The novel's not finished yet; I'm guessing it will end up around 60k or 65k, but we'll see.
“Casey,” I heard a voice hiss, and was startled to see someone appear suddenly by his side, with no warning. The man was several inches shorter than I was, with greasy black hair that hung in his face. “Hey, Casey.”
Casey stood up straighter, clearly trying to get as far away from the guy as he could, the look of disgust on his face very thinly disguised. “What, Larry?” he asked shortly.
Larry looked up then and caught sight of me and Marielle, and flinched like someone had slapped him. Without saying another word, he ducked away from Casey and slunk out of the room. His gait was strange, weaving back and forth in a very deliberate pattern.
Casey’s face held comic disdain. “Oh, dear Larry,” he said with a dramatic sigh, and made a show of brushing off any part of him that might have been near the guy. He obviously liked to be sparkling clean all the time, possibly to the point of obsession. I wondered idly what would have happened if Larry had actually touched him, and laughed to myself at the resulting mental image.
“What?” asked Marielle, and Casey grinned.
“What?” I asked back, confused, then realized I must have laughed out loud. “Oh, nothing.”
“I know, Larry’s worth laughing at,” Casey said. “One of these days someone should teach him to shower. I keep telling the boss to hire a dog trainer, but he keeps saying no.”
It was a cruel thing to say, but I laughed anyway. Marielle didn’t; in fact, she was looking distinctly unhappy.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked her, patting her arm. She flinched away from me, and I frowned. “Do you want to leave?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
Wheeee!
In other news, the Turkey-Day pies were a big success. The apple recipe turned out great, so I made it again for the party at Mom's on Thursday (after borrowing a couple of pie pans from Kathy, since I left my good glass one in Keene). I got a little creative with the pumpkin pie, too, breaking tradition to add a layer of chocolate on the bottom.
The chocolate ganache that I used was from a recipe for black-bottom cream pie, which is chilled instead of baked, so the chocolate layer stays on the bottom and doesn't mix with the cream layer. A pumpkin pie, however, has to be baked (and for a long damn time), so the ganache melted. What ended up happening is that it mixed just a little bit with the pumpkin filling, not entirely, so there was a nice layer in between the two of chocolatey-pumpkin. It was really tasty...and the apple pie got finished for breakfast. There is no better breakfast than leftover fruit pie!
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