seat in the empty chair at the front right of the long table, while Douglass sat in the empty seat at the front left. This left Jane framed in front of the San Fernando Valley. With her smaller frame, she should have seemed less important, but the charisma that kicked up with her nerves made her seem bigger.
She glanced slightly at Tom before addressing the group. "I'm not sure exactly how much you know about the project we're proposing," she said. "So, I'll just start at the beginning. We're looking to create a multi-cam sitcom about my life."
A murmur ran around the room. "Multi-cams are over," the token woman said. She had glossy black hair and long white fingers tips with blood-red fingernails that Polly could see as the woman twirled a pen in one hand. Assent sussurated around the table.
"Yes!" Jane hopped on this answer, and pointed at the woman, indicating a connection based on mutual agreement. "But it doesn't have to be. Most multi-cam shows suck either because they're dumbed-down, generic messes. "Or," she added, pacing a bit in front of the window, "because they were created as multi-cam shows for budget reasons but they would have done much better as single-cam shows. The advantages to shooting multi-cam over the past decade have all been approached from a budget standpoint, but people ignore the things that made multi-cams magic from the beginning."
"And what are those things?" A random white guy asked.
Jane grinned at him. "I'm so glad you asked! So, the obvious thing is the connection between the audience and the performers, right? There's nothing like a live performance, for either party. But laugh tracks break that connection because an audience is pumped up to laugh, even if what they're watching isn't that funny. And then later, editors, kill any decision the audience at home gets to make as to whether a joke is funny or not by adding in canned or exaggerated laughter to even the lamest statements. It breaks focus and trust on the part of the audience that a real audience used to generate for the viewer at home. I suggest that we do a multi-cam show without mic'ing the audience and editing out any laughter from them."
The room erupted in outrage. "You can't do that!" Polly heard one white man exclaim amongst otherwise indistinguishable mutterings.
Jane held up a hand, laughing, and the room quieted, more out of curiosity than anything else. "I know, I know. It's just a thought, but I think it would be worth experimenting with. At the very least, we should put faith back into the audience to allow them to tell us if it's funny or not. The great thing about working live is that if a joke doesn't work, doing another take is not just a chance to force the audience to have the correct reaction this time, but to actually re-write based on their reaction. It forces us to be on our toes so that by the time it makes it to a home audience, the jokes have been vetted. Some of the funniest moments of television history were unplanned -- that's what performing live, and in front of a live audience, gets you."
Less outrage this time, but the room was definitely unsettled. Polly, who'd heard Jane's opinions on what would make a great multi-cam show too many times was more interested in the reactions Jane was getting from the room. Yes, nobody in the room was on board, but every last one of them was invested in the conversation. Polly wondered if these people were all so out of touch that Jane's thoughts were actually revolutionary. Nothing she was saying was outside of conventional thought on the subject. Maybe what was so shocking was that somebody was saying it out loud in a room like this.
The one black man in the room spoke up. "Live performances feel magical in the moment," he said, "But that rarely translates to film, if ever. That's one of the reasons for the laugh track in the first place."
"Yes!" Jane shouted. She reached out toward the man. "Exactly!" She flung up her arms. "That's why you still need for the show to be good. You need the characters to be multi-dimensional, you need the stories to be compelling. A lot of bad sitcoms rely on the fact that no one and nothing ever changes. That's another reason that single-cam sitcoms work better -- because you get to see the characters grow and change throughout the season. When you tune into a multi-cam sitcom, week after week, you know that you're basically going to be getting the same show that you got last week -- that's why people don't tune in. They don't feel like they're missing out on anything.
"The limitation of working in front of a live audience is that they need context. They need to walk in and know who the characters are, what the setting is without any previous familiarity. You can't get too weird because the people who are unfamiliar with the show won't understand what's happening. That's why you get stock characters in stock situations with stock jokes and stock storylines."
"Exactly." This was Snow White again, her long fingernails flicking her pen. "So how do you get around that?"
Jane sighed. "By not using that as an excuse. You don't need to write a pilot episode every week in order for people to get that they're looking at people dealing with the issues of being human. Again, we have to trust the audience more here. A sitcom is basically a funny play, but if you walk into a play you've never seen before, you don't expect to see something you've seen before. It's okay that you don't know these people and what came before this span of time that you're watching them or what will happen after You can still be invested."
"Alright," Douglass said, leaning forward. "But all of this is format. What is your show actually about."
Jane let out an excited breath and then drew in a deeper one. "Okay. Again, I don't know how familiar you all are with my stand-up but essentially, I talk about what it was like growing up in over 20 foster homes. I've lived with every social class, every ethnicity, been raised in every religion. And at the end of it all, I've Frankensteined together a mother, a father, and multiple siblings along with all kinds of nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. So, not only would we be able to explore what a family is, which is a definition that changes constantly these days, but also, even though I'm white, we can still cast diversely and explore all kinds of different aspects of what 'American' life is." She used finger quotes to emphasize this last part.
"Also, like, yes, on the road, I can talk about my life for an hour at a time but in New York or LA or any other larger city, I'm generally relegated to 5 minutes, 10, or 20 if I'm lucky. So I'm accustomed to focusing on specific aspects of my life and relationships in shorter amounts of time. And if I'm able to get an audience invested in who I am in 5 minutes -- and to be real, in a 5-minute set, if it takes me that long to get the audience invested, that was a bad set -- then being able to focus on one story at a time is actually not that difficult of an adjustment to make."
Jane's pitch over, she let out a quick laugh and then curtsied awkwardly. A gentle laugh travelled around the room.
"I guess that answers whether or not you can make these subjects funny," Tom said with a grin, to more answering laughter.
"Exactly," Jane said. "There are so many things that we can talk about, and if we hire diverse writers, then these stories can be told by the people who are the most invested in telling them and portrayed by the people who are the most invested in portraying them not just correctly, but in a way that offers hope. The best comedy comes from pain, and we have a huge legacy of that to mine from."
Silent white guilt made a trip around the room, but was mostly shrugged off. "So, what is an example of a sensitive subject that you would be able to broach with humor?" A white man asked.
Jane, aware that she'd lost the room a bit, but undaunted,
"Even if nothing else comes out of this meeting, at least I get to say that I met you," she added.
The only people who have a chance to make anything weird and different work are people who are passionate about that thing.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Chapter 2?
Polly had been alive a long time -- long enough to have cursed immortality more than a few times. She had met hundreds of thousands of mortals. She'd seen even more on television and in films. Some of them had been near talentless, but she'd never met a mortal with no talent before. "Like, zero," she said aloud.
