Scene Snippets

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.

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"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.


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"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.

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"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."

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"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."