Chapter 4

For something to do before his date this evening with Karly, Dan just drove around the area. He stopped for lunch which was a sandwich that he washed down with a bottle of beer. He thought that the area was generally newer and was relatively free from graffiti and litter. He did note that compared to where he lived there was an absence of grass which in his mind was a bit of a negative but was probably in keeping with a scarcity of water here.

Dan was looking forward to his dinner date with Karly as he pressed her doorbell button. There was a little bit of the “jock” in her that attracted him beside her looks. She opened the door and said she was ready to go. He saw that she was wearing a dark blue dress.

“Wow,” he said, “You need to wear a dress more often as you look good, not that you don’t look good in your other clothes. Please take what I just said as an honest compliment and not that I am blowing some smoke at you.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile on her face.

Karly gave Dan directions to a nice restaurant that was a short drive from her condo. It was a step above a family-type restaurant and not overly crowded which meant a quiet atmosphere. They had a drink after they placed their order.

The conversation covered many subjects which Dan directed to find out more about Karly. She told him of her family, schooling, golfing, and how she came to be working for Pete Wilson. She asked Dan generally the same questions about him that he was asking her.

When the subject came to golf and this area, she mentioned the golf courses here she thought were a must-play. That most of them were private would not be a problem for Dan to play as his being a member of a club whose golf course is rated in the top one hundred and with Pete’s connections would open the door for him. She said she would golf with Dan if nothing was on her schedule at that time. Her being an assistant pro would open the door for her because of the arrangements the golf clubs had with each other.

Dan enjoyed dining with Karly and asked her on the drive back to her condo if they could do this again. She said she did have a nice time and Dan seemed like a nice guy, so she would like to do this again. The round of golf she owed him was discussed and she said she would make a tee time two days from now and let him know what the tee time was.

Dan had some nice thoughts about Karly on the drive to his fairway home. At the same time, he was wondering what was in store for him with Jenna tomorrow.

In the morning Dan did a quick walk to pick up the morning paper and back in his home he read it over a bowl of cereal. It was the usual news in the paper and there was nothing of interest in the advertisements that caught his attention. The weather forecast was for sunny skies and a temperature in the upper seventies.

Jenna was dressed in a blouse and shorts and was carrying a hat and sunglasses when she opened the door. She looked good and he told her that she did which caused her to smile.

Dan was doing the driving and Jenna was giving him directions on where to go. Every so often she asked him to stop so she could point out what was there. There were several museums that she pointed out but Dan told her he wasn’t interested in going into any of them. He could see as he drove that she was referring to a three-by-five card as to where to go which to Dan was a plus in that she had taken time to prepare for this so-called tour.

Stopping in the vicinity of Old Town Scottsdale they had a sandwich and a diet soda. Dan used this time to ask Jenna questions to find out more about her. She explained she was originally from the LA area and had gone to UCLA and studied creative writing. She landed a job being one of the writers for a television show. Writing these scripts exposed her to the business and let her make some valuable connections.

Jenna went on to say that writing scripts for the television show were a constant challenge. That was because they were constantly trying to “fill in the middle.” By that she meant the general plot and the beginning and end were known, it was what happened in between that needed to be written to fill in the forty-five minutes of air time.

She said when she had free time she started writing a novel. The main character was a female policewoman who had a law degree and had progressed to being a detective. She was partnered with a male detective. Her being shot on the job forced her to reassess if she wanted to stay in the police force. All considered, she resigned from the force and joined a law firm. She was assigned cases that the law firm didn’t want for various reasons to handle but reluctantly were required to accept them. These cases she was able to handle successfully with very little courtroom involvement.

Jenna said she submitted her novel to a publisher. The publisher said they liked the story but were reluctant to publish it because they thought it wouldn’t sell many copies since Jenna was an unknown author. They said they had an established author who wrote similar type stories but his main character was a male. This established author however just had a medical incident that would prevent him from writing any further stories. If Jenna would change her stories to this other author’s characters and write the stories like he would have done, the stories would be published under his name but she would receive the greater percentage of the royalties.

“After reading a few of this author’s stories, I agreed to do this arrangement and it has worked out financially for me to be doing this. I can dictate a new story in about four weeks. I will however only submit to the publisher two stories a year in order to not flood the market. I have three stories that I have already written that I haven’t submitted. This main character has now evolved to be an extremely wealthy man who has purchased many properties here and overseas, owns a large yacht, pilots a jet plane and scores with every woman he meets. He even has a relationship going with our first female President and her female Vice President. I am thinking that in the future, it will be politics for him, or maybe becoming an ambassador, or maybe a government semi-CIA troubleshooter will be what he gets involved in.”

Laughing she said, “This character is truly an American success story but while it’s totally fiction the novels do sell.”

“With these three novels already written I am now dictating a spinoff novel from these stories about a former CIA spy turned Hollywood stuntman. Because of my financial success in writing these stories, I can alternate my time here in Phoenix, an area I like, as well in Hawaii where I have a home located at a secluded part of Maui.”

After listening to Jenna telling her story Dan told her she should consider writing a story with the general plot being about her life. If she did do that Dan said she would need to include some romantic moments in it to make it popular.

Laughing she said, “Oh, don’t worry, there is some of that.”

After lunch, they drove to Camelback Mountain and did do the hike up to the top. It was a beautiful view and Dan took photos with his phone that he would send back to work.