Her office was small, with a rose color breaking up the white molding. The decorator had gone nuts with the statues in this room. Three of Polly's sisters on three different walls; Thalia, Erato, and Clio had their own alcoves. The room comfortably fit a smaller version of Sam's desk with two velvet chairs that matched the walls facing the desk. The designer had found an office desk chair that looked like a throne, painted gold with white cushions. The window behind the chair was framed by gauzy, white curtains, but as the alleyway that the window looked out on ruined the ambiance, the designer had covered the "view" with a shade. The shade was painted with trompe l'oeil scene of a beach.
Polly walked over to a small bookcase in the corner and hit a hidden switch. It swung open to reveal a closet. The closet held a few changes of clothing and shoes; business and casual and two safes; one that Hayley knew about and one that only Polly did. A full-length mirror hung on the back of the door.
What type of body to present to the public was always a political choice. Throughout the centuries, Polly had generally settled for the classic white male, as she could be certain that even on a short mission, she'd have immediate credibility. This time, she'd wanted to settle in, stick around. She'd considered appearing as a black woman, just to balance out the myth of white male brilliance she'd helped perpetuate for millennia. But then, the Rachel Dolezal scandal had hit.
Polly recognized that inhabiting black skin without being burdened (and blessed) with the history behind it was disrespectful. In the end, she'd gone close to her own natural appearance; olive skin, dark topaz eyes, and jet black hair. She was vain enough to have made sure the hair was silky and the teeth straight but she'd also made herself short and chubby. The fact that she was not glamorous-looking weeded out people that she didn't want to work with.
Anyone who looked past her instead of at her, anyone whose gaze went immediately to her bosom, anyone who called her "senorita" without learning her name (or heritage) was immediately out. She mostly booked and hired women. Polly prided herself on not being vain, and in fairness, compared to her sisters, she was fairly unconcerned with her appearance. But she was still a goddess, and beauty was important to her.
Nobody took incredibly beautiful people seriously as anything other that eye-and-arm candy, so she'd gone with average features. She had chosen a serviceable appearance without any particular thought toward romance.
Now, she sucked in her stomach and arched her back, critically observing the changes her posture made on her body shape in the mirror.
"Oh, my god, you do that too?"
Polly jumped, all of her pent up breath whooshing out of her. Jane Johnson, one of Polly's comedians, stood in Polly's doorway. She was slightly taller than Polly but slim, with dark hair and kewpie doll face that she'd recently started to try to balance with a leather motorcycle jacket thrown on with a t-shirt and jeans. She was only twenty-three but had already been doing comedy for a decade. She was one of Polly's only comedians that Polly hadn't done much for. Jane was one of those who would have made it no matter where she was discovered, or by whom.
Jane walked over and sat down on one of the chairs facing Polly's desk. She slouched down into the chair and flung a leg over the arm. She grinned at Polly as Polly stepped away from the mirror and kicked the bookcase/door shut. "It's good to know you're human," Jane said, tracking Polly with gleaming eyes, as Polly walked over to her desk.
Polly shrugged off her embarrassment and laughed. "Was there ever any doubt?"
"Kind of," Jane answered with a laugh but the corners of her mouth were tense.
Polly leaned forward, catching Jane's gaze. "How can I help you, hon?" she asked gently.
Jane shrugged, flushing a bit. She looked away, her gaze following the ornamental swirls of Polly's desk. "I have an audition today," she said. "It's stupid but I don't want to go alone. Maybe after, I could buy you lunch?"
Polly stood up. "Of course." She felt under her desk with her feet for her heels and then slipped them on. She grabbed her cell, slipping it into the skirt of her sundress.
Jane popped up from the chair. "Really? Okay, great," she said, moving toward the door. "I need to be there in 20 minutes."
"Where, exactly?"
"Burbank," Jane said, flashing an apologetic grin behind her.
Polly sighed and followed. It was noon. Getting to Burbank from Sylmar took 20 minutes with no traffic, let alone at this time of day with all of LA getting ready to do lunch.
Sam was back at her post and on the phone. Sam was 30 but with a face made for Disney and Lauren Hill hair. She brightened up when she saw Polly, which Polly took to mean that Sam's audition had gone well. Bryce Adder, a comedian that Polly didn't like much but who hung out a lot, was sitting on the couch next to the door. He rose when he saw Polly. "Can I talk to you?" he asked.
"I'm on my way out," Polly said, relieved to have an excuse to leave. Bryce was a tall, good-looking white guy who constantly pestered Polly for more stage time despite being only okay at comedy. He wasn't bad enough for Polly to tell him to get lost, although she felt no desire to help develop his talent. She did hope that he would grow up and let some of his more misogynistic jokes go, someday. Seeing him always put a pit of dread in her stomach, a confrontation that she'd like to put off indefinitely, if not forever. "You can make an appointment with Sam," she said. "I'd be happy to sit down with you," she said, losing a little of breath at the lie. She flashed him an apologetic smile and followed Jane, who hadn't even slowed down.
Mid-summer in Los Angeles, the heat had a fist to it. Polly pushed back against the searing breeze, following Jane to her dark blue Hyundai Sonata, which had been part of her payment for doing a commercial for the brand a year ago. Polly barely had the door closed before Jane took off. Polly was immortal but she strapped the seatbelt on with a quick prayer to Zeus anyway. Jane's philosophy on defensive driving was that a great offense made a great defense. Polly drove like everybody's least favorite grandmother; slowly, methodically, and with the proper respect for a 3000-lb death machine. As subtly as possible, she braced herself against the back of her seat, the door, and the floor of the car.
Once they were safely (relatively) on the freeway, Polly chanced a glance at Jane. She mentally shuffled through a list of pep talks but realized that Jane's gaze was focused on the road, where it belonged. Polly sank back in her seat, letting Jane's road-rage mutterings flow over her. Jane was a great comedian. She presented her knife-edged point-of-view with that sweet face machine-gunning a hundred jokes a minute at the audience. Her brilliance was obvious to everyone but herself. She was especially insecure when it came to acting, which was newer and something that she had less control over.
Polly kicked off her shoes and pulled out her phone. She had at least a hundred messages on various social media platforms that she needed to sort through, at any given time. Anything she didn't answer, Sam or Hayley would but she didn't like the new mortal trend of needing to be on-call at all times. An entire generation of mortals were growing up without the ability to just step away from each other and take a breath. She answered a handful of emails before her phone was jerked from her grasp by gravity.
