Free Alpine for You by Maddy Hunter

at the unbreakable metal spokes and bowed them into the impossible shapes of a broken Erector Set. “My umbrella!” I fