Muses come in all shapes and sizes. Some inspire great works of art and literature, others awe-inspiring musical scores and theater. These muses don't fall into any one of those categories. They live in the Walmart world between imagination and the need for distraction. The fanfiction world. It's Happy Hour at a local bar. At least it's happier for some more than others. The following is a conversation between two off duty Crossing Jordan muses...
Merlot, or as her friends called her Merlie, gingerly opened the entrance to the bar and eased herself in, careful not to get her wings caught in the closing doors. It had been a hell of a day, a hell of a week, and hell of a fifth season, if you want to get right to the point. It wasn't easy being a muse. Wasn't easy at all.
Especially concerning Crossing Jordan. And right now she needed a drink to recuperate and deal with herself and the fact that she was AWOL as a muse to JMKW.
Merlie peered through the smoke of the room, thinking she saw a familiar figure slumped over in the corner of the bar. Then she grinned. Yep, she did. It was Onelda. Another muse. NCCJFAN's muse to be exact. A partner-in-arms…someone else who also had to deal with the fall out of season five on Crossing Jordan.
And Merlie would give any amount of money that Onelda was AWOL, too…and probably more than just a little drunk. "Onelda…" Merlie said, sliding onto the barstool beside her fellow muse. "How's it hanging?"
"How's it hanging or who's hanging?" Onelda replied, motioning to the bartender for another brandy. "I'd like to hang the writers…to begin with. We'll move on from there." Onelda looked tired. Her blonde hair, generally neatly pulled back in a bun, was messy and her wings were tattered.
Merlie nodded in sympathy. The last season on CJ had started out well enough. Angry Woody had been a sexy Woody. Then Tim and Allan had the bright idea to bring in Charles Mesure as JD Pollack and Leslie Bibb as Lu for the love interest of Jordan and Woody.
And everything had gone to hell in a hand basket for NCCJFAN and JMKW. The wonderful love stories they had been writing for fanfiction concerning Woody and Jordan came to a screeching halt as the two writers tried to deal with their waning feelings for Jerry O'Connell's character, Woody.
"NC…is she getting any better?" Merlie whispered to Onelda.
Onelda sighed and knocked back the brandy in a gulp. "Nope. Not a bit. She's struggling. The first time she's struggled in a long time. She keeps blaming it on that damn study guide for Moby Dick she had to write … but that's not it. Not really. The poor girl just doesn't know how to deal with the Woodman right now and can't seemingly picture Jordan with anyone else but Woody. She's been trying, but all she can do is rant and rave and swear. It got so bad…." Tears welled up in Onelda's eyes. "She's never said things like that about me before."
"She doesn't mean it, Merlie said soothingly. "You know she doesn't."
"She threatened to catch me and put me in an empty mayonnaise jar on her desk. With a leaf and a twig. Like I was some kind of frog…" Onelda's voice broke on a sob.
"Now…now….NC is just frustrated. Let me tell you about JMKW…."
Merlie signaled the bartender for a half-carafe of her favorite and flashed a cocky smile to one of the Due South slash muses. Unable to help herself, she reached out and pinched his butt as he walked away. Onelda always did have a good eye for picking the right part of the bar.
"At least you have a smart one to work for. She cares enough about you to keep you around in a jar. Mine, well...when they passed out muns I got the short end of the stick. The girl can't even type let alone put a proper sentence together. Mistyped words, bad punctuation...those dot-dot-dots! They are almost as annoying as a set of Britney Spears' air quotes. How the hell I ever got this assignment I'll never know. You get a jar. I tend to get ignored when she's working alone."
Onelda nodded in sympathy. It was one thing clocking in to work between her mun's many activities but it was another to sit there nursing a dyslexic keyboardist though a simple paragraph.
"I know it could be worse. I could have been assigned to some brace-faced teenage boy stumbling his way through high school creative writing class. Still, the girl cannot multitask. Life she says. It's just an excuse. Don't tell anybody but I think she just gets bored listening to just herself think. Drone..drone..drone. It takes her three paragraphs just to say it's dark outside. Then she schleps me halfway across the country. Things were fine for awhile and then...poof! We're moving again. Of course she announces this to me about the same time...IT...happened."
"The IT?" Onelda asked.
Merlie nodded and polished off her first glass of wine like it was water. Both Onelda and Merlie shuttered it the thought of IT. The Worse Case Scenario. That series of canon events that sent many of the muses around the fandom screaming in terror. Production fell to an all time low and many muses found themselves either writing for another fandom...or simply out of work.
"She was a mess. For the life of her the poor woman couldn't find a positive spin on the situation whatsoever. It was ugly. I wanted to split, but I couldn't. I was working with you and a couple other muses from the union. You don't know what I had to do to get her to sit still long enough to type. I pulled out all the stops. Lattes, vino, the inspiration mix on her Media Player. Turn over became slower and slower...the canon blew past what we had working. You remember how depressing it was, O."
