Day 9: Hermitude


Looking East

From Beer & Chocolate, Chapter 2

Melanie walked past her cube then suddenly doubled back. “Oh good you’re here early. Have you heard?”

“What?”

“That press rag blog thing has gotten hold of our deal with Aspert. You have to go over there and convince them to stop hounding us.”

“What?” Liz groggily asked. It was all too confusing.

“Here.” Melanie leaned over her and quickly tapped on Liz’s computer, getting a new browser window open and typing in the URL of the gossip rag. A photo of three of them, Liz, Melanie, and Johnny, laughing and giggling at a winery- Liz couldn’t remember which- and a few paragraphs on what Johnny’s new girlfriend was all about.

“Why do these people care?” Liz said. She looked up at Melanie. “Are you OK with this?”

“I’m fine, I don’t care. Johnny hasn’t said anything about it.” She leaned back on Liz’s desk and crossed her arms. “I’m mostly worried about what this kind of speculation does for the deal. So can you take this guy here out to lunch and find out why they’re so into it, and just try to get them to stop trailing us everywhere.” Melanie opened up Liz’s top drawer. “Use the company AMEX, and pick someplace nice.”

I didn’t write yesterday, took the day off. So I’m back on it today. I realized yesterday how little I’ve been out taking photos, because if I’m not writing at home, I’m getting stuff done so I can start writing. One week in and the impact has been felt, I guess. Had a good conversation with my mom on who Collins would be. In Austen’s P&P, he is the cousin that gets the entail to their cottage. Such an obscure legal situation. He’s also got a great character, always simpering about his employer and her estate, “Rosings.” So I’ll introduce him here. I have a new respect for Austen being a very compact writer.

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