Seduced by the Screenwriter

Chapter 4, Getting His Rocks Off, Part 4

Chapter 4

Getting His Rocks Off

To prepare for his second date with Catrina in a few hours, Chett watched the quintessential Canadian curling movie, Men with Brooms, and searched the internet for a description of the game.

An hour and two scotch whiskies later, with curling lingo and rules down pat, he realized that to avoid embarrassing himself in front of strangers, he'd need to practice turning the handle in the direction he wanted the rock to curve down the ice while at the same time shoving it just hard enough for it to come to a stop within the circular target at the other end of the sheet of ice.

Chett had no intention of becoming a laughing stock in Muskoka. Bad enough that dozens of film critics had done him that favor back in LA. Therefore half an hour before the scheduled seven p.m. game he arrived to practice, only to be disappointed that the four lanes or "sheets" of ice were occupied with games in progress.

From one of the chairs behind the long window separating the curling club lounge from the ice, he watched a middle-aged man in a bulky knitted cardigan push off from the "hack", a plastic footrest embedded into the ice. Man and rock slid in slow motion for a few feet until he released the rock. Then all hell broke loose as two other players furiously shoved their brooms back and forth in front of the rock as it glided down the ice. According to the movie, touching or "burning" a rock in motion with a broom was almost a crime.

"Sweep. Sweep. Harder. Harder. Hurry hard," shouted the Skip holding the broom on the center of the bulls-eye target at the other end of the sheet. "Stop! Stop sweeping. It's gonna hit the button."

Thunk. The rock crashed into one rock perfectly positioned on the target's center button, (thunk) ricocheted off another, and all three rocks slid outside the target so were pushed by foot into a corner, leaving no more rocks in the dyed circles called the "house".

"Good take-out," shouted the Skip down the ice to his teammate.

"Despite first impressions, curling is a rather complex strategic game," said a familiar husky voice close to his ear.

Lizard Girl's sudden appearance jolted his cynical heart. Blood pulsed in his ears.

"They called me Cat at police college." Catrina's grin acknowledged his startled reaction.

Cat. It suited her. Dark, lean, sinuous. Pretty. Graceful movements. Today she wore black leggings topped with a thigh-length cream wool sweater and thin leather gloves, her shiny dark hair in a ponytail.

The two all-male teams reconnoitered at the lounge end of the ice sheet and shook hands. He scowled and stiffened, speculating whether any of those men had intimate knowledge of Catrina's smoking figure hidden under her oversized sweater.

"Now they'll all head for the Brew Pub," Catrina observed. "The custom is for the winning team to buy the losing team's drinks."

He deliberately relaxed hiked shoulders. Catrina's love life wasn't any of his business. "So the losers aren't really losers because they score free drinks?"

"Everybody's happy," she agreed. She turned her incisive gaze on him, but misread the reason for the tension in his body. "No one will care if you're the worst curler ever. It's a recreational league. Our mixed team has no hope of qualifying for the Brier," she said, referring to Canada's televised national competitive curling competition.

A kernel of an idea for conflict between a flawed movie hero and his female partner and love interest distracted him from the jealous tentacles squeezing his balls as he watched the male eight-pack slip and slide on the ice over to solid ground. Men's instinctual lizard-brain behavior over-powered logic when it came to women. A female cop might interpret a female suspect's body language in a completely different way from the male detectives and thereby affect the outcome of the investigation.