The Fifty-Seven Lives of Alex Wayfare by MG Buehrlen

Author:MG Buehrlen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2014-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

A knock on the driver’s side window jerked me awake. “Hungry, sweetie?”

I opened my eyes to the oval, cheery face of an older woman with pointed glasses. Her silver hair was teased in a beehive, and she wore an apricot-colored waitress dress. The name tag at her breast said LAMERLE.

“Come on in, sugar,” she said, waving me toward the door of the diner. “I’ve got grits. I’ve got hash. I’ve got flapjacks.” She kept listing foods as she walked, but I couldn’t hear her anymore.

After I checked to make sure the Portrait of a Young Man was safe and secure, I opened the passenger door and almost fell out onto the pavement. Every muscle was stiff, and my stomach growled, demanding a living sacrifice. LaMerle unlocked the diner and held the door open for me. I fell into a blue vinyl booth by the front windows so I could keep an eye on my hundred-million-dollar Corvette. A drumline marched and pounded inside my head.

“You look like you could use some coffee,” LaMerle said. She shuffled behind the counter. The coffee maker was filled, then set to percolate. “You like ice in yours? Folks say I’m crazy, but I like mine with ice. You let me know if you want ice.”

I sat there, forehead and nose pressed to the laminate tabletop, wondering if I was experiencing a hangover. My mouth certainly felt rank enough, but maybe I was just tired. I didn’t feel drunk last night, but then again, I wasn’t sure if I would’ve noticed anyway. The only time I ever had alcohol was when Uncle Lincoln handed me a frozen peach schnapps at Christmas and told me it was a slushy. I spit it out on his salmon corduroy pants.

I downed LaMerle’s coffee, without the ice cubes, even though I hated the stuff in Base Life. In this body, though? Coffee was a sweet, dawn-kissed beauty. It was a pure need, like warm blood and fresh air. Like life couldn’t start without it. It was strong and helped shovel the heaviness of sleep off my back.

LaMerle whipped up some fried eggs and a strange kind of sausage made with pork and oats she called goetta, and I devoured those as well. When the breakfast crowd picked up, I left her a nice tip for letting me sleep in her parking lot and giving me directions to the bank.

The Cincinnati Mutual Bank and Trust was a two story brick building at the center of town. Porter had descended back to 1953 a long time ago and opened an account there, which he still had today. He chose that particular bank because it was one of the only ones still intact, having never moved their safe deposit boxes or gone through the renovation after a fire or flood. I was to leave the painting in his box, where it would remain hidden until he collected it in Base Life, over fifty years later.

Which, you had to admit, was pretty freaking genius.

But first, I had to find the key.

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