by Mike Faricy
“Beer’s just fine for me.”
A hallway ran straight ahead along the length of the condo, exposed brick on one side and doors to various rooms on the other. Track lighting along the ceiling lit the hall and highlighted three framed paintings hung on the brick wall. The paintings were roller derby scenes. Girls skating around a banked track wearing hot pants, you could feel a sense of speed and action just by looking at the things, the paintings.
“You do these?” I asked, staring briefly at the paintings before following her into the kitchen at the far back end of the hall.
“No, some California guy. That’s me in them, in the purple jersey. He did ten of the things if you can believe it, gave me a deal. He had a show and everything, I guess it went pretty well.” Her voice was muffled as she bent over and reached into a gigantic refrigerator.
“Here’s to you,” she said a moment later and handed me a bottle.
A few beers later we ended up on one of the couches, legs resting across the coffee table. A couple of table lamps with stain glass dragon flies on the shades dimly lit the room. Light from the lamps reflected off the glazed fireplace tiles.
“You think there’ll be any trouble?” she asked.
“You mean with Harlotte Davidson and the fingers?”
“No, I mean because I’m almost out of beer, yes with Harlotte and the fingers.”
“I hope not. I don’t think there will be. But, I’ll give you this, it’s pretty strange.”
“Yeah and not the sort of publicity we’re looking for.”
“I don’t know, you could probably get a sellout crowd showing up just to see if anything was going to happen. People dig this weird shit, look at all the folks into the whole vampire thing,” I said, then sipped.
“That is so not the sort of fans we’re looking for. We’ve worked really hard to get beyond the image of strippers on roller skates and then something like this comes along.”
“Maybe it’s someone who gets their kicks getting headlines, you know their fifteen minutes of fame sort of deal. If that doesn’t happen, if you keep it quiet, maybe the guy will just go away.”
“Or get more aggressive,” she said.
“There is that.”
“Who would let some guy cut off their finger?” she said, then shuddered swallowing her beer.
“I’ve been thinking about that. At first I was thinking, it’s him, you know some nut case doing it to himself but there are too many middle fingers for one guy. Then, I thought maybe homeless people, druggies, but that seems sort of far fetched. I’m guessing someone with ready access.”
“Ready access? To fingers? You gotta be kidding. How does that work?”
“Maybe it’s someone who works in a hospital or a morgue or a funeral home, something along those lines.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
“Just thinking out loud.”
“You hear back from Miss Cosmopolitan?” she asked, moving quickly away from the subject of fingers.
“No, not really interested,” I said. I saw no benefit admitting I heard Carol’s stupid French phone message. I could only hope little old Nicholas was just that, little.
“Need a hug?”
“What?”
“Get over here, stupid,” she said and took her glasses off.
Don’t miss Bombshell. Dev thinks he’s on his way to a sweetheart deal, hovering around a team of gorgeous women and getting paid for the privilege. As per always, circumstances quickly fly out of control and Dev ends up with a laundry list of trouble – and no answers.
Take a moment and grab another one of my books and enjoy the read and many thanks.
Mike Faricy
