Souls Wax Fair: an original, unputdownable, contemporary literary thriller set in South Dakota by Kelly Creighton

Author:Kelly Creighton [Creighton, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime, Mystery, thriller, stories
Publisher: Friday Press
Published: 2022-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Passing Game

2015

Put the menu down, son, or we’ll never get served, the father tells the boy, thinking that they have waited long enough already. But the boy is only looking at the menu because his father forbids the iPad at the table, clearly values time spent in conversation. But for the boy, their conversations have become so one-sided they always circle back to the starting point.

And, for the father, it is hard to know what else to say that hasn’t already been said. Maybe it’s down to the boy’s age, him being fourteen, being born on the 12 September 2001, and named Phoenix: not only for this city that has always been special to his father – where father and son are now spending time together, where the father has just had a stint commentating on the Super Bowl.

But the boy was also named Phoenix as a nod to their broken post-9/11 nation rising up from the ashes in those bleak days.

They are sick of Mexican food the past few days, they have burritos coming out of their ears, and so Ricky has brought his boy to this nice Italian he used to frequent when he was at rehab camp pre-season. The restaurant has gone downhill, granted, though it never was anything special to look at, with its chopping ceiling fans and dusty chandeliers, black and white prints on the walls and specials up on the chalkboard that now look incredibly cheap. Yet, the food, as Ricky remembers it, is exquisite. The service has definitely waned, though.

Ricky remembers a few young waitresses who were as cute as corn. Now, however, the staff is male and middle-aged, unmotivated. They wear white lambent dress shirts, black matte pants, and vests that highlight their generous love handles.

The waiters prefer the female clientele. It doesn’t matter the age group, or if they are groups of college girls getting together, or perhaps a birthday, or colleagues out for a business meeting, or just mothers and daughters grabbing some lunch.

This one waiter, who is particularly irritating to Ricky, toys with all the women no matter their appearance, calling them lovely ladies, saying they don’t need dessert, that they are sweet enough. Acting extra corny for his service charge. Ricky would love to know if it is a successful approach. He just can’t see it working. He and his boy are in no rush, but their invisibility is starting to bug Ricky. So he calls the waiter over, who now has an entirely different demeanor. He has no time or focus for Ricky’s charm, nor does the waiter seem to recognize him.

Ricky is trying to ask the waiter about red wines since he has his attention, when the man abruptly tells him that they are on the menu.

I’ll give you more time, the waiter says, trying to walk off because a woman has entered the restaurant, an abnormally skinny woman.

No, says Ricky, just bring your finest, and get my boy a drink, too. We’d like to eat sometime this year.

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