longer involved.”
Fat chance. While we’d been circling the streets of Greensboro, pockets of people affected by my actions had been choosing up attitudes. Not near as many chose passivity as I’d hoped.
The first mistake was not taking Gilia back where I found her. Since the Saunderses lived a half block from the eighteenth fairway, she’d walked to the club, and, in our innocence, it made sense to drop her at home.
Before I even turned off the key, angry hands reached in both doors and yanked us into the open.
“Sonny!” Gilia yelled.
Then, “Ryan, you let go of him!”
A lot of people were shouting at once. The sucker pinning me against my own Dodge ordered Gilia into the house. This had to be the macho brother.
“Let go of him, you little shit!”
I agreed with the shit part, but Ryan wasn’t little. Sons of linemen grow up big.
He breathed beer in my face. “Stay away from my sister.”
“She’s my sister too, jerk.”
That set him back a moment. Meanwhile, the goon Gilia had called Sonny came charging around to our side of the action. One look told me here was the spawn of Skippy. Sons of quarterbacks grow up compact and sneaky.
Sonny even had Skip’s snarl. “You, mister, are going to take back every lie you said about my dad.”
“Forcing me to call the truth a lie won’t make it less the truth.” Let them work their way through that logic.
Didn’t take long. Ryan came back with the tough guys’ universal retort.
Beyond Ryan’s fat shoulder I could see Skip Prescott standing on his own porch. With a drink in his right hand and his left hand sunk in his tennis shorts’ pocket, he came off as the slightly amused massah who’d ordered the whipping of a bumptious slave.
“Still afraid to fight your own fights, huh, Daddy?” I called out, which got me a frown from Skip and a jerk forward, hard shove back against the car from Ryan. Behind us, I could hear Gilia begging Cameron to call off the dogs.
Ryan had a jaw big enough to club cattle. “What were you doing with my sister?”
“Communicating.”
He didn’t like that. The kid wasn’t stupid—just big and Southern.
Sonny played cheerleader. “Wipe the pavement with the bastard. Show him never to mess with real men.”
I decided to go like-father, like-son. Ryan was calm, yet dangerous; I should turn my attention to Sonny the rat terrier.
“You’re no better than your dad,” I said. “Our dad. You make threats, then find someone else to carry them out.”
“I’ll break your neck.”
“Either hurt me now or shut your fat face.”
Sonny hit me in the gut. As I doubled over, Ryan let go of my shoulders, then teed off on my chin. Gilia screamed. I remember that detail—Gilia screaming.
I made it to the pavement, went fetal, and rode out the pounding. All in all, it was pretty typical of two guys beating the snot out of one guy while a woman goes ballistic in the background. I’d written the scene several times for Young Adult sports fiction, so it was as if I’d been there before.
Lying with my forehead stuck to concrete, part of me disengaged from reality and sat on the hood of the Dodge, taking notes: Sonny goes for the face, Ryan for the kidneys, someone is dragging Gilia into the house. There was more lower back pain and less blood than in the versions I wrote. Otherwise, I’d pretty much nailed the sensation.
Katrina Prescott stood in the middle of the street, less than a block from what I’ve come to call Sam’s Massacre. It’s a wonder I didn’t run her down, what with being slumped over the steering wheel with blood dribbling in my eyes.
I braked hard and avoided killing her, but Katrina didn’t seem to notice the brush with death. Instead, she hopped in the passenger seat and started talking.
“Skip is cruel and abusive. I’m so glad you’re driving him nuts; it’s a wonderful turn of events.”
“Mrs. Prescott, I’ve had a hard day. I’d just as soon go on home now.”
“He forced me to take tennis lessons.”
“That is cruel.”
“Against my will, he made me get a breast enhancement—silicone. Are you going to drive or not?”
I tried not to look, but, heck, women get silicone implants so you will look. Why is it whenever a woman tells you she’s had an implant, she’s offended if you look down there?
I shifted into first and moved on up the street. “Couldn’t we talk another time, Mrs. Prescott. I have a headache.”
“You look awful.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
Katrina didn’t want to hear it. “Skip diddles his secretary, he diddles Cameron’s secretary, he diddles the jailbait in the shoe department. The one time I had a lover, Skip planted dope in Sean’s trailer and called the police.”
“I saw that story on
“Before that, Skip gave me syphilis and to this day he accuses me of giving it to him.”
“All men do that.”
“I hate Skip.”
“Everybody hates Skip, Mrs. Prescott. Can I please go home now?”
“Do you believe in phrenology?”
It seemed like I’d passed out and missed a transitional statement. “Telling the future by bumps on someone’s head?”
“Phrenology is not fortune-telling. It’s the science of character analysis through the study of skull structure.”
“My housekeeper hears the future from coffee grounds in the garbage disposal.”
Katrina pulled her legs up under herself and sat facing me. “Listen, the skull is made up of twenty-six round enclosures with vacant interspaces. Each enclosure corresponds to a trait, and the larger the enclosure, the more prevalent the trait.”
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars to get out of my car.”
“May I feel your head?”
“Do you have to?”
Katrina clamped her hand on my forehead and let her fingers slowly drift to my eyebrows. She touched the side of my head in what on TV they call the Vulcan death grip. Meanwhile, I turned right twice, trying not to roam too far from Starmount Forest.
“Poor self-esteem,” she said. “A disfigured parental love, unconventional sex preferences, no wit whatsoever.”
“Don’t touch my ears, Mrs. Prescott.”
“The benevolence node is prominent. You must be very kind.”
“The node wasn’t prominent until your son hit me.”
“Shush.”
I think boredom causes insanity. Look at rich people. Or Southern California where the weather never changes so people go crazy from nothing else to do. Katrina went into a kind of spell with her fingers on my head. Her eyes took on that glaze professional women get when you eat them.
“Now, you feel my head,” she said.