"Shit!" Jane said, her gaze focused on an exit three lanes away and coming up fast. She jerked the wheel again, barely missing a semi.
"I swear to God, if you don't take the next exit, you'll never step foot on my stage again!" Polly shouted, clinging to the dashboard with one hand, the door handle with the other.
Jane sighed. "I think I have to," she said, ignoring a multitude of middle fingers she was receiving from people in the cars around them. "I'm sorry, I was going over what I wanted to say and wasn't paying attention to driving."
Polly ignored these comforting words and let Jane navigate the switching of lanes at a more reasonable pace. "I'm definitely going to be late now," Jane said.
"Why did you wait so long?" Polly asked.
"Honestly, I was just going to blow it off but then I thought if you went with me it might not be so bad. My roommate was going to come with me, but she got called into work last-minute."
Polly was surprised. Jane was nearly oblivious as to how talented she actually was, which meant that she rarely placed any importance on auditions and such. That she needed moral support was -- interesting. "What is the audition?" Polly asked.
Jane sighed turned onto the exit. "It's for a sitcom?"
"Uh-huh," Polly said. "So it's a big part?"
"Kinda," Jane said. "It's supposed to be about me."
Polly stifled a laugh. Only Jane would call a pitch meeting for her own sitcom an "audition". Jane pulled up outside of a dark-glassed skyscraper. Polly stifled another laugh. Jane's pitch was with NBC. Of course it was.
"Can you park for me?" Jane asked. "I'll wait for you in the lobby but I want to check in. Also, can I tell them you're my manager? I kind of already did."
"Sure," Polly said, answering the parking question automatically. The rest of the request hit a moment later, but Jane had already flashed her a dimpled grin and her door was already open. "Thanks!" she said, before exiting the vehicle.
Polly watched Jane jog toward the entrance and shook her head. Mortals. Always so hesitant to just ask for what they needed. Always so sneaky. She unstrapped her seatbelt and then retrieved her phone from under one of her shoes. She slipped it back into her pocket before scooting over to the driver's seat.
Her office was small, with a rose color breaking up the white molding. The decorator had gone nuts with the statues in this room. Three of Polly's sisters on three different walls; Thalia, Erato, and Clio had their own alcoves. The room comfortably fit a smaller version of Sam's desk with two velvet chairs that matched the walls facing the desk. The designer had found an office desk chair that looked like a throne, painted gold with white cushions. The window behind the chair was framed by gauzy, white curtains, but as the alleyway that the window looked out on ruined the ambiance, the designer had covered the "view" with a shade. The shade was painted with trompe l'oeil scene of a beach.
Polly walked over to a small bookcase in the corner and hit a hidden switch. It swung open to reveal a closet. The closet held a few changes of clothing and shoes; business and casual and two safes; one that Hayley knew about and one that only Polly did. A full-length mirror hung on the back of the door.
What type of body to present to the public was always a political choice. Throughout the centuries, Polly had generally settled for the classic white male, as she could be certain that even on a short mission, she'd have immediate credibility. This time, she'd wanted to settle in, stick around. She'd considered appearing as a black woman, just to balance out the myth of white male brilliance she'd helped perpetuate for millennia. But then, the Rachel Dolezal scandal had hit.
Polly recognized that inhabiting black skin without being burdened (and blessed) with the history behind it was disrespectful. In the end, she'd gone close to her own natural appearance; olive skin, dark topaz eyes, and jet black hair. She was vain enough to have made sure the hair was silky and the teeth straight but she'd also made herself short and chubby. The fact that she was not glamorous-looking weeded out people that she didn't want to work with.
Anyone who looked past her instead of at her, anyone whose gaze went immediately to her bosom, anyone who called her "senorita" without learning her name (or heritage) was immediately out. She mostly booked and hired women. Polly prided herself on not being vain, and in fairness, compared to her sisters, she was fairly unconcerned with her appearance. But she was still a goddess, and beauty was important to her.
Nobody took incredibly beautiful people seriously as anything other that eye-and-arm candy, so she'd gone with average features. She had chosen a serviceable appearance without any particular thought toward romance.
Now, she sucked in her stomach and arched her back, critically observing the changes her posture made on her body shape in the mirror.
"Oh, my god, you do that too?"
Polly jumped, all of her pent up breath whooshing out of her. Jane Johnson, one of Polly's comedians, stood in Polly's doorway. She was slightly taller than Polly but slim, with dark hair and kewpie doll face that she'd recently started to try to balance with a leather motorcycle jacket thrown on with a t-shirt and jeans. She was only twenty-three but had already been doing comedy for a decade. She was one of Polly's only comedians that Polly hadn't done much for. Jane was one of those who would have made it no matter where she was discovered, or by whom.
Jane walked over and sat down on one of the chairs facing Polly's desk. She slouched down into the chair and flung a leg over the arm. She grinned at Polly as Polly stepped away from the mirror and kicked the bookcase/door shut. "It's good to know you're human," Jane said, tracking Polly with gleaming eyes, as Polly walked over to her desk.
Polly shrugged off her embarrassment and laughed. "Was there ever any doubt?"
"Kind of," Jane answered with a laugh but the corners of her mouth were tense.
Polly leaned forward, catching Jane's gaze. "How can I help you, hon?" she asked gently.
Jane shrugged, flushing a bit. She looked away, her gaze following the ornamental swirls of Polly's desk. "I have an audition today," she said. "It's stupid but I don't want to go alone. Maybe after, I could buy you lunch?"
Polly stood up. "Of course." She felt under her desk with her feet for her heels and then slipped them on. She grabbed her cell, slipping it into the skirt of her sundress.
Jane popped up from the chair. "Really? Okay, great," she said, moving toward the door. "I need to be there in 20 minutes."
"Where, exactly?"
"Burbank," Jane said, flashing an apologetic grin behind her.
Polly sighed and followed. It was noon. Getting to Burbank from Sylmar took 20 minutes with no traffic, let alone at this time of day with all of LA getting ready to do lunch.
Sam was back at her post and on the phone. Sam was 30 but with a face made for Disney and Lauren Hill hair. She brightened up when she saw Polly, which Polly took to mean that Sam's audition had gone well. Bryce Adder, a comedian that Polly didn't like much but who hung out a lot, was sitting on the couch next to the door. He rose when he saw Polly. "Can I talk to you?" he asked.
