Don’t ask me how I did it, because I won’t be able to explain today’s sudden, unprecedented burst of productivity. Especially when you factor in the fact that I went into work early today and cranked out three full stories during my shift. I should have been a total puddle on the writing front tonight. But somehow I made it through with more than 5,000 words in one day — finally breaking the 40,000 word barrier.
Yeah. I’m surprised too.
I got home from work a little before 7 o’clock, at which point SMB came over to drop off my cheesecake pan (I’d left it at his place after my last baking endeavor, but needed it back to make a raspberry white-chocolate cheesecake to bring to his extended family’s tomorrow night for dessert). We grabbed a quick dinner and he left me alone for the night so I could bake to my heart’s content.
After that, I even squeezed in a Syracuse basketball game. #WeWon
And somehow, amid all of these potential distractors, I one-upped my previous best day by almost 2,000 words and got myself back ahead of the progress bar. It’s the kind of productivity that can only be rewarded by one thing. An excerpt.
Here’s a little snippet from Maxime’s first (and last) date with a grad student named Todd, during which she locked her keys in her car:
There are two ways to deal with something like this.
The first is that you call AAA and have them haul their asses to wherever the hell you are, and pronto, before you turn into an iced caramel macchiato. But that wasn’t exactly an option for me.
I’d let my AAA membership run out about a month ago, simply because I hadn’t been able to scrounge up the fifty dollars required to keep me up to date.
Then there’s the second option, which entails calling whatever local tow truck company you can get a hold of and coughing up eighty dollars for them to take approximately four minutes to jam some sort of lever into your car, leaving a scratch and a dent that will remain long after your pride has healed over again.
But I didn’t have eighty bucks. All I had was a gas tank in desperate need of some low-grade fuel and thirty bucks to feed the car, my cat and me until payday on Friday.
I was, as they say on the farm, up shit crick without a paddle.
Forget the paddle. You don’t even have a damn canoe that floats you fucking idiot.
“Well, you have AAA, right?” Todd asked.
I hate him.
“Of course I do,” I said, pulling my wristlet out of my purse again, and flipping through its various contents until I found my AAA card. I didn’t know what to do, so I just pretended I was totally fine. This wasn’t a huge deal, and I definitely had a plan that would work out — no skin off my back.
I called the number on my AAA card, which bounced me to an operator in Upstate New York, where my account was originally registered to. After a couple minutes on the phone with an operator, they transferred me down to a Connecticut operator who said she couldn’t find my name on file.
“That’s weird,” I said, shrugging my shoulders in exaggeration to Todd who was leaning against my car, watching the entire conversation unfold. “Let me read my number again.”
She still couldn’t find it, she told me.
“Maybe it’s because the account’s with a different region?” Todd offered.
“Maybe it’s because the account’s with a different region,” I told the operator.
Perhaps, she told me, but there was nothing she could do for me until she got it figured out.
“Well what do I need to do to figure it out?” I asked as a shiver rolled through my body. “Should I just call upstate again?”
“Are you with anyone else?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I’m here with a …. A friend.”
Todd looked at me with a quizzical smile.
“I wasn’t about to say I just embarrassed myself on a first date,” I told him, slapping my hand over the phone receiver.
“Do they have AAA?” she asked.
He heard her, and nodded.
“Uh, yeah. Hold on just a second,” I said, handing Todd the phone.
He grabbed his wallet out of his fleece pocket and began reading his account number to the operator. There was no need for him to repeat it. Unlike mine, his was legit. Someone would be there within thirty minutes she told him.
Todd hung up the phone and leaned back against the car. I was staring at the ground in an effort to avoid humiliating myself any more than I already had, and only saw the tips of his feet.
“It’s kind of cold out here,” he said. “Do you wanna go wait in my car?”
I smiled sheepishly and tipped my head back upright.
“You don’t have to wait with me if you don’t want to,” I told him.
“You kidding me?” he asked. “You want me to leave you alone in a dark parking lot, in the snow so some pot-bellied dude can come over here and break into your car for you? I don’t think so. Come on. I’m parked over here.”
He clicked a button on his keychain as we walked over to his Honda to unlock the doors for us.
I’ve got to get me one of those keychains. That way I wouldn’t have to lock the doors from the inside and I’d never lock my keys in my car again.
Not that I lock my keys in my car often; before that night it had only happened one other time. Of course, my car had been running that time and when Cynthia called the police to ask if they could help us, the dispatcher sent a ladder engine from the Syracuse Fire Department. I thought it was the most embarrassing moment of my life, until I topped it in a snowy Starbucks parking lot with a balding grad student I didn’t care to spend more time with.
