Secondhand Souls (2015) by Christopher Moore

Secondhand Souls (2015) by Christopher Moore

Author:Christopher Moore [Moore, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Humorous, Fantasy, General, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780061779787
Google: QKykBQAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0061779784
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-08-24T12:00:00+00:00


17

Come Lay My Body Down

For the next two days Charlie tried to get used to the idea of living his life as someone else. He walked around the neighborhood, running errands and adjusting to being outdoors again, among people and traffic and sunshine. He went to the courthouse and applied to change Mike Sullivan’s name to Charles Michael Sullivan, so he’d have a quick explanation for why everyone in his life would be calling him Charlie. He accepted sympathy about his accident from the people at Mike’s bank, and made sure everyone he encountered knew that he was suffering from mild amnesia and asked them to be understanding if he seemed a bit sketchy on the basic details of his life. Mercifully, most of the people who he encountered seemed to think Mike Sullivan was a pretty decent guy, although no one seemed to know him very well, which worked out great for Charlie.

“This amnesia thing is great,” he said to Audrey as she sat bent over a sewing machine, making one of dozens of costumes for the Squirrel People. “You just say, ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t remember your name, I fell off the Golden Gate Bridge and hit my head and I’m having a few memory issues.’ Everyone’s so nice about it.”

“They’re probably envious they can’t use the same excuse,” said Audrey. “This is ridiculous!” She snapped the needle up out of the fabric and snipped the thread. “I can’t make all the Squirrel People ornate costumes. This list Bob gave me is impossible. I made their original costumes from fabric scraps I’d collected over months. This would be a full-time job, even if all I was doing was collecting material, let alone making a unique costume for each of them.”

“Maybe I can help,” said Charlie.

“That’s sweet of you to offer, but you have plenty to do already. I’m just going to get a couple of bolts of cotton in different colors and make them basic outfits from it, with drawstring trousers, like hospital scrubs. They can cinch them up to fit.”

“Sounds good,” said Charlie. “You can use Wiggly Charlie for the pattern.”

Charlie had gotten used to Wiggly Charlie following him around the big house that comprised the Buddhist Center, the little monster imitating his movements. When Charlie went to the bathroom, W.C. followed him and peed in a plastic mixing bowl that Charlie had used for the same purpose when he had been a little monster. When Charlie sat down to practice Mike Sullivan’s signature, W.C. sat on his mixed nut can, using a stack of books as a little desk, and practiced his penmanship as well, which consisted mostly of tearing stationery and licking the pen, then putting inky tongue prints on the paper. Charlie hung some of the more interesting ones on the fridge.

Wiggly Charlie was learning skills, but didn’t seem to be getting any more vocabulary, picking up only the odd word here and there and working them into some syntax around the phrase “need a cheez.



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