"I'm on my way out," Polly said, relieved to have an excuse to leave. Bryce was a tall, good-looking white guy who constantly pestered Polly for more stage time despite being only okay at comedy. He wasn't bad enough for Polly to tell him to get lost, although she felt no desire to help develop his talent. She did hope that he would grow up and let some of his more misogynistic jokes go, someday. Seeing him always put a pit of dread in her stomach, a confrontation that she'd like to put off indefinitely, if not forever. "You can make an appointment with Sam," she said. "I'd be happy to sit down with you," she said, losing a little of breath at the lie. She flashed him an apologetic smile and followed Jane, who hadn't even slowed down.
Mid-summer in Los Angeles, the heat had a fist to it. Polly pushed back against the searing breeze, following Jane to her dark blue Hyundai Sonata, which had been part of her payment for doing a commercial for the brand a year ago. Polly barely had the door closed before Jane took off. Polly was immortal but she strapped the seatbelt on with a quick prayer to Zeus anyway. Jane's philosophy on defensive driving was that a great offense made a great defense. Polly drove like everybody's least favorite grandmother; slowly, methodically, and with the proper respect for a 3000-lb death machine. As subtly as possible, she braced herself against the back of her seat, the door, and the floor of the car.
Once they were safely (relatively) on the freeway, Polly chanced a glance at Jane. She mentally shuffled through a list of pep talks but realized that Jane's gaze was focused on the road, where it belonged. Polly sank back in her seat, letting Jane's road-rage mutterings flow over her. Jane was a great comedian. She presented her knife-edged point-of-view with that sweet face machine-gunning a hundred jokes a minute at the audience. Her brilliance was obvious to everyone but herself. She was especially insecure when it came to acting, which was newer and something that she had less control over.
Polly kicked off her shoes and pulled out her phone. She had at least a hundred messages on various social media platforms that she needed to sort through, at any given time. Anything she didn't answer, Sam or Hayley would but she didn't like the new mortal trend of needing to be on-call at all times. An entire generation of mortals were growing up without the ability to just step away from each other and take a breath. She answered a handful of emails before her phone was jerked from her grasp by gravity.
"Shit!" Jane said, her gaze focused on an exit three lanes away and coming up fast. She jerked the wheel again, barely missing a semi.
"I swear to God, if you don't take the next exit, you'll never step foot on my stage again!" Polly shouted, clinging to the dashboard with one hand, the door handle with the other.
Jane sighed. "I think I have to," she said, ignoring a multitude of middle fingers she was receiving from people in the cars around them. "I'm sorry, I was going over what I wanted to say and wasn't paying attention to driving."
Polly ignored these comforting words and let Jane navigate the switching of lanes at a more reasonable pace. "I'm definitely going to be late now," Jane said.
"Why did you wait so long?" Polly asked.
"Honestly, I was just going to blow it off but then I thought if you went with me it might not be so bad. My roommate was going to come with me, but she got called into work last-minute."
Polly was surprised. Jane was nearly oblivious as to how talented she actually was, which meant that she rarely placed any importance on auditions and such. That she needed moral support was -- interesting. "What is the audition?" Polly asked.
Jane sighed turned onto the exit. "It's for a sitcom?"
"Uh-huh," Polly said. "So it's a big part?"
"Kinda," Jane said. "It's supposed to be about me."
Polly stifled a laugh. Only Jane would call a pitch meeting for her own sitcom an "audition". Jane pulled up outside of a dark-glassed skyscraper. Polly stifled another laugh. Jane's pitch was with NBC. Of course it was.
"Can you park for me?" Jane asked. "I'll wait for you in the lobby but I want to check in. Also, can I tell them you're my manager? I kind of already did."
"Sure," Polly said, answering the parking question automatically. The rest of the request hit a moment later, but Jane had already flashed her a dimpled grin and her door was already open. "Thanks!" she said, before exiting the vehicle.
Polly watched Jane jog toward the entrance and shook her head. Mortals. Always so hesitant to just ask for what they needed. Always so sneaky. She unstrapped her seatbelt and then retrieved her phone from under one of her shoes. She slipped it back into her pocket before scooting over to the driver's seat.
Chapter 1 ?
"Polly!"
Polly's head jerked up from her desk before she was even fully awake. Her assistant, Harley Nugent, popped into Polly's doorframe, bouncing slightly off of the doorjamb. She had long, straight red hair and a small-puppy-in-a-big-dog's-body kind of energy. She tended to bump into things rather than just stop under her own steam.
"Yes?" Polly asked, blinking quickly to de-fog the spell of sleep. It had been a long night. She'd been nodding off at her desk all morning.
"I have to run out to pick up lunch, can you sit at the front desk for 10 minutes and answer the phones?"
"Of course," Polly said. She placed her hands on her desk as though she were about to stand, but slumped back as soon as Harley disappeared. Harley didn't usually answer phones. Sam Hart, the club's daytime receptionist must be out at an audition. Polly had a vague recollection of setting one up and then, as she remembered where her feet were -- yep, right there at the end of her legs -- she vowed to stop hiring actresses to work as her receptionist. She felt around under her desk for her shoes but then decided to leave them.
It wasn't her fault, though. Everyone had a least a smidge of talent, and those smidges tended to explode into the real thing around her. Actually, in that case, it was kind of her fault. Sure, she could turn off her magic, in order to keep her employees with her longer but that idea repelled her. She had too much pride in her own talent to squash it on purpose.
She stumbled out into the reception area. Her nights had been long, lately, leaving her sleepy and out-of-sorts during the day. Fortunately, the office was blessedly empty, which was unusual. Even though she was normally happy to see whatever comedian who wandered in, she was also, on days like this, very glad to have Sam and Harley to buffer her from immediate human contact. Aside from both being massively talented, even without Polly's influence, they were both super organized and loyal as hell -- or at least, they seemed to be. So far. One never knew, for sure.
After Ares had helped her get revenge on her sisters for humiliating her, Polly had left Olympus for the mortal world. She hadn't been back in over a thousand years. She wasn't sure if she'd ever go back. If she were honest with herself, shame kept her from going back as much as anger. She'd helped hundreds of mortals in that time, soothing her conscience by helping others.
Five years ago, she'd opened up a small comedy club in the San Fernando Valley. She'd considered Hollywood but there were already a lot of clubs there, and besides, she wanted to be closer to the comedians. Up-and-coming comedians only needed one or two roommates and only one or two jobs in order to afford living in the valley.
