Another NaNo snippet, and basic ranting and stuff. Faye was, in fact, on a bounty, one worth a quarter-mill, not too shabby. She stood in the shadows of a smoky bar, waiting for the show on stage to begin. Faye knew who her target was, and she wanted to wait until the group got a little more liquored up and a whole lot sloppier. She�d already spotted at least two bodyguard-types who could be trouble. Perhaps I�ll just wait for the second set, Faye thought. I don�t want to bring down the whole party for the cover-paying crowd. Just then, the woman on the stage opened her mouth and sang with a voice that had been strained through decades of unfiltered cigarettes and blended scotch whiskey, a voice that grated on the nerves yet still made the listener search for a partner to take home that night, to sweat into each other to the soundtrack of a hung-over angel. If I could sing like that, my debt would be gone, mused Faye. Christ, if I could sing like that, then maybe Spike . . . but the only image of Spike she�d been able to muster these days was the sight of him laid out in that hospital bed. She�d cried herself to sleep, seeing the lunkhead so completely decimated like that. She�d been to visit him only a couple of times since then, but hid out of sight until she knew that he was asleep. If she only looked at his closed eyes, then she saw the Spike she knew. Faye took another slug of her cheap blended whiskey, looking over the crowd for her target, and letting the rumble and rasp of the female singer vibrate into her muscles. Faye allowed herself to think briefly of Jet, and the night they�d shared her bed. Unfortunately, once she got the image of Jet in her mind, there was no shaking it, and the guttural tremolo of the singer wasn�t helping. Oh, just go and bitch-slap your bounty so you can go home, Faye thought to herself. The singer reached the end of her song, and Faye slid off her barstool and sashayed over to her mark. �Hi, sailor,� Faye purred as she leaned over her mark�s shoulder. He turned his big, bushy head and leered down her body. �What can I do for you, darling?� sneered the bounty. �Undressing me with your eyes? How uncouth.� And with that, Faye slammed the butt end of her pistol into the mark�s head and he went down like a bag of rocks. Sighing, Faye slapped on the cuffs and called the cops. The singer on stage never missed a single beat, but she caught Faye�s eye and gave her a thumbs-up. Faye picked up the mark�s half-finished drink, raised it in a salute to the bourbon-burned pipes of the woman on stage. On this day in 1940, The Nazis bomb Coventry, destroying the cathedral and killing several hundred people. British Intelligence knew ahead of time -- the German ENIGMA ciphers had been decoded -- but did not warn the town's citizens. Of course, Coventry was a legitimate military target, something the English government tried to play down. (snark) My goodness, how the times have changed! (/snark) I really don�t have much to say . . . my brain is a little empty because I�m trying to reserve my energy for the NaNo, and part of that is doing research into scene-specific song lyrics and whether a character can actually say the phrase, �Fuck Entropy�. Well, of course, he can, but in the terms as to whether he�s a closed thermodynamic system. At any rate, Wikipedia is very very helpful. I got a call from my priest yesterday, which in itself is a bit odd. Tomorrow is our wedding anniversary (me and the Hubster, not me and my priest, you sickos � although, he�s as cute as a bug and he�s of short stature, and you know what they say about men of short stature, that they�re not short on . . . ack! Bad bad Valkyrie! Wash out your mouth with holy water, you heathen freak!!!!!) So anyway, Fr. F asks me if I can set up a small reception for the Confirmation Mass next Monday, and since he didn�t say Tuesday, as that is Sacred Bowling Night, I said sure, no problem. So I went down there because they have some festive stuff to decorate with and I went into the back room and I�m convinced that these people don�t even know what they have in there. No clue. I managed to find about four thousand votive holders with half-burned votives in them, eighteen strands of Christmas lights that don�t work, and a big bag of mismatch plastic forks. And several tins of vegetables. What the? Well, I made a little stash of stuff I want to use and I made mental notes about what to get and I just got back from At the same time, I have to make forty-three pounds of stuffing for a Thanksgiving potluck tomorrow at work, half of which I made last night � now my entire house smells like sauted� onions. The necessity for the huge amount is because I work with a lot of bachelor engineers and they don�t know how to cook. They sure as hell don�t know how to dress themselves. Oh, yes, and I have to slice and baste a ham. Before and after the Sacred Bowling. I only call it sacred because, well, it is, and in fact, the bowling itself is not so sacred as the Buying of Ice Cream is afterward. And after months of my having to buy the ice cream -- the manner in which that this had been chosen in the past was that the person with the lower scratch score had to buy. Since Hubster got better than I and I had major abdominal surgery, I had to buy the ice cream every damn week until I changed the rules that the person who got the lower number of pins over their average had to buy. And since Dairy Queen� has decided that their small Blizzard� is worth nearly three bucks, we�ve been going different places. With coupons. Which I find interesting because the choice when I had to buy was always Dairy Queen�, regardless of cost! That SOB Hubster of mine. I shouldn�t call him that because tomorrow is our anniversary (number 3) and we bought a kayak because we weren�t going to buy each other gifts this year, but then I found out he bought me something anyway. I was fretting to my mother that I didn�t know what to do about that, and this was her advice: �Do nothing. The wife shouldn�t have to buy any gifts for the anniversary anyway. It was his privilege to marry you, and you should get all the presents.� Okay, Mom. NaNoWriMo word count: 30148. WOOT!
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