Am I wearing underwear?

I ripped out the first chapter from my book, threw it off the deck, into the wind. 

Ok, it's in the recycling. You know what I mean.

Here, in all it's non-glory, is the new first page of Smart Mouth, a fiction novel by Holly Lorincz.

Let me know what you think. 

CHAPTER ONE (excerpt)

Am I wearing underwear?

A clear image of her old standby’s floated into her pulsing, headachy vision. Pilled white cotton, weak elastic around the legs, sliding over morning gooseflesh . . .

Thank God, thought Addison Taylor.

The twenty-three-year old lay on her back, cheap tweed skirt flipped over her head, an airless straight jacket. Rough material brushed across her teeth, the strong stink of mothballs awakened by her saliva. The office chair’s wheels spun in the air next to her prostrate body. She heard a dying beast’s whirring cry, warning its young of approaching human asses.

Ouch, she thought. My head.

Nine seconds ago, Addy’s ass had grazed the seat; the chair bucked and tipped, ejecting the young woman onto the ceramic tiles behind her desk, just missing the rubber floor mat. Twisting, arms pinned, she used her chin to inch down the skirt, freeing first her green eyes, then a freckled nose, her long, wavy, honey-stained hair bursting into frizz with the static electricity.

Why me? Was I a murdering, incestuous prostitute in my last life?

The classroom door snapped open. Brisk steps quickened her heartbeat, stopped her wind-milling legs. She turned her head, cringed. A gap between the floor and the back panel of the desk revealed a well-oiled pair of men’s black dress shoes.

“Mrs. Taylor?” A pleasant male voice rolled through the room. Troy Ford, her boss.

If I answer, he’ll see my Goodwill panties. If I don’t, a herd of fourteen-year-olds will show up and capture this on their cell phones.

Her silence didn’t matter. A cleft chin filled the air above her desk, followed by gladiator cheekbones and water-blue eyes. Vice-Principal Ford, cartoon handsome, placed his fists on the desktop and leaned over, quirking an eyebrow. “Mrs. Taylor.”

Well, of course. It couldn’t be the ugly old guy from next door, now could it?

The administrator stepped around the desk. “Let me help.” He managed to sound condescending and polite while crouching his long, lithe body close to hers, grasping her arms and heaving her to her feet like she was a first aid dummy. His superior facial features twitched but did not break.

            “I see you’ve encountered The Chair.”

Busted by the man . . . the little man

When was the last time you laughed until you cried, and then laughed some more, set off again and again, even when your stomach muscles ached and you had no air left to breathe? For me, it was probably around the time I made up my mind to divorce my first husband. Oh, I've laughed since then (it was years and years ago), but not that uncontrollable, half hour belly guffaw. Not until tonight. 


Andre and I sat down with a bowl of ice cream and an episode of Locked Up Abroad after Auggie, the six year old,  was asleep. Or so we thought. Fifteen minutes into that hilarious, fun-lovin' show, Auggie Mar appeared at the foot of the couch, a silent spectator, until he realized we were eating ice cream. Holy Bejiminy, that kid broke into a wail that made Andre and I levitate. I'm pretty sure I have a white streak in my hair now. 


"You're eating ice cream!!!!" he shrieked, a look of horror hard to describe. It was as if he discovered Santa Claus teamed up with his beloved kindergarten teacher to kill all the baby kitties in the neighborhood. His fists were balled, his eyes screwed up tight, a pissed off little monkey jumping up and down. 


I carried him downstairs, hitches and sobs, temper tantrum in full swing. "huh huh huh . . . I saw the . . . huh huh huh . . . vanilla . . . and he had . . . huh huh huh CHOCOLATE SAUCE!  IS THAT WHAT YOU DO EVERY NIGHT?! YOU WATCH TV AND EAT ICE CREAM WITHOUT ME!!!"


How it took him six years to figure that out, I don't know. But the jig is up. As I cuddled in bed with him, he didn't appreciate the laughter, at least not at first. After about five minutes, he forgot he was mad and giggled along with his crazy momma, which just made me laugh harder. 

Can you astral project? I can.

Totally fighting to stay alert today. I have some goals, dammit. Trying to pad the red-haired cheerleader’s parts in my novel. Not her physical parts, her talking parts. Come on, people, let’s not get sidetracked.  I also want to take a shower and apply tanning lotion, in preparation for sitting in the audience at graduation tonight, crying as some of my favorite kids in the world cross the stage.

But all of that seems impossible. I’m so f-ing tired. My face is puffy, my limbs feel like Hephaestus opened up his forge and pored some molten lead into my body. I can’t even drag myself downstairs to retrieve some overly-warmed Folgers. I can smell it from here. It has that boiled stink. God, I want some. 

While I can’t seem to focus on re-building a character, I do have a story rolling around in my head, something Andre and I were talking about last night. Wanna hear it?

Premise: I, Holly Lorincz, have a weird relationship with animals. Freaky shit happens, frequently. I’m going to share three major incidents that will make you call me a liar. That’s okay. I can’t hear you.

Incident 1:

On March 15^th, 20--, I went into labor at 11:30 at night. I took a shower, woke up Andre. On the way to the hospital, the contractions didn’t seem so bad, though my back was starting to hurt. By the time we were checked in, my back hurt a lot. Baths, walking, nothing helped. I was in back labor. My robotic, Grinch-hearted doctor wouldn’t come in until I was dilated more, nor would she okay an epidural. At one point, the contractions became a blessing, pulling the baby up off the nerves in my spine, until he crashed back down on the nerve endings, over and over again.


 I took that for twelve hours. At noon, the horrible doctor finally agrees to stop watching re-runs of Grey's Anatomy and come in, approving a shot of phenobarbital over the phone, to tide me over until she could get there.

The needle slid under my skin. Within a minute, I found myself going under. But before I was out, I shut my eyes and found:  I am standing in my driveway. The sky is a crisp, bright blue, the trees a sharp green in contrast. On the ground in front of me, one of my sweet little brown and white springer spaniels is seizing. McGee is arcing back and forth, foam slathering her muzzle, her body wet with sweat, the gravel cleared out from underneath her body. The seizure has gone on for awhile. Her eyes are on me, then they roll. My heart wrenches.

I think to myself, “Oh my god, McGee has been hit by a car, I have to tell Andre.”

Then I fell unconscious. I did not dream. But exactly one hour later, I awoke. Groggily, I called out to my husband. He was right there. “Andre, call the neighbors, something has happened to McGee. I think she was hit by a car.”  He told me he’d already talked to the neighbors, they’d checked on the dogs this morning, they were safe in our yard. To humor his laboring crazy wife, he called again.

The neighbors called back a few minutes later. They found McGee seizing in the yard, the ground swept bare beneath her.  They wrapped her in a blanket, holding her seizing body all the way to the vet; she’d been poisoned, how we still do not know. She barely survived. She had the stench of death on her for days, crawling like a worm to sit at my feet. She sits at my feet today, healthy, my beautiful little pup.

I’ve had these kind of “aware” moments before, but they’re hard to believe, even for me.  I don’t know if McGee was reaching out for me, or if I astral projected, or … I don’t know. I’m not in tune with the supernatural. I’m not versed in the lingo of other-worldly stuff. I generally try to ignore that side of the world, pissed off when I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise, pulling the quilt over my head in defense of ghosts and vampires.  But I didn’t just see McGee that day, I was there with her, and that moment is burned deeper into my brain then most others, every color and smell vivid still.  Whatever happened, no matter how weird or outside the box, I’m grateful McGee is alive.

Okay. Incidents #2 and 3 will have to wait for another day. Stay tuned.