Welcome back, Sunday eighters. I'm doing a series of my opening lines, since openings are what will get the reader to keep on reading. I'm featuring one of my favorite openings today, the first lines of The P-Town Queen, a romantic comedy featuring a woman who is trying to fix her career as a shark researcher and a guy who is running from the mob. They meet in Provincetown Massachusetts and the rest is, as they say comedy.
The opening began as a bit of joke, as I'd read somewhere you ought to begin a story with a bang. So I did--
The opening began as a bit of joke, as I'd read somewhere you ought to begin a story with a bang. So I did--
I did not blow up the Mona Lisa. Not only did I not blow up the Mona Lisa—an old leaker of a boat whose blowing up could be construed as a favor to the aptly named Rusty Cook—I did not blow up any part of Rusty’s marina. My brothers will, of course, say otherwise, they had quite the laugh at my expense over coffee at Ella’s Place.
Rusty had been on the lookout for a boat for me. It had taken a lot of gumption and crow-eating to get to a place where I could consider buying a boat-- I needed a cheap one, because God only knew how much money I’d be able to squeeze out of the Massachusetts Bay Commission via the research grant proposal I’d spent three long months laboring to produce.
The head of the commission was Ned Anderson. Ned, a brilliant shark researcher in his own right, had tumbled a long way: to full time administrator of a bullshit state commission. Though to hear Ned say it, it wasn’t a tumble but a reward for all the years he’d spent roughing it on a California channel island—an island that only had electricity every other day— in order to unlock the mystery of white shark feeding behavior. I had spent five years on that island with Ned. We were married at the time.
Rusty had been on the lookout for a boat for me. It had taken a lot of gumption and crow-eating to get to a place where I could consider buying a boat-- I needed a cheap one, because God only knew how much money I’d be able to squeeze out of the Massachusetts Bay Commission via the research grant proposal I’d spent three long months laboring to produce.
The head of the commission was Ned Anderson. Ned, a brilliant shark researcher in his own right, had tumbled a long way: to full time administrator of a bullshit state commission. Though to hear Ned say it, it wasn’t a tumble but a reward for all the years he’d spent roughing it on a California channel island—an island that only had electricity every other day— in order to unlock the mystery of white shark feeding behavior. I had spent five years on that island with Ned. We were married at the time.
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