A Canadian Werewolf in New York

Chapter Sixteen

I sat back from the laptop and stared at the screen, satisfied that I’d properly moved the scene along, and it was actually going somewhere that would keep me intrigued.

This was one of the tricks I used when working on a writing project.  I would try my best never to resolve a scene at the end of a writing session or scheduled time to work; but rather, I would try to stop writing in the middle of that scene -- if possible at the very height of the tension I was working at creating, for two main reasons.

First, if I finished the scene, resolved the issues at hand, then when I again sat down to work on the project it would be almost like working from scratch; starting from the beginning, which I always found extremely challenging.

Second, leaving the scene hanging kept me on the edge of my seat, and, while I was doing everything else but writing that scene, the back of my mind kept running through all the possibilities of what was going to happen next.

I had no idea what I was going to write next, what exactly was going on with Gwendolyn, except the fact that I was considering toying with inserting a supernatural element into the plot.  I’d often done that throughout the series, insinuating some sort of supernatural occurrence, like a haunting, but only to reveal by the outcome of the novel that it had been a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the actual facts.  I enjoyed doing that, and my readers seemed to like being teased like that.

In any case, I was satisfied with what I’d written, and spending the twenty minutes on that scene helped bring my mind completely out of the situation involving Howard, properly allowing my subconscious mind to come up with a “next step.”

As I pushed my chair back from the desk and stood I knew that my next step would be to find out where Howard worked and head to his office to see if I could gather up any sort of clues about his involvement with these people and how his world intersected with theirs.

I knew that would mean a phone call to Gail to get that information from her.  And I was about to pick up the phone and give her a call when the phone rang.

Hesitantly, I reached for it.

“Michael?” I recognized the sweet timid voice on her first word, but, true to form, she introduced herself as if we hadn’t known each other for years.  “This is Anne Lee from Mack Halpin’s office?”

“Hi Anne.  What can I do for you?”

“Mack would kill me if he knew I was calling you, but he’s been pacing around the office for hours, has asked me to cancel all of his appointments, and keeps telling me to call you and check up on your status, then, moments later changing his mind and saying not to call.

He just stepped out for a moment, so I thought I would call to check in.  Frankly, I’m really worried about him.”

“Mack is just fine, Anne.  You know how he gets.”

She sighed.  “Yes, I know how he gets; but I’m really worried about his blood pressure lately.  His doctor prescribed a new medication for him late last week, and though it seemed to have a positive affect on him, today it’s as if he’s not using his medication at all.”

I thought back to my breakfast with Mack earlier that morning, wondering why I hadn’t picked up on an elevated blood pressure.  I started kicking myself for not noticing it, then reminded myself that the symptoms were extremely subtle, even to the acutely heightened senses I possessed.  An elevated heart rate was simple for me to detect, but blood pressure was virtually “silent” in detection, and a layperson like me could barely know what clues, what symptoms to pick up on.

“I didn’t realize his blood pressure was a problem again, Anne.”  Mack, of course, would have flipped his lid if he knew that Anne had confided any part of his health status to me.  But it had been at least two novels ago when she warned me not to provoke him if I could help it, being quite concerned for his health and the newly determined condition.  She’d gone on to tell me that day about her father having died on the job from stroke -- he’d been a very successful business executive, working unreasonably long hours, and had ignored his doctor’s advice to slow it down, modify his lifestyle, or go on any sort of blood pressure medication.  She said her father had seen that as a sign of weakness and if other executives learned he was on medication, it would put him at a disadvantage.