A wave of laughter came from a table of Battlestar Galatica muses enjoying a well earned happy hour after a long constructive day. Merlie cast them a jaundiced eye and poured herself another glass. "Would you look at them? Sci-Fi. Those guys are hand fed their ideas. HAND FED! Remember when we were hand fed? It's not fair."
"Have you ever looked at their world? Talk about depressing. Dry. Not a drop of fluff in sight. A muse like you would last thirty words in that fandom, Merlie."
Merlie looked at her friend incredulously. "Have you even looked at my work lately? No fluff...None. Nada. Zilch! O, you know me. I signed on for that mindless sticky-sweet stuff. I suck it up for the darker crap...if I can add a healthy dose of romance or at least one smart ass line or two ...but this last one. She's going for straight for the wear-black-and-listen-to-Nirvana-'til-your-ears-bleed-too angst. She's too old for that. Most women her age scrapbook, join the PTA... drink, for a hobby," she said rolling her eyes. "This was supposed to be a fun. I need a change Onelda. Do you think the Grey's muses are hiring?"
"Those guys are hand fed, too. All they do is play musical beds," Onelda replied, sighing with envy. Bed hopping would be nice for a change. Easy. Mindless. Just breeze through the Kama Sutra and pick a position. Write a nice love scene or two with some hot sex and everyone's happy.
"You know…we came so close, Merlie. So damn close…The Lucy Carver Inn…how great was that? And then they decide that Woody is going to have to screw Lu. Just to add tension to the plot. Tension! Give me five minutes on Tim's computer and I'll show you good tension and good sex."
But muses sat in silence for a while, nursing their respective drinks. Finally it was Merlie that broke the silence. "So…I hate to bring this up, but what are you feeling about season six?"
Onelda gave her friend a jaded look. "Well, at least Mesure is gone and there's no way he can come back. He's pretty damn dead…or at least his character is. Poor guy…I did kind of like him at the end. But he should have known after Jordan couldn't tell him that her night with Woody meant nothing, that he was toast. He should have packed up and moved to a trailer park in South Dakota and raised Angora rabbits or something."
Onelda's wings dropped visibly for a moment. "As far as managing NC and the sixth season, I don't know. They've moved CJ to Friday nights and she always has rehearsal with her ballroom dance partner then, so she's gonna have to Tivo or DCR it. She really hasn't decided which.
"But that puts me in another squeeze. That means when she does watch it, she can breeze through the commercials…take it all in at once. So if she gets upset…I don't get a breather during those three minute sponsor breaks. And you know how mad she can get. Do you remember what a case she was after Embraceable You?" Onelda shuddered at the memory. NC had thrown everything she had at the TV after the writers had the audacity to screw with canon that badly. She had nearly thrown Onelda too, but the muse had ducked and flown off for a full two weeks to let the writer calm down.
"I remember," Merlie said solemnly. "I'm surprised you even mentioned the episode by name. I thought you couldn't say the title around NC without her still going ballistic…for a long time it was simply referred to as 'the-episode-whose-title-we-will-not-speak-less-we-incur-her-Irish-temper.' She's still no better with it?"
Onelda shook her head. "Nope. In her mind that was when Tim sold his soul out to the devil for Heroes and the writers began their slippery slope of messing with canon. Change Jordan's birthday, indeed," Onelda snorted with indignation. "I can't blame NC on that one. Jordan's September birthday is vital to the canon about her mother's death. And they move it to March without giving it a damn second thought. Because Woody has to give Jordan a diamond birthstone ring. What the hell…" Onelda motioned to the bartender for another brandy, all the time giving him a big, flirty smile. The barkeep looked strangely like George Clooney. From a vague place in her mind, O was sure there was a CJ connection, but couldn't remember it at the moment. She shook her head and wrote her cell phone number on a cocktail napkin and slid it across the bar to him. He winked at her, folded the napkin up, and put it in his shirt pocket.
"So Merlie…" O continued with the reassurance now that her weekend might be pleasantly busy, "how is JMKW handling the sixth season?"
"With a great amount of circumspection." Marlie stopped and grinned. "D'ya like that? It was on my word-of-the-day calendar."
Onelda made an approving hum. It was one of those allowances that came with friendship. Working with an English teacher made her cringe at Yogi Berra misuse of the language.
"Fridays at eight. Where canons go to die a quiet, undignified...painful death. But then again this is the woman that didn't give CJ a snow ball's chance in hell of making it past the 13th episode of season three. So what the heck does she know?"
Merlie looked over her shoulder and caught sight of a follow CJ muse, looking quite lobotomized, sitting in a booth in the corner. It may have been a hard season on the Woody/Jordan muses. But it had been down right deadly for the Lily/Seely crew. She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Maybe the Bones group was looking. Lady doc, cop...