It was amazing that a "small club" still took up a decent length of the block. The periwinkle blue stucco had been studded with elaborate, gilt-framed televisions advertising upcoming shows. A large, black-painted wood cut-out of an open-beaked bird combined with an even larger white-painted wood speech bubble proclaimed, "Starlings Comedy Club" in black block letters above the office entrance.
At the end of the building was a small cafe. Starling's Cafe was on the other side of the club's kitchen, so just as the reception area doubled as a box office at night, the kitchen was used for the cafe during the day and the club at night. The cafe was mostly where Polly's regulars hung out, wrote new material (or didn't), and used her free wifi during the day.
Polly hadn't had much interest in decorating the place -- all she needed was a stage and some seats, right? So she'd hired an interior designer. Armed with nothing but Polly's vague comment about being of Greek ancestry, the designer had gilded the office with white molding and wall niches inset with statues of Greek goddesses. In a weird twist of Fate, which Polly often took a silent moment to curse, the designer had been inspired to use the 9 muses as her central theme. They didn't particularly look like Polly and her sisters but she tended to avoid their blank gazes anyway.
Plush, dark periwinkle carpet ran through all of the rooms except for the bathrooms and kitchen which were covered in white, porous tile for easy clean-up and quick drying. Aside from the white columns, the reception area was painted in the same periwinkle blue as the outside of the building. Sleek but comfy couches lined the wall facing Sam's massive, wrought-iron desk, two on each side of the door. Small side tables with books rather than magazines had been Polly's only influence in the design of the reception area.
The reception area broke off into two parts. To the left and down a short hallway, was Harley's office, and then Polly's and then a bathroom that the office shared. To the right, a short hallway led to the public bathrooms and further down the hallway, a large archway opened directly into the showroom. For guests, this was where the hallway ended. On the other side of the wall was another archway for the servers to get in and out of the room and the partitioned off hallway continued on to the staff bathroom and the kitchen.
The phone rang, startling Polly. Without thinking, she picked up the receiver and then dropped it back into the cradle. She didn't feel like talking to anyone. Her head pounded; a combination of guilt, relief, and too much ambrosia fighting for dominance over her nervous system.
The bells on her front door chimed and a man entered. Polly grimaced and then tried to inject some genuine interest into her expression. She relaxed when she recognized the uniform of a postal carrier. Not a fragile, easily crushed comedian, but a solid, strapping, albeit short, black man. He had a mailbag slung over his shoulder and was holding some boxes. An expression of bland friendliness in his dark brown eyes matched a sweet smile.
"I've got some packages for you," he said, walking toward the desk. Polly mentally dismissed the man. He had no talent to develop and she could sense no ambition in him, anyway.
"Thanks," she said, as he set three small boxes down on Sam's desk. She examined him more thoroughly, finding relief in being around someone she couldn't do anything for. He was exactly her height, and she was only 5'4 without heels, which she'd left under her desk. He had a decent jawline and strong arms and legs but a bit of a paunch around the middle even though he was definitely not any older than his late 30s. He had a comfortable feeling about him. His energy was self-sustaining; neither overly needy nor aggressively protective.
He was exactly average. Not good-looking, not ugly. Not weird, not cool. But there was something -- off.
"You have no talent," she blurted out.
He blinked and stepped back. He tilted her head and sent her a quizzical smile. "What?"
She leaned forward and stared him in the eyes, putting all of her focus into scanning him completely. "Like, no talent. Like, none. Not a finger, not a toenail, not a cell in your body has any talent!" She said.
"I mean," he said, taken aback. "I can play the guit--"
"Nope," she interrupted. "Not well. Not well, at all."
"Okay," he said, with a rueful laugh. "I sing in the shower some--"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's not good. You shouldn't."
He laughed again and thought for a moment. "Um...my friends say I grill a mean burg--"
"No. No. Nooo..." she said, with increasing vigor. "Your friends are liars. Your burgers are just okay." She frowned, focusing all of her energy on finding any bit of talent in him. She shook her head. "There's nothing. Nothing."
The front door chimed again and the scent of food permeated the room. "I've got lunch!" Harley said, dropping two containers onto Sam's desk. She shoved a cup of coffee into Polly's hand. "You seem like you need it," she said cheerfully. She looked up at the mailman. "Hi, Duke! How are you doing today?"
"I'm good," he said automatically turning his sweet smile onto her. "Actually, I'm talentless, apparently," he added with a laugh.
"Oh, don't say that," Polly said. She picked up the phone and sent Polly a quizzical glance. "Starlings Comedy Club, how can I help you?"
Polly realized that the phone had been ringing for a good minute and she hadn't even heard it. Duke returned his focus to her, his smile warming her body like a tiny, gentle sun. He saluted her, backed up a couple of steps and then turned to leave.
As the door chimed closed behind him, she realized that her mouth was open and that she hadn't moved from her position behind Sam's desk. One hand was still planted on the desk, the other holding the coffee Harley had shoved into her hand. Harley was angled over the phone from the wrong side of the desk, scribbling onto a post-it pad. "Okay, great, can you come in tomorrow at 4 for an interview? Bring a resume. Great! See you then!"
She dropped the phone back into the cradle from high enough that it bounced before settling into place. "Potential new dishwasher!" she said. "By the way," she added, rolling her eyes. "One of the TVs outside melted again. I'll send Sam out to pick up a new one when she gets back from her audition."
Polly stood up straight and stepped away from the desk. "Cool," she said. She wandered back down the hallway and into her office. She leaned against her door, dazed.
Polly's head jerked up from her desk before she was even fully awake. Her assistant, Harley Nugent, popped into Polly's doorframe, bouncing slightly off of the doorjamb. She had long, straight red hair and a small-puppy-in-a-big-dog's-body kind of energy. She tended to bump into things rather than just stop under her own steam.
"Yes?" Polly asked, blinking quickly to de-fog the spell of sleep. It had been a long night. She'd been nodding off at her desk all morning.
"I have to run out to pick up lunch, can you sit at the front desk for 10 minutes and answer the phones?"
"Of course," Polly said. She placed her hands on her desk as though she were about to stand, but slumped back as soon as Harley disappeared. Harley didn't usually answer phones. Sam Hart, the club's daytime receptionist must be out at an audition. Polly had a vague recollection of setting one up and then, as she remembered where her feet were -- yep, right there at the end of her legs -- she vowed to stop hiring actresses to work as her receptionist. She felt around under her desk for her shoes but then decided to leave them.
