Excerpt from today's work on Carnal Fear

I think some of this is a reaction to something I read a couple of weeks ago and didn't agree with. I'll probably lose a lot of it in a later draft but for now here you go.

"Well no duh, Aaron."

"Miss Gough, 'duh" is a terribly hurtful word. You've harmed me irreparably. I think it's only fair that you pay for supper."

"Aaron Feldman, how dare you? You specifically said you would pay for dinner. How like you to make a promise and then try and weasel out of it. Remember when you said if I carried you all the way to the beach I could use your new bucket to build sandcastles and then you hogged it the entire time? You have no shame."

"I have plenty of shame. Luckily for me this situation doesn't call for it. You're the one who should be ashamed for bringing up twenty year old past wrongs. Just like a woman, can't let anything go."

This was the outside of enough. I threw my napkin at him, cheering when it hit him square in the nose. "Take that!"

He laughed. "And here I thought you'd be the same old Sutter. But no, your aim has improved exponentially." He was interrupted by the delayed delivery of our food.

"Hogwash. My aim has always been superb. But enough about me and my many talents. Tell me about your last photography trip and why it's fair that you get to be talented in more than one way while the average person has to console themselves with writing bad poetry."

"I think everyone has more than one talent. I heard someone the other day who was saying we live in a time where you have to specialize. She said it's impossible to be a Renaissance man or woman anymore because there's too much out there we have to learn and do. That didn't make a lick of sense to me. It seems pretty obvious to me if there is more to do and see and learn then we all have to be Renaissance men and women, instead of none of us being one. Look at all the people blogging. Never in the history of the world have so many people been able to publish their writings."

Sutter was surprised by all this passion. "But isn't it all junk? Marnie at the gallery sometimes reads entries to me and it's just horrid. She's says it's worse to read than it is to hear because of all the misspellings and lack of punctuation."

"Sure, a heck of a lot of it is utter crap. So what? It's still people trying, expressing, reaching out. It's a grand and glorious thing. And these same people are posting pictures of their cats or their cars or the funny way the shadows hit the mailbox on the way in to work this morning. And that means people are taking part in two disciplines at once, they're creating visual and text art at the same time. But best of all they're noticing. They saw that the light was interesting or that their cat looked particularly cute and during the day they hear something that makes them think, oh that would be good blog material and they're digging deep and they're finding the words to describe it all. Maybe it's all done at a rudimentary level but it's still going on. Oh it's a wonderful time to be alive."

"You think? You used to want to live in the old west and run with the buffalo."

He laughed. "Yeah well, didn't we all?"

I shook my head. "I wanted to be a horse."

"I can see that. They're a lot like you. Beautiful, spirited and they'll jump the fence and come back pregnant if you don't watch out." I looked away but he must have seen something in my face anyway because he apologized. "I was just joking, I didn't mean anything by it." Then he frowned. "You've never been pregnant have you?"

"No," I said. "I never have." I looked at my food but I knew I wouldn't be able to eat another bite. One side effect of the stress I was under was loss of appetite. And my hair was falling out. I had no idea why but it was making me crazy. "You ready to go?"

"Sure. Did you want to show me your house?"

Just the idea of trying to be perky and act like a tour guide made me bone tired. "It's kind of late. Would you like to see it tomorrow?"

"Sure. What time?"

"I usually get home from work at around 6:30, unless we get a late customer. Does seven suit you?"

"Okay. Let me get directions from you."

"What you mean you don't already have a map with the route to my house highlighted in pink?"

He smiled. "Well yeah, but I didn't want you to think I was being too forward."