35,199 Words, and Shit is Getting Real

I knew I was going to reach 35,000 words last night, and I knew it was time to get my story rolling. I still only vaguely know what is going to happen in these last 15,000 words, but it was time to get on with it. I thought about including another excerpt about Torts, but decided to include this longer, semi-serious one, so you can get a picture of where things are headed. Tonight I will start 'Part 3' of the book, and I think I'll have no choice but to push the plot forward, as much as I have enjoyed wasting words on overlong descriptions of things that are not even in the same vicinity as the point.

So, here it is... interspersed storylines of Alice and Jake as they both come to a realization...

Anastasia Pemberley was a woman that Jake had always imagined meeting. He was that sure of his relationship with Alice. After all, even the most heartily disapproving mothers wanted to meet the people their children considered important. Eventually. He knew very little about Alice’s mother besides the fact that she and Alice had a strained relationship. That they had moved around a lot. That Anastasia had been a single mother, Alice’s father’s whereabouts unknown. It wasn’t a subject that Alice was wild about discussing, and he had never pressed. He thought he had time to get to know those things. Also, Alice was a woman who could not be pressed. She could not be rushed. She took her own time with things.
Though he had been confident of their meeting someday, he had never imagined that he would be meeting her this way, in Alice’s absence, having achieved her phone number through somewhat clandestine means, but here he was.
“Mrs. Pemberley, my name is Jake Dempsey…”
“Who?”
“I’m a friend of your daughter’s. Alice.”

When Alice opened her eyes, at first she only saw a sea of faces, looming over her. They didn’t look quite right; they were overly pale, and their eyes overly dark, as though they had no corneas. She sat up quickly, suddenly and overwhelmingly terrified, and the darkness swam around her vision again, drawing her back into unconsciousness.
“Easy…” said a voice, soothingly, softly. It was a voice Alice could listen to. Alice slowed down, breathed deeply, and the blackness faded away, and the faces returned to normal. She looked into the eyes of Si(mone), the woman who had sent her away to oblivion, and was now bringing her back.
“Where am I?”

“Where is she?” Anastasia asked, an edge of hysteria in her husky voice. Whiskey and cigarettes had deepened her voice, but it was still a musical voice. Jake remembered that she had been a singer when she was younger. Alice had mentioned it once.
“That’s what I’m calling about. I need to find her. I think you might know where she is.”
“Who did you say you were again?” she asked, hysteria giving way to suspicion.
“Jake Dempsey. I work with Alice at the paper.”
“Ah yes, the sports writer. Dempsey. Yes, she did mention you. I thought you sounded like an idiot,” she said, and Jake felt a twinge, not for his own sake… he was quite used to being called an idiot. But for Alice’s sake. A woman who could be that casually cruel to a stranger must have done a real number on her daughter.
“Yes, that would be me. I am a bit of an idiot,” Jake said, trying to make it a joke and failing. Anastasia did not laugh.
“I’ve read some of your work.” Anastasia said dryly. Jake waited patiently for her to continue, but apparently that was the only comment she intended to make about his work. Whether it confirmed or disconfirmed her belief that he was an idiot remained unspoken, but he would have erred on the side of idiocy, as was his custom.
Jake made an uncomfortable throat clearing sound, as he wasn’t sure whether he should say thank you or not. He thought small talk a waste at the best of times, and he certainly wouldn’t describe this phone conversation in that way. He thought it best to get straight to the point.
“She said she was going home, do you know what she meant by that Mrs. Pemberley?”
The gasp that he heard on the other end of the line told him that she did know what it meant. That she knew it very well.

“Where you are isn’t important, you know that, don’t you?” asked Si(mone), still using a calm, soothing tone. Alice looked at her, and knew she was right.
“No, of course.”Alice said, shaking her head slightly, smiling at her own foolishness. It didn’t matter where she was at all, only where she was going.
“You ought to wait until the morning to go there. It won’t do to arrive in the dark. It won’t do at all.” Si(mone) said, and once again, Alice knew exactly what she meant. She also knew it didn’t matter.
“I don’t have a choice.” Alice said, her voice soft, dreamy, but determined. She knew that for her, time had run out. It was time to go.
“I know,” said Si(mone), not unkindly. She would have helped Alice if she could, but she saw that Alice’s immediate future was set. She would have to go, and she would have to go tonight.