"You're cheating on me, Victor."

I was desperate for some decent text, okay? When that line wafted into my head an hour or two ago, I wrote it down, in spite of my vow not to spend company time writing.

Then I wrote two pages of stuff to go with the line.

Brace yourselves. These are not completely sucky pages. Not entirely. This is...dare I say it? Yes! This is actually reasonably good material!

The bad news, of course, is that the second Buehler left the office for a three-day business trip, I started writing while I should have been working*. At the moment, I'm torn between shame** and triumph***. And also between hunger and duty. I'm cramming down my lunch so as to be ready for my 1:30 meeting because I spent my lunch hour writing. I'm not crazy about cold chicken but I have to eat.

(*Okay, I didn't actually write until my lunch break, but I was Thinking About Writing instead of working.)

(**Very little.)

(***Quite a lot, actually.)

So, cheating. I cheated the company. Not for the first time, either.

I'm certainly glad I'm not the person struggling to find the money to cover the salary I'm overpaid.

Shortly thereafter....

Well, my 1:30 meeting was simple enough. The client needs to reschedule the training, she had something come up.

I am not now gifted with a "free hour" for writing. I am going to spend this interval working and that's that!

Heck...I already made three phone calls. I'm on a roll!

Shortly thereafter....

Five calls!

I think that's enough productive work for one day, don't you? I wouldn't want to raise the bar too high or anything.

Besides, it's very exciting. I had no idea this scene was going to happen in this story. I wonder what's going to happen next?