Coyote Fork by James Wilson

Author:James Wilson [Wilson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781725253803
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2020-08-31T18:55:54+00:00

11

JUST BEFORE SEVEN, I WAS standing outside Milward Books. It was locked, but through the window I could see Breeze, diluted to a vague watery shape by the glass, fiddling with something at the counter. I knocked. She looked up and waved, then hurried through the shop to open the door.

“Hi.” She glanced left and right. “Where’s—Sorry, I forgot her name.”

“Carly-Rae? She had to leave. Some problem at home.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” But she was instantly more relaxed. She quickly locked up. “OK, we’re going out to Denny and Oak’s place.”

“How far is that?”

“Not far. Just ten minutes in the old Clunker.” She pointed to a decrepit Toyota, its paintwork dulled to a sickly mauve.

We got in. When she switched on, the engine made a deep-throated noise like a racing car, and the loose exhaust thudded against the floor. She reversed out into the path of a delivery van, which had to brake violently to avoid hitting us. The driver lowered his window and yelled,

“Stupid bitch! No one ever tell you to look where you’re going!”

She didn’t reply, but set off slowly along the street, the van driver honking in her wake.

“You better lighten up, friend,” she said to his red-faced reflection in the mirror. “Or one of these days, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.” She shook her head. “Crazy the way some people live.” She hesitated. “So you and Carly-Rae . . . are you a thing?”

“No, I told you. Or she did. We’d only just met.”

She nodded. “I didn’t want to say anything, if you were, you know, like . . . But actually, I think it’s better she’s not here.” She turned left over a bridge, then on to a road running alongside the river. “I put the word out, told everyone you were coming, they’re all real excited to meet you. But Carly-Rae really wouldn’t have fit in. She’d done her golly-gee routine with Oak, he’d have had her for breakfast.”

“That sounds a bit intimidating.”

“Oh, you’re going to be fine.” She clapped a hand over my knee. “They’re all going to love you.”

“So who’s going to be there?”

“I can’t tell you for sure. You know the way some people are: they don’t get back to you, they just show up. Or not. But there’ll be a few, I guarantee it.”

“Any of the Bone family?”

She half-turned towards me, then stopped and made a show of looking in the rear-view mirror.

“Why you ask about them?”

“Oh, it’s just, you know . . . you can’t help being curious, can you? Given that Evan Bone is now pretty much—”

“Yeah, whatever happened to him, huh?” She hesitated. “Actually, he seems to have taken off someplace, did you hear that? Like it’s all gotten too much for him. Being the richest guy on the planet, or whatever he is.”

“Third richest, apparently. Are his parents still around?”

She shook her head. “No, they took off years ago.”

“Do they keep in touch?”

“Uh-uh. That’s what money does. You got enough of it, you forget about your friends.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.