"Look at us O. We're used, bruised, and left out to dry. Even the boys over in slash got shaft...pardon the pun. Do you trust them that the tenor of the show won't change being stuck in the Family Hour? Are we going to be tied up in one of those cases of be-careful-what-you-wish-for?"
"Hmm, what do you mean?" Onelda said trying to keep her attention on her friend and not the way the muscles in the bartender's forearms flexed when he leaned over to scoop ice out of the ice maker to put in a waiting blender.
"Lucy Carver."
Onelda scribbled a few notes about forearms lust in her notebook before picking up her drink again. "Lucy Carver. It was perfect. Snowed in at an eclectic B&B in the middle of nowhere. One kiss. Fade-to-black."
"But they had to wake up. It's happen before. Dave and Maddie, Sam and Diane...Jeannie and Major Nelson. Doing it has been known to kill off more than one series."
A collective gasp erupted in the room. There were only few tables that didn't seem to bat an eye. One was the smirking Grey's group. Deep inside Merlie quasi blamed them for the trouble she and her friends were in. If they hadn't had been stormed in a stole-the-key demographic away...and making them expect a little canon bed hopping...okay, A LOT of bed hopping...then The Powers To Be felt the need to fight fire with fire.
"Where do you go from H.E.A. --Happily Ever After? Nowhere. Between you and me, I had my misgivings about the doings at the Lucy Carver. There is no drama with H.E.A.. Logically, Lucy Carver left us with three directions." Merlie ticked those points off on her fingers. "Direction A...Jordan running. Direction B...Woody getting cold feet. Or Direction C...the sex wasn't as promising as the four years of foreplay. What we got was somewhere around Direction H, for...'Just where in the Hell did that come from'?"
"I think we got a mix of all four, Merlie," O replied, still musing over forearm lust and wondering what the barkeep's biceps looked like at the same time. "I think Woody did get cold feet when he told Jordan 'I don't want to be the rebound guy'." Rebound guy my ass. After four years, he had to realize…had to…that JD Pollack was the rebound guy and the only reason Jordan invited the Aussie back to Boston was because first, she needed a date for Lily's wedding, and second, Woody was now officially screwing Lu…which made it impossible for him to be Jordan's date. But I digress." O tucked a curl behind her ear and blinked rapidly to moisten her contacts. They really need to make this bar a no smoking one…
"Woody has issues. He needs to address them. It's like Bourbon's muse told me one time…he tried to give her that ring but he knew she'd refuse it. The boy was setting himself up for failure and he knew it. He knew that Jordan would tell Pollack about their blissful night at Lucy Carver, but she had to do it her way and in her time. Instead he walked away…and by the next episode he was in Lu's pants.
"As for option C, you can't tell me that the sex wasn't as good as the foreplay. Do you remember Elephant in the Room? Where Woody and Jordan were role-playing that hotel murder…the way Woody went after Jordan and she was letting him…you can't tell me the sex wasn't five-star awesome. Pollack knew what had happened the minute he entered the room." O sighed at the memory. With the couple's fondness for role playing, she'd love to get Jordan in a Naughty Nurse costume and Woody in a Mountie outfit and…
Then she shook her head. Like that would ever happen on Friday nights during family hour.
"So I think you are dead-on right as far as option H goes 'Just where in the Hell did that come from'?" But I think 'Where in the Hell is this going?' is a good option, too." O swallowed the rest of the brandy in her glass. "However, I'll tell you one thing…Madmadam Beth's muse and I were talking the other day…and I think option A might dovetail into option H. Jordan has run, but not because she wants to, because she has to. I'll give the CJ writer's credit…that's the first time that has ever happened. And I'll tell you something else." O's voice dropped to a low-tone of conspiratorial whispering as she leaned closer to Merlie. "I think Woody not only knows where she's at…I think he helped her get there…"
O sat back up on her barstool and gave the barkeep another wink. It didn't hurt to keep the flirting going. She was rewarded with a dimpled grin from him. Damn dimples…they've always been my weakness, the muse mused. Must be why I've stuck by O'Connell's character, no matter what an ass Woody's been. "There is one saving grace in all this, Merl," O suddenly continued.
"Huh? What?" Merlie responded, her attention momentarily taken by one of the male muses from Law and Order. "What's the saving grace, O?"
"Chad Darnell."
"Ohhhhh. Chad."
"Yep. Chaddie Boy. He's on CJ's staff now and he's as protective and as fond of the series as we are. He'll do his best, I'm sure. And he is one talented guy, but sooo busy. So busy in fact, I hear the union is thinking about issuing him an additional muse."
