Saturday Snark Returns

Hiya!  It's Saturday Snark Day at Marie Sexton's blog again!  I particularly like this exercise-- it's a challenge to find the moments in your work that made you choke on your own coffee (or soda!) and try not to spray it over your computer screen.  Humble?  No.  But fun to go back and read what made other writers crack up-- definitely!  


This is from Believed You Were Lucky, which is in the Three Fates Anthology and it shows us Hacon Haldor, who is usually a very cautious sort of fellow, dealing with the consequences of a particularly magical night:-)








Hake walked in a little early and gave her the coffee while he sipped his own—also a caramel double latte, although usually it was a small coffee, black—and he smiled absently at Emma’s narrow-eyed scrutiny.


“What?” he asked, and she grimaced.


“You smell different,” she said. She sipped her coffee suspiciously.


“Smell different?” Perplexed.

“Yeah. Usually you smell like... Mennen. Something that smells like lilacs on you, even though I think it’s supposed to smell like men’s stuff. It was my first tip-off that you were gay.”

Hake choked on his latte and set it down so he could hang up his summer-weight coat and take his briefcase back into the tiny office behind the reception room. (He also made a mental note to change his body wash and his deodorant, because that right there would have been some good information to have when he’d been trying unsuccessfully to pick men up at clubs after his breakup with Andre.)


“And what do I smell like now?” he asked when his office was settled and his computer was booting up. He glanced at the clock—he had fifteen minutes before his client actually showed up. They had time for this.


“Mmm... something hot! Something a straight guy would use. It’s like... I don’t know. Wood chips and horse sweat and mint and ambergris—whatever it is, you should keep it!”


Hacon blushed—a true blush, he knew it—and Emma looked at him curiously.


“Come on, Mr. Haldor—what is it? What are you wearing? Give?”


Hake mumbled into his coffee, and she insisted on making him speak up.


“What?” she asked one more time, and he blushed some more and said quite clearly, “It’s Ivory soap and Leif.”