Have another Max and Button outtake where they do nothing to move the plot or their subplot or develop character or do anything of worth or note. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but let’s look at the glass half full: It’s a blog post:
Max came back to end of the bar where Chloe was sitting, carrying a celebratory beer and a martini with three olives in time to see a drunken stranger come up beside her, put his arm around her, and say, “Honey, you are really cute.”
“Oh, don’t,” Max said.
“You the boyfriend?” The drunk sized Max up, and since he probably had a hundred pounds on Max, he laughed. “What are you going to do about it?”
Max sighed and put the drinks down. “Probably save your worthless life.”
The drunk laughed again and turned back to Chloe, whose eyes were now gleaming with liquored-up homicidal rage.
“Do not call me cute,” Chloe said, as Joyce leaped down from the shelf, and hissed, her red eyes glowing.
“Oh, this is great,” the drunk said. “Two cats, hissing at me.”
Chloe went for her ankle holster, and Max kicked the drunk in the back of the knee, grabbed his neck as he folded, smashed his forehead into the bar, and then dropped him on the floor.
“Wow,” Chloe said straightening. “That was efficient.”
“I’ve been here before with Mammon,” Max said, checking to make sure the drunk wasn’t getting up again any time soon. “My boss can infuriate anybody.”
Rab came down the bar and leaned over to see the drunk. “I suppose you had to.”
“He called Chloe cute and and then Joyce got off the shelf.”
“Oh.” Rab nodded. “Then you had to. It might be best if you were not here when he came to.”
“Hell, yes.” Max looked at Chloe. “Come on, drink your olives and I’ll take you to dinner. I think I can afford the Eurydice Grill.”
Chloe looked down at the drunk. “I’ll buy. That was really very efficient.”
Max looked at Rab and spread his hands out. “Who says I don’t have charm?”
“Everybody,” Rab said, and Max laughed and took Chloe away as Joyce jumped down on the drunk, kneaded him with her claws a couple of times, and then headed for the stairs, looking pleased.
Oh that’s fun. I do like Max. And Rab. And Chloe.
And Joyce.
Always fun getting the snippets!
BTW and completely off-topic: are you still working with St Martins Press? Apparently they have contracted with Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her “memoirs” and “the fight for the future of our country” (bleagh).
I assume it will be published through their fiction section or perhaps humor? Because it sure won’t be non-fiction.
That’s up in the air. They rejected Nita, so who knows if they want anything else from me? Once I finish Nita, we’ll find out.
I like this couple so much! And reading these outtakes, and with the sense that the main couple is meanwhile having a much more stressful time, makes me remember a Buffy episode: “The Zeppo.”
It amused me to have a story told from Xander’s point of view, and to have him catch occasional glimpses of all the other main characters battling an “end of the world” threat. He was having a subplot, but it was presented as the main plot, unlike the usual way it’s done.
I loved that episode as well! It was so character driven that we really got to connect with Xander as the hero of his own story. I felt like the lesson was that everyone is fighting their own battle. Buffy just nailed everything.
It might be time for a Buffy re-watch
We’ve just started our sons on Buffy. So far, so good, although I have to keep my husband from quoting along with it and spoiling things.
Thank you, I love Chloe and Max, vintage Crusie. In the nicest way she hurried to add.
Lovely clip! I suppose I sorta see why it can be excised, but these outtakes accumulate.
I have a Trio Calculator Clock Frame that I received as an employee appreciation gift for my twentieth anniversary with the Department of Corrections. I tended to think of it as a cheap trinket until I went online to see if I could find one to share here:
https://crestline.com/p/trio-calculator-frame-clock-105076?pid=182214&gclid=Cj0KCQjwh8jrBRDQARIsAH7BsXfz_2pmWI2DwCmDhgFXqLVjV5I9IC9TyJBz3PahC-H4g_udphWhTw4aAuMbEALw_wcB
They want US$325.00 for that thing! I am, years after the fact, suitably impressed. But that’s not why I bring it up. You see, it has an alarm function, which I somehow set without knowing how, for noon. This is a little piece of my life I would happily make an outtake. Not the device itself – I lerve it. I use the calculator. I have my grandson’s most bedeviling photo in it. It’s… glorious.
But I could live without the thing playing an electronic William Tell Overture at noon every day, if that’s what it really is. I took the battery out for a minute. It remembered the alarm when I put it back in. I had to reset the time and date, but it remembered the alarm.
Maybe by the time you finish trimming tDiND I will figure out how to cancel that alarm.
(That is the price for 25 of them.)
I might have a line on the instructions if you really want it to stop playing that at noon. Usually a Mode button cycles through the options and another button turns options on and off.
I’ll look for it, and good call on the price. It turns out I was right about it being a cheap trinket.
Cheap but adorable.
I have the instructions …. (it was a Quest!). If you email me at cgcameron13@gmail.com I will send them to you, Gary.
Yayyyyyyy
Also, the website yelled at me that I am posting comments too quickly? I didn’t know websites that did. Well, now that I’ve learned something new, I can turn my brain off!
Sorry. I have no idea why it did that.
That was wonderful. I needed a smile and Competency Porn today. Thank you!!
I love this scene. I don’t care if drives the plot or not, it’s wonderful. It put a smile on my face.
Yes! I love how Max *laughs*. He doesn’t chortle or “bark back a bite of laughter”. He’s real. I love the *community* … that too is vintage Crusie. And that’s why I keep coming back to read & re-read all the books, but especially “Faking It”. That’s my go-to book when I’ve had a rough week. 🙂
This was supposed to go under Margaret’s Vintage Crusie post. ????
Fan service for a book we haven’t even read yet. You are the bestest.
LOL at Joyce puncturing the drunk.
I love this scene. And hate that you have to cut it. Are you *sure* it doesn’t move something forward? Their relationship? Venus’s position in respect to Mars? Something?
Sigh. It’s so short, too.
145,000 words. Must cut 45000. This scene has to not only add to their relationship, it has to do windows, floors, and the Lindy Hop. No.
I love your snippets. They are as good as fudge.
Oooh, fudge. No, I have to cut that out, too. Damn.
But that’s only one word?!?
And 45000 calories.
Well, that was fun! It made me wish I had had someone like that when I was young and still went to bars. I used to meet my friend Marianne, who had very large breasts, for a drink. There was always some 40ish guy in a suit who couldn’t believe that just because she was in a bar, she wasn’t dying for him to come and drool down her shirt(we were in our 20s at the time). Since she had one of the smartest and funniest guys I’ve ever met waiting for her at home, their efforts seemed particularly ridiculous.
Getting rid of people can be hard, my friend went dancing and when her friend went to the bathroom, she caught the attention of a small group of men. so she told the doorman, who had a word. He told them she was his wife and she hung out with him till her friend got back.
You know, I’d love to read all 45000 of those words you have to cut, just for the fun of it. I assume some of them are spoilers, but once you’ve got the book published, any chance you could put them all up here?
A lot of them are completely useless, so nope, but when I lop out whole scenes, I can do it.
If this was a tv series, they’d have used that in the trailer.
It does imparts a lot of information fast, while being exciting visually and does set Joyce up as a cat to be feared
That was great! Thank you for sharing! Also, JOYCE!