Merlie snorted in her wine glass. The Powers To Be couldn't even spare the expense to budget Wally Shawn in to be Woody's psychiatrist instead of making Lu some morphed cop-slash-shrink thing. How could they be expected to pony up the union dues for additional muses for a canon that has been sold out by its creator for something new and shiny...and tailor-made for that subcompact car-pay-as-you-go-cell-phone buying demographic. She chose to keep her smart ass comment to herself.
"And this is good for us...why again?" Merlie asked leadingly.
"Every little bit helps Merlot. Every little bit helps." Onelda punctuated every word with a tap of her acrylic fingernail against the bar top.
Merlie didn't know if Onelda was trying to convince her, or herself. The bartender thought she was calling him. He slid up with a smile. O apologized and sent him away by blowing him a kiss.
"Come to think of it there is another," Merlie said as of she was having an epiphany. "With CJ coming back in the fall...instead of after the regular football season we'll have more to work with. Those long drawn out mid season starts are hard. Nine months of having to come up with original inspiration is enough to make a fairy want to turn in her wings."
"The question stands," Onelda asked gesturing with her brandy glass. "Just where are they going to take us from here?"
"We'll find out soon enough," Merlie sighed. She reached in her cleavage and pulled out bill. "I've got a five that says that it's Lu that follows our girl instead of the Woodman."
Onelda's eyebrow arched. "Interesting..."
"Unless the Bibb girl's movie career magically takes off after playing a NASCAR trophy bride, this is going to be her main gig. She's in the credits. They have to use her weekly. So they'll have to have Lu and Jordan make nicey-nice. Because as much as my mun is disappointed in how wimpy they made Lu, she'd be very upset if they recycled the Elaine storyline."
"Let's hope they don't have the girls compare notes," Onelda quipped.
"At least for Woody Junior's sake." Merlie replied tapping her glass against her friends.
"Because if they do compare notes, the show may become as unresolved-sexual-tension charged as the X-files used to be…remember Mulder and Scully? And then poor Woody Junior would definitely be hung out to dry…literally and figuratively," O said, returning the tap on her friend's glass. "So here's to Woody and Jordan, and Bibb being a such a convincing NASCAR trophy wife that she's showered with movies offers and no longer has time for CJ. I just don't think the fandom could handle another character dying…Elaine, Devin. It's always the females, you know. Always."
Merlie nodded. "Peter, Sydney, even Trey…they just kind disappeared. Eddie Winslow, too. Just kind of didn't show back up…no explanation. Bibb better watch her back…"
O shrugged. "If the girl knew she was Woody's love interest when she signed the contract, I have no sympathy for her. None. She should have known she would at the least be disliked. And now that she's gunning for Jordan…" O knocked back the rest of her brandy. "She could be ratings toast.
"However, I do think you're right. I don't think Woods will run after Jordan because I still think he knows exactly where she's at…and Jordan won't take the chance of him ruining his career over her. My question is…and remains….what will happen between Woody and Jordan after Jordan gets back from DC? I mean they can't keep her there forever…the show's centered in Boston, and she is the main character."
"That would be difficult," Merlie agreed, "but hell, they've screwed with canon so much already…"
The muses sat in silence for a moment as the alcohol began to kick in and as O continued to eye the barkeep. "Welll…" said O, rummaging through her pocketbook to find her credit card and pay for her drinks. "I guess I need to run. NC is doing a rough outline for another study guide…and even though she can write those in her sleep because she's taught American lit so long, she may need me. And I have a new story idea I'm going to whisper in her ear and see if she bites. Bites the idea….not me." She retrieved her gold card and handed it to the barkeep with another big smile. "So what do you think, Merlie…what do you think's gonna happen in season six that we're going to have to help our girls deal with?"
"O, if I knew that I'd be in La-La Land working with the exempt muses that have six-digit personal expense accounts and percentage points bonuses. All I can say is that I hope there is a silver lining in all this Friday-eight-eastern-seven-central nonsense..."
"And what's that?"
"They'll have to go back to just plain old good story telling and leave the between the lines stuff to us Monday morning quarterbacks. Like a smorgasbord, a muse can take what he or she wants, the way they want it, and can leave the rest. The Powers To Be just need to add a glance, a touch, lines like Jordan's and Nigel's: 'Jordan you should know that last night will never happen again--Oh God, what are we talking about here?', line from season two's Conspiracy." She stopped to chuckle, remembering the amount of work that single exchange generated and each piece was as diverse as the opinions of the people who wrote them. Good times.
Merlie put her elbows on the bar and rested her chin on the heels of her hands. "I don't know what season six has to offer but like Margo Channing once said; 'Fasten you seat belts, It's going to be a bumpy night'."
Onelda gave her friend a grin that said that said, good or bad they were all in this until the end of the ride. "And I'll be strapped in right next to you. See you around Merlie"
"See you around."