Stilettos, Stoli & Scribbles ~ Served With A Twist

 

 

 

For today’s episode, we’re going to change it up a bit.  Since our guest can be a bit prickly (read obstinate, mule-headed, unforthcoming) when it comes to answering personal questions or attempts to delve into his background, we’ve asked Kenna Campbell, MFC and star of Eden’s Fall, whom we met in part 1, to guest host the interview. She’ll be talking to her first best friend, verbal sparring partner and sometime roommate, Will MacKenzie.  Will has a supporting role in Eden’s Fall and in Winter’s Thaw, but you’ll really get to know him in Venus Rising.

Like Marlon Perkins approaching a sleeping lion, Kenna attempted to catch Will unawares, in his natural habitat.   Finding him asleep on the couch with his headphones on, an unheeded footie (“don’t call it soccer!”) match on the television, she took her chance.  Silently, with stealth and agility she crept through the living room lest she wake the sleeping beast. She made it to the edge of the couch and reached out a hand to lift one side of the headphones…

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Kenna jumped back. “Damn it Will! You scared the crap out of me!”

Will opened one eye and glared at her. “What the hell time is it?”

“It’s late… or early depending on your point of view. Who cares? I couldn’t sleep.”

The headphones around his neck, Will swung his long legs off the couch, sat up and rubbed his eyes.  “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing on and I’m bored.” Kenna plunked herself down in the recliner and started thumbing through her copy of Vogue.

“Nothing? You couldn’t find any John Wayne to watch?” Cautiously, he asked, “Have you started using your painkillers for fun?”

“No, and you know I’m too afraid of junkies to take beyond ‘as prescribed’. Since you’re up, let’s do this quiz ’73 Questions to Determine Your Fashion Profile’!”

A low rumble emanating from Will’s throat was his only response.

“No?” She picked up another magazine. “How about the Proust Questionnaire? This one only has 31…”

“31?! What the fuck, Kenna! I know for a fact, Chapman only had to answer 10!”

Kenna laughed, “You are such a baby!” They hadn’t even started yet, but she was already enjoying herself.

“Frankie put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“No, but she did promise to make it worth your while if you cooperated this time. There’s a reason your first round didn’t make the cut.” Kenna slid her notepad with the actual questions on it from between the pages of the magazine where she’d stashed it.

Will sat back and crossed his arms over his chest as if this should indicate that he’d participate, if not enthusiastically.

“Okay, first question: What is your favorite word?”

“Fuck.”

Kenna rolled her eyes. “I knew you were going to say that. What’s your least favorite word?”

“No.”

“Are you going to take this seriously or not?”

“I am! Next question.”

Kenna sighed. “What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?”

Will poked a molar with his tongue“You mean like watching Henrik Larsson score a goal for The Hoops at Parkhead? That was a spiritual experience. No? What turns me on? A nice ass.”  A magazine flew out of Kenna’s hand and narrowly missed Will’s ear. “Hey! You asked!”

“Okay, what turns you off?”

“Trying to watch a footie match…”

“You were not watching,” Kenna interrupted. “You were asleep.”

“As you say,” Will said around the cigarette between his lips. While he dug in the front pocket of his jeans for his lighter he added, “How about being woken up to take a for shite quiz…”

“Here’s one you can handle. What’s your favorite curse word?”

“We covered that.”

“True. Covers half your vocabulary.”

“Hey!”

“What sound or noise do you love?”

Kenna expected a snappy retort. Instead, Will seemed to genuinely consider his answer. “My Da had horses. I used to watch them run. I love the sound of hooves carrying a thousand pounds of beautiful horseflesh hitting the ground running. It’s like thunder…” Will paused. Kenna was rapt. “What?”

She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d stood up and started reciting Shakespeare.  “Nothing. I’m just…nothing.  What noise do you hate?”

“The sound of someone who clearly doesn’t know what they’re doing, grinding the gears on a finely tuned machine…”

“One gear!” Kenna protested. “You know I owned it after that.”

“Like fingernails on a chalk board”

“Yeah, yeah.”  She tucked her legs beneath her butt and balanced her notepad on a knee. “What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?”

“I don’t have a profession,” Will laughed.

“Okay, then what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Will stopped laughing and his eyes narrowed. “Next question.”

Kenna sighed. “What profession would you not like to do?”

“Anything where I can’t be my own boss.”

“You’re not your own boss now.”

Will poked his cigarette in her direction. “My point exactly.”

“Ooookay. Last one, I promise. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?”

“Holy shit, Kenna! He ground his cig into the ashtray and got up from couch while he thought about his answer. “How about, ‘Just kidding, c’mon in.’?”

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This concludes the latest episode of “Inside the Writers Studio”. Thanks for tuning in.