Good Things/ Everyone Has Secrets

I want this week to be over.  It is going to feel like the longest effing week.  Tomorrow night I look forward to seeing old friends, reuniting the PM productions gang!  On Thursday night I look forward to the Pigeon Holiday Potluck, but for goodness sake, I have to work a whole full long ass day right before both those fun gatherings, which makes me a lil grumpy.

I also just got off the phone with a couple of loan places and that makes my seriously consider learning how to tie a proper noose with my adorable pink scarf.

So I thought I'd blog about something that makes me happy, to cheer myself and get me through the rest of this day! 

Aaron.  Yeah, pathetic, right?  I know.  But He is great in so many ways, and I feel so blessed to have him.  We went out with a gift certificate to Not YOur Average Joe's last night, had ourselves a pitcher of Sangria and some apps, then headed over to the movie theatre to see the new TRON film (which I enjoyed despite myself.)

He is awesome pants.  A great date, a great friend, and really good company.  In the car I got to discussing my writing.  I said: "I have a dilemma and I need your advice."

And he was game.  I laid out my problem.  It's about the fire that killed Nolan & Jonah's parents.  I have long suspected that this fire was not the accident it appeared to be.
But.  Was I ready for the implications?

Aaron was so funny and great helping me work through my qualms about who started the fire, why it happened, and how it all went down.  He approved heartily of my decision to make this Caleb's big secret, and he's on board with the vision I have for Nolan too.  He says he wants me to finish the Jonah story so I can focus on Nolan.  I told him it doesn't really work like that. But he likes what I have going with everyone.  He told me he loved the idea, the rule, the caveat that Everyone in Cedar falls has a secret.  He says it seems so simple, but that it's really great fun and gives the writer so much to play with and propts so many ideas inside him. 

The praise felt damn good.

He has definite opinions on how Jonah's storyline should wrap-up, but he is a different visionary than I am, and I'm afraid I just can's leave Jonah paralyzed but alive for the rest of his days, no matter the poetic justice of it.  I just have other plans for the fella.

He also helped me make a final decision on the Vaughan Grey questionable paternity thing.  I think I'll insinuate and hint at and toy with the possibility, but in the end I think it is important that Jonah has really really committed incest, no ifs and or buts.  Father-daughter incest, not half-brother\half-sister incest. 

I am still pussying out on the Maggie\Grey soryline, but I don't think it can be helped.  They are following the romance novel trajectory, and in order to feel satisfaction I think I just gotta give them a happy ending.  I feel fiercely protective of them for some reason.  I will make their ride as bumpy as possible, but in the end I want to give them peace.

I know, I know.  Peace is boring.  I guess we'll see.

Poor Ben and Avalon, they're in a pickle.

And velvet.  Sheesh.

And then I have this wild plot development with Jonah and grace and Velvet that I'm not one hundred percent sure I'm behind. 

But it was really awesome to have aaron's help and advice.  I used to be able to bounce ideas off my bestie D, but the poor woman is one busy chica, and naturally fictional towns have taken a back, back, back seat to all the other things she has going on in her amazing world of motherhood, wifehood, studenthood, and personhood!


AND, just to let everyone know, I've sorta popped Nettie's cherry!  I have started using her to write vignettes!  I haven't actually completed one on her yet, but I've started two juicy ones.  Maybe today I will post the very first partial vignette I wrote on her, for your viewing pleasure and as a celebration of breaking-her-in!!
It is the beginning of a nolan Delaney stroyline and it was written the very same night that Aaron served as my brainstorm partner.  You will see a bookend piece with this theme a little later on, something I've written but can't post just yet.

This takes place when Nolan is younger.  Before he meets Zahra. 

Thanks Nettie, for proving every bit as easy to write on as my big lappy!

And keep in mind, folksicles, that this is in a very rough state :)

K, enjoy the first fruits of my labor with Nettie!

*************

Everyone in Cedar Falls had secrets.  Maybe no worse than anywhere else, maybe no better, but everyone had secrets in the sleepy little community of means, and somedays it seemed to Nolan Delaney that he knew far too many of them.

Colonel Jarrod sent money to the family his wife didn’t know about over seas, the one he’d made and abandoned when he was a general enlisted man.  Father Devereaux stole money from the collection boxes to buy shots at the Harp and Fiddle.  Mrs. Cashman was accustomed to providing oral sex for a better rate on her car insurance.  Principal Fredricks was a closeted lesbian afraid to come out for fear of losing her job and her children.  Luis the busboy stole items from people’s coats and purses—not for money but for the thrill of it.  Shauna the travel agent booked herself in rooms next to the attractive male clients she served when they traveled to tropical destinations, and would almost always arrange a way to get them into bed—married or not. 

The pharmacist was hooked on pain pills, the nurse at the elderly home was repulsed by dementia and depends.   The couples therapist was a swinger, the police chief was a racist.  The butcher was a money launderer, the baker used undocumented aliens in her shop, and the candlestick maker, or the owner of the candle shop that is, repackaged cheap foreign-made products and called them artisan organics.

Nolan Delaney was a bartender, the kind you read about or see in the old films.  He was the sympathetic ear with the down-to-earth advice and the locked lips.  He had the kind of smile that made you like him, the kind of personality that made you trust him, and the kind of ready empathy that made you pour out your deepest secrets as he poured your booze.  He was a bartender, but more than that, he had become, somehow, the chief confessor for a town brimming with sordid little secrets and sinister sins.  

He made you feel as though he didn’t judge, as though he didn’t condemn.  He never cringed when you finally got it off your chest.  He never pulled back in horror or clammed up.  He remained a friendly face and a shoulder to lean on, so long as you hadn’t done something too terribly heinous.  He was sympathetic and discreet, but he was also highly moral and good.  

But he’d only ever gone to the authorities with information once or twice.  The once when he thought he knew where that missing girl was being held (nobody would have suspected the Oncologist, and it was with a great deal of skepticism that the police even followed up on Nolan’s lead, but it saved a girl’s life and laid to rest a few missing person’s cases to boot.); And the only other time was with the sleaze who had a penchant for forcing his ‘dates’.  Everybody knew Nolan Delaney wouldn’t keep his lips sealed for anyone who hurt women and children.  

But for most things he was as good as a vault; lay your burden down and trust that it would be secure, so long as it resides in Nolan Delaney.  He’d urge husbands to go back to their wives, but he wouldn’t blab about the infidelity.  He’d encourage the suicidal to seek help, but he’d never whisper a word about their darkest weakness.  He’d point women to the best places for care when they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, or if they were afraid to leave the boyfriend or husband that was hurting them.  He’d more often than not convince petty thieves to do right by their victims and even on a few occasions to turn themselves in.  He counseled alcoholics, drug abusers, gambling addicts, sex addicts, and lesser degenerates of all shapes, sizes, and sorts.

He was the kind of fellow who had help lines and emergency services on speed-dial, who knew the names of reliable clergy from most major religions, who had a couch to spare on those nights when some lonely soul had no place else to go.  He was the guy who gave you the courage to come out, or to propose, or to finally quit that job you hate.  He’d buy you a round for your promotion, your graduation,  and the birth of your child.  He was well liked, reliable, and remarkable in his ability to carry on as though he wasn’t carrying little bits of his neighbor’s crosses.  Singular in his ability to smile and nod at you the night after he’d seen you at your worst, your most vulnerable, your most shamefully embarrassing, smile and nod and treat you as though none of that awful human foible mattered one bit to him, and none of it would come back to bite you.