The Fifteen Minute Novel is a novel written fifteen minutes at a time with each week day’s section starting with the sentence from the previous day. At least it is attempting to be a novel. For now I am just aiming at one continuous story, worked on for fifteen minutes each day. Started Friday January 1st, 2021 (in case you want to search for the beginning. I can’t wait to see where it ends up. It could be good, or it could be a mess. We’ll have to see. For now, here is today’s fifteen minutes.
Day 47: ‘It’s his job,’ James reminded himself.
‘It’s his job,’ James reminded himself. Still job or not it rankled to have his personal life inspected. He hadn’t cared for it when the divorce lawyers did it at Faith’s behest and he didn’t care for it now.
‘Although how Faith thought I had time to cheat on her is beyond me,’ James added.
Carson eyed the car as they moved to the trunk of his own vehicle and James thought the fact that he only gave it a passing glance meant that he really had inspected it before coming up to the apartment. The look on his face also told him that Carson was still looking for reasons to object.
‘Yeah,’ James thought. The sooner I’m officially settled and limited in our interchanges the better.’ While he could get on board with the whole rearranging his life to keep himself actually living, he knew himself well enough to know there would be a point, where he would not be willing to tolerate the micromanagement.
‘Settled in a job and a residence, that’s all he is really concerned with.’
Carson opened his trunk and took out several shopping bags. James found himself darkly amused by the fact that they were from the stores James found on his own the day before.
‘Not the ones Carson took me to, although that could have been neighborhood familiarization,’ he conceded.
Carson took the bags out of the car. He Handed them to James who took them. “I added seven sets of everything so you have more than a week’s worth and it will look like you have a full wardrobe if you aren’t always wearing the same thing.”
James nodded and wondered if Carson thought he would just assign shirts to days. Monday Blue. Tuesday Green. Wednesday Gray.
“I’ll be sure to mix them up,” He told Carson.
“On the sheet with the address is the name of the man you report to on Monday. Eight am. Sharp,” Carson said.
“Got it.”
“And you have my card if anything goes wrong,” Carson continued.
James felt as though he was a small child being dropped off for school for the first time. ‘Except that my mother didn’t pin an ‘if lost return to’ card on me.’ James added. ‘Of course everyone at school knew who I was, so maybe that was the reason it wasn’t needed.’
“I will keep the card with me and remember I am a temporary hire sent over by Anderson Staffing to fill the entry level accounting position,” James said, anticipating the repeating of the information Carson gave him upstairs. He may understand the reasoning, but he had no desire to repeat it line for line while standing in the parking lot holding shopping bags.
Carson frowned. “You’ll need to bring your lunch.”
James lifted an eyebrow in surprise. “Okay,” he said. While he didn’t trust his culinary skills very far he was reasonably certain he could put a basic sandwich together.
Carson seemed pleased with his surprise and decided he spent enough time with James. He closed his trunk and got into his car. James walked to the side and began climbing the stairs back to his apartment as Carson pulled out of the parking lot and went wherever else it was he needed to be.
“I think there are other things in a sack lunch,” James thought. In truth, he had never actually had a sack lunch. He ate at the school cafeteria when he went to school and when in college he went to fast food places. As he aged, the restaurants he went to became pricier, but no sack lunches had ever appeared.
“Maybe a piece of fruit or a cookie,” he said.
Ten til Midnight 