You can’t imagine how perfect your advice is for me, as well as the protagonist I have created. If you are willing to indulge me, here are a couple of excerpts from Unreasonable Suspicion.
Once they were both inside, Brenda closed her office door and pressed her back against it, as if to create a barricade. Despite her waif-like appearance, the magnetic field of anger emanating from her would have been enough to bar anyone from barging in. After a long exhale, she said, “He did that to deliberately challenge my authority. To humiliate me…”
“You did zat to deliberately defy me, Renata. Now play it correctly.” Renata shuddered ever so slightly and the fingertips of her left hand tingled at the recollection of her mother’s words, and the dissonant strains of a late Beethoven string quartet.
.....
At last it was time to practice the fourth step of spiritual health - letting go of the results. Reportedly, according to Native American wisdom it followed (1) showing up, (2) doing your best, and (3) telling the truth. For Renata that played out in early 21st Century European-American tradition as having a glass of wine, or, the occasional cocktail if circumstances warranted something a little stronger. Um, like this evening maybe? She turned on her sound system, and while her Manhattan “cooked” in the freezer for the required 30 minutes, she went upstairs to shed her management guru getup and relax in a warm tub scented with White Moss bath gel and wonder if Dr. Stern, Asher, might possibly have marital problems.
It was a little before seven when Renata padded back down the steep wooden stairs swaddled in a white terry cloth robe and puffy animal print slippers that were a birthday present from her dad’s longtime girlfriend, Nutmeg. From her sofa she could see the Fremont Bridge looking like a colossal diamond necklace spanning the Willamette River – an impression further enhanced by a few sips of good bourbon mixed with sweet vermouth and bitters. Her short term goal was to make the allotted single serving of hard liquor last until Kenny Burrell finished fingering Blues in the Night.
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