He waited quietly for the buzz of his smartwatch to tell him another player had come off the board. Around him the noise of the restaurant drowned out the few desperate flickers of conversation she attempted between bites of a seventy five dollar steak. He hadn’t touched his own meal, a pasta of some sort with a peculiar green sauce drizzled on top that the waiter reminded him was posh. Instead he sipped at his old fashioned, the fourth he’d had this evening.
“What do you think?” She said again.
“It’s an idea.” He replied, without even knowing what she was talking about. Over the past year he’d mastered a series of open-ended responses that would continue her side of the conversation without him needing to concern himself too greatly about the content.
“What’s your idea then?” Her voice showed anger.
“I’m one hundred percent in support of yours, honey. I don’t think that me coming up with something random on the spot when you’ve clearly thought through this does either of us any good.”
She stared at him for a long moment and then went back to her steak.
His watch buzzed. He reached for his drink, careful to tilt his thumb downwards enough to see the information on the display. Houston was selecting Charlie Watters with the 22nd pick.
Some Thoughts:
- TBH my heart wasn’t into this freewrite. I started with the idea of generating another juror mixed in with the moment I had the other night of my own smartwatch feeding me picks. Then it morphed into something else entirely and I started to imagine that the character was an agent living in Scottsdale who had a client who was expected to go in the later rounds, so he’d agreed to this dinner with his wife thinking it would be a way to balance work and home and make her feel valued in the moment, but he doesn’t value her, so he’s actually focused on the situation taking place a few states away. It didn’t get there, but that has been the way for me when it comes to drafts lately. I lay down the bones of a thing and then I add more soul in the rewrite. I wonder how many authors function this way?