It wasn't her fault, though. Everyone had a least a smidge of talent, and those smidges tended to explode into the real thing around her. Actually, in that case, it was kind of her fault. Sure, she could turn off her magic, in order to keep her employees with her longer but that idea repelled her. She had too much pride in her own talent to squash it on purpose.
She stumbled out into the reception area. Her nights had been long, lately, leaving her sleepy and out-of-sorts during the day. Fortunately, the office was blessedly empty, which was unusual. Even though she was normally happy to see whatever comedian who wandered in, she was also, on days like this, very glad to have Sam and Harley to buffer her from immediate human contact. Aside from both being massively talented, even without Polly's influence, they were both super organized and loyal as hell -- or at least, they seemed to be. So far. One never knew, for sure.
After Ares had helped her get revenge on her sisters for humiliating her, Polly had left Olympus for the mortal world. She hadn't been back in over a thousand years. She wasn't sure if she'd ever go back. If she were honest with herself, shame kept her from going back as much as anger. She'd helped hundreds of mortals in that time, soothing her conscience by helping others.
Five years ago, she'd opened up a small comedy club in the San Fernando Valley. She'd considered Hollywood but there were already a lot of clubs there, and besides, she wanted to be closer to the comedians. Up-and-coming comedians only needed one or two roommates and only one or two jobs in order to afford living in the valley.
It was amazing that a "small club" still took up a decent length of the block. The periwinkle blue stucco had been studded with elaborate, gilt-framed televisions advertising upcoming shows. A large, black-painted wood cut-out of an open-beaked bird combined with an even larger white-painted wood speech bubble proclaimed, "Starlings Comedy Club" in black block letters above the office entrance.
At the end of the building was a small cafe. Starling's Cafe was on the other side of the club's kitchen, so just as the reception area doubled as a box office at night, the kitchen was used for the cafe during the day and the club at night. The cafe was mostly where Polly's regulars hung out, wrote new material (or didn't), and used her free wifi during the day.
Polly hadn't had much interest in decorating the place -- all she needed was a stage and some seats, right? So she'd hired an interior designer. Armed with nothing but Polly's vague comment about being of Greek ancestry, the designer had gilded the office with white molding and wall niches inset with statues of Greek goddesses. In a weird twist of Fate, which Polly often took a silent moment to curse, the designer had been inspired to use the 9 muses as her central theme. They didn't particularly look like Polly and her sisters but she tended to avoid their blank gazes anyway.
Plush, dark periwinkle carpet ran through all of the rooms except for the bathrooms and kitchen which were covered in white, porous tile for easy clean-up and quick drying. Aside from the white columns, the reception area was painted in the same periwinkle blue as the outside of the building. Sleek but comfy couches lined the wall facing Sam's massive, wrought-iron desk, two on each side of the door. Small side tables with books rather than magazines had been Polly's only influence in the design of the reception area.
The reception area broke off into two parts. To the left and down a short hallway, was Harley's office, and then Polly's and then a bathroom that the office shared. To the right, a short hallway led to the public bathrooms and further down the hallway, a large archway opened directly into the showroom. For guests, this was where the hallway ended. On the other side of the wall was another archway for the servers to get in and out of the room and the partitioned off hallway continued on to the staff bathroom and the kitchen.
The phone rang, startling Polly. Without thinking, she picked up the receiver and then dropped it back into the cradle. She didn't feel like talking to anyone. Her head pounded; a combination of guilt, relief, and too much ambrosia fighting for dominance over her nervous system.
The bells on her front door chimed and a man entered. Polly grimaced and then tried to inject some genuine interest into her expression. She relaxed when she recognized the uniform of a postal carrier. Not a fragile, easily crushed comedian, but a solid, strapping, albeit short, black man. He had a mailbag slung over his shoulder and was holding some boxes. An expression of bland friendliness in his dark brown eyes matched a sweet smile.
"I've got some packages for you," he said, walking toward the desk. Polly mentally dismissed the man. He had no talent to develop and she could sense no ambition in him, anyway.
"Thanks," she said, as he set three small boxes down on Sam's desk. She examined him more thoroughly, finding relief in being around someone she couldn't do anything for. He was exactly her height, and she was only 5'4 without heels, which she'd left under her desk. He had a decent jawline and strong arms and legs but a bit of a paunch around the middle even though he was definitely not any older than his late 30s. He had a comfortable feeling about him. His energy was self-sustaining; neither overly needy nor aggressively protective.
He was exactly average. Not good-looking, not ugly. Not weird, not cool. But there was something -- off.
"You have no talent," she blurted out.
He blinked and stepped back. He tilted her head and sent her a quizzical smile. "What?"
She leaned forward and stared him in the eyes, putting all of her focus into scanning him completely. "Like, no talent. Like, none. Not a finger, not a toenail, not a cell in your body has any talent!" She said.
"I mean," he said, taken aback. "I can play the guit--"
"Nope," she interrupted. "Not well. Not well, at all."
"Okay," he said, with a rueful laugh. "I sing in the shower some--"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's not good. You shouldn't."
He laughed again and thought for a moment. "Um...my friends say I grill a mean burg--"
"No. No. Nooo..." she said, with increasing vigor. "Your friends are liars. Your burgers are just okay." She frowned, focusing all of her energy on finding any bit of talent in him. She shook her head. "There's nothing. Nothing."
The front door chimed again and the scent of food permeated the room. "I've got lunch!" Harley said, dropping two containers onto Sam's desk. She shoved a cup of coffee into Polly's hand. "You seem like you need it," she said cheerfully. She looked up at the mailman. "Hi, Duke! How are you doing today?"
"I'm good," he said automatically turning his sweet smile onto her. "Actually, I'm talentless, apparently," he added with a laugh.
"Oh, don't say that," Polly said. She picked up the phone and sent Polly a quizzical glance. "Starlings Comedy Club, how can I help you?"
Polly realized that the phone had been ringing for a good minute and she hadn't even heard it. Duke returned his focus to her, his smile warming her body like a tiny, gentle sun. He saluted her, backed up a couple of steps and then turned to leave.
As the door chimed closed behind him, she realized that her mouth was open and that she hadn't moved from her position behind Sam's desk. One hand was still planted on the desk, the other holding the coffee Harley had shoved into her hand. Harley was angled over the phone from the wrong side of the desk, scribbling onto a post-it pad. "Okay, great, can you come in tomorrow at 4 for an interview? Bring a resume. Great! See you then!"
She dropped the phone back into the cradle from high enough that it bounced before settling into place. "Potential new dishwasher!" she said. "By the way," she added, rolling her eyes. "One of the TVs outside melted again. I'll send Sam out to pick up a new one when she gets back from her audition."
Polly stood up straight and stepped away from the desk. "Cool," she said. She wandered back down the hallway and into her office. She leaned against her door, dazed.
Friday, July 13, 2018
Unamused Prologue
The scent of ambrosia wafted through the dusky air, mingling with moans of pleasure. The lake was perfectly round and filled by an underground spring with clear water that deepened into cerulean at the center. An equally perfect circle of soft sand surrounded it, wide enough to accommodate the supple bodies of nearly every god and goddess in Elysium and their lovers. Some were dozing in the violet and orange haze. More were engaged in the act of love, often with multiple partners, in a slow, lazy orgy.
Strong, supple hands brushed against Polyhymnia's calves as she walked past a group of five or six nude, entwined, bronze-skinned gods and goddesses. She refrained from rolling her eyes as Ares tugged at her ankle more aggressively than any of the others. She gathered sand on the tip of her sandal and let it fly. He grunted and let go.
"You're such a prude, Poly," he muttered, brushing the sand out of his eyes.
"You're such a pest," Polyhymnia responded without looking back. His chuckle floated on the air behind her.
Narcissus was already at the pool, staring at his reflection, his back to her. He sensed her presence and called out, "No ripples!" without tearing his gaze from the water. Polyhymnia suppressed the urge to kick him in.
She moved along the sand at the edge of the water. When she was about a hundred yards away from Narcissus, she sank down onto her knees. The hem of her tunic pooled around her. The gasps and sighs receded from her awareness as she focused on her reason for coming to Elysium. She stared down at her grim reflection.
She and her sisters, by their nature, had a tendency to be scattered throughout the mortal world at any given time but they had a standing date once a year in Boeotia for any of them who could make it. Polyhymnia had shown up a week early, as usual, to arrange for food and wine with her father's servants, and hadn't been surprised when none of her sisters had shown up on the appointed day. Polyhymnia had missed a few reunions herself, having gotten lost in certain mortal entanglements. And to be honest, her sisters were all a bit self-absorbed and were, therefore, often late. But when a few days had passed and not even one of them had appeared, Polyhymnia had become concerned.
The pool at Elysium had the property of being able to show one what one wanted to see, so Polyhymnia had caught a ride on the closest pegasus. Now, she looked down into the water and forced herself to breathe deeply, consciously relaxing her shoulders. "Let me see Melpomene," she said, mentally unknotting the fist of worry that was clenched in her stomach. Of all of her sisters, Melpomene seemed to attract the most trouble. She also had the tendency to drag her sisters into her scrapes, which meant that by scrying for her, Polyhymnia was likely to find at least one or two more of her sisters at the same time.
An image of Melpomene appeared in the water. As the scene became clearer, Thalia appeared as well. Around them, urns and pillars appeared. Large cushions were scattered around the floor, upon which lounged the rest of Polyhymnia's sisters. It was as Polyhymnia had suspected -- except that none of her sisters looked upset, which they would have been if they'd been dragged into one of Melpomene's constant sagas. If all of her sisters were together and all was well, why hadn't they met at their father's house, as was tradition? And if they'd changed the location of their reunion, why had none of them told her?
The realization hit her. One of her father's servants must have mislaid a message from Hermes. Her sisters must be waiting for her. Polyhymnia's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Her sisters would tease her mercilessly for showing up late. She quickly scanned the room for hints as to its location. The pillars were painted gold. The large cushions were all turquoise, and smaller round ones were orange. That meant her sisters must be at Calliope's home. Yes, the arrangement of the pillars framing the dusky sky behind them was familiar.
Polyhymnia gathered up the skirt of her tunic as she prepared to rise. The musical sound of her sister's laugh made her smile. It was nice to hear her usually agitated sister sound so happy. The laughter trailed off and Melpomene raised a golden goblet to her sisters. "Thank you all for being here, and thank you all for not inviting Polyhymnia. I couldn't take any of her judgment disguised as concern, this year."
Polyhymnia froze, half-risen into an awkward crouch. What?
Calliope snorted. "No problem," she said, an edge of disdain in her tone. "Calliope," she said, in a deep voice, "How's the writing on your epic coming along?"
Erato chimed in, her voice also unnaturally low, "Erato, how's your songwriting?" She snorted. "As though any of us has time to create our own art, what with constantly inspiring these otherwise pathetic mortals to greatness?"
Polyhymnia frowned. The bitterness in her sisters' voices was new to her. She'd never considered that her real interest in her sisters' lives was taken as criticism rather than encouragement.
"Thank you for not inviting her, Clio, we know you two get along," Euterpe said. Polyhynmnia's sisters turned their focus to Clio, and so did Polyhymnia. Polyhymnia, before this day, would never have admitted to having a favorite, but Clio was always the easiest to talk to, and she tended to be less gay and flighty than the rest of her sisters.
Clio flushed but she raised her chin, her golden eyes flashing a mild challenge. "It was either that or be uninvited myself," she replied, in her usual cool, even tone. "Besides, I imagine everything will work itself out, eventually."
Urania flicked a graceful wrist in a dismissive gesture. "If we wanted this reunion to revolve around Polyhymnia, we would have invited her. We'll see her next year, we just need a break from her. Terpsichore, play us some music. Let's dance."
Terpsichore put down her goblet and raised her everpresent lyre, and plucked a familiar melody. As the melody picked up, the image of Polyhymnia's sisters faded away.
Polyhymnia rose from her half-crouch and walked away from the pool, in a daze. Her head swam in confusion and her heart felt like it had been replaced with eight sharp, heavy pebbles. Stabbing pains radiated out from her chest, piercing her ribs. She collapsed on the sand, trying to catch her breath. She felt like her entire body was on fire.
She had never felt the specific shame that came from being betrayed by those she trusted the most but she was familiar with the concept, as she'd witnessed it happen to mortals many times. She'd always felt like it balanced out for them, being able to turn their pain into inspiration for beautiful art, but as she curled into her pain, she couldn't imagine any art beautiful enough to balance out this level of devastation.
A band of cool strength wrapped itself around her waist. She hadn't realized that she'd gone blind with rage until her vision cleared. The fine, golden sand against the pure white of her skirt. A bronze arm wrapped around her waist. Ares. He pulled her toward him. She fancied that she heard a sizzle as her burning skin met the coolness of his chest. His nearness wiped out the pain from her body. Slowly, her mind cleared and narrowed into focus on one thing.
Ares lay curled around her on the sand, her tears sizzling as they fell onto his muscled bicep. "Don't worry," he murmured into her hair. "I'm very good at revenge."
[Note: A post title with a ? means that the chapter is being worked on and not currently considered done, although, most likely, most of these chapters will be altered as the story goes along and I'm figuring out what's going on.]
Strong, supple hands brushed against Polyhymnia's calves as she walked past a group of five or six nude, entwined, bronze-skinned gods and goddesses. She refrained from rolling her eyes as Ares tugged at her ankle more aggressively than any of the others. She gathered sand on the tip of her sandal and let it fly. He grunted and let go.
"You're such a prude, Poly," he muttered, brushing the sand out of his eyes.
"You're such a pest," Polyhymnia responded without looking back. His chuckle floated on the air behind her.
Narcissus was already at the pool, staring at his reflection, his back to her. He sensed her presence and called out, "No ripples!" without tearing his gaze from the water. Polyhymnia suppressed the urge to kick him in.
She moved along the sand at the edge of the water. When she was about a hundred yards away from Narcissus, she sank down onto her knees. The hem of her tunic pooled around her. The gasps and sighs receded from her awareness as she focused on her reason for coming to Elysium. She stared down at her grim reflection.
She and her sisters, by their nature, had a tendency to be scattered throughout the mortal world at any given time but they had a standing date once a year in Boeotia for any of them who could make it. Polyhymnia had shown up a week early, as usual, to arrange for food and wine with her father's servants, and hadn't been surprised when none of her sisters had shown up on the appointed day. Polyhymnia had missed a few reunions herself, having gotten lost in certain mortal entanglements. And to be honest, her sisters were all a bit self-absorbed and were, therefore, often late. But when a few days had passed and not even one of them had appeared, Polyhymnia had become concerned.
The pool at Elysium had the property of being able to show one what one wanted to see, so Polyhymnia had caught a ride on the closest pegasus. Now, she looked down into the water and forced herself to breathe deeply, consciously relaxing her shoulders. "Let me see Melpomene," she said, mentally unknotting the fist of worry that was clenched in her stomach. Of all of her sisters, Melpomene seemed to attract the most trouble. She also had the tendency to drag her sisters into her scrapes, which meant that by scrying for her, Polyhymnia was likely to find at least one or two more of her sisters at the same time.
An image of Melpomene appeared in the water. As the scene became clearer, Thalia appeared as well. Around them, urns and pillars appeared. Large cushions were scattered around the floor, upon which lounged the rest of Polyhymnia's sisters. It was as Polyhymnia had suspected -- except that none of her sisters looked upset, which they would have been if they'd been dragged into one of Melpomene's constant sagas. If all of her sisters were together and all was well, why hadn't they met at their father's house, as was tradition? And if they'd changed the location of their reunion, why had none of them told her?
The realization hit her. One of her father's servants must have mislaid a message from Hermes. Her sisters must be waiting for her. Polyhymnia's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Her sisters would tease her mercilessly for showing up late. She quickly scanned the room for hints as to its location. The pillars were painted gold. The large cushions were all turquoise, and smaller round ones were orange. That meant her sisters must be at Calliope's home. Yes, the arrangement of the pillars framing the dusky sky behind them was familiar.
Polyhymnia gathered up the skirt of her tunic as she prepared to rise. The musical sound of her sister's laugh made her smile. It was nice to hear her usually agitated sister sound so happy. The laughter trailed off and Melpomene raised a golden goblet to her sisters. "Thank you all for being here, and thank you all for not inviting Polyhymnia. I couldn't take any of her judgment disguised as concern, this year."
Polyhymnia froze, half-risen into an awkward crouch. What?
Calliope snorted. "No problem," she said, an edge of disdain in her tone. "Calliope," she said, in a deep voice, "How's the writing on your epic coming along?"
Erato chimed in, her voice also unnaturally low, "Erato, how's your songwriting?" She snorted. "As though any of us has time to create our own art, what with constantly inspiring these otherwise pathetic mortals to greatness?"
Polyhymnia frowned. The bitterness in her sisters' voices was new to her. She'd never considered that her real interest in her sisters' lives was taken as criticism rather than encouragement.
"Thank you for not inviting her, Clio, we know you two get along," Euterpe said. Polyhynmnia's sisters turned their focus to Clio, and so did Polyhymnia. Polyhymnia, before this day, would never have admitted to having a favorite, but Clio was always the easiest to talk to, and she tended to be less gay and flighty than the rest of her sisters.
Clio flushed but she raised her chin, her golden eyes flashing a mild challenge. "It was either that or be uninvited myself," she replied, in her usual cool, even tone. "Besides, I imagine everything will work itself out, eventually."
Urania flicked a graceful wrist in a dismissive gesture. "If we wanted this reunion to revolve around Polyhymnia, we would have invited her. We'll see her next year, we just need a break from her. Terpsichore, play us some music. Let's dance."
Terpsichore put down her goblet and raised her everpresent lyre, and plucked a familiar melody. As the melody picked up, the image of Polyhymnia's sisters faded away.
Polyhymnia rose from her half-crouch and walked away from the pool, in a daze. Her head swam in confusion and her heart felt like it had been replaced with eight sharp, heavy pebbles. Stabbing pains radiated out from her chest, piercing her ribs. She collapsed on the sand, trying to catch her breath. She felt like her entire body was on fire.
She had never felt the specific shame that came from being betrayed by those she trusted the most but she was familiar with the concept, as she'd witnessed it happen to mortals many times. She'd always felt like it balanced out for them, being able to turn their pain into inspiration for beautiful art, but as she curled into her pain, she couldn't imagine any art beautiful enough to balance out this level of devastation.
A band of cool strength wrapped itself around her waist. She hadn't realized that she'd gone blind with rage until her vision cleared. The fine, golden sand against the pure white of her skirt. A bronze arm wrapped around her waist. Ares. He pulled her toward him. She fancied that she heard a sizzle as her burning skin met the coolness of his chest. His nearness wiped out the pain from her body. Slowly, her mind cleared and narrowed into focus on one thing.
Ares lay curled around her on the sand, her tears sizzling as they fell onto his muscled bicep. "Don't worry," he murmured into her hair. "I'm very good at revenge."
[Note: A post title with a ? means that the chapter is being worked on and not currently considered done, although, most likely, most of these chapters will be altered as the story goes along and I'm figuring out what's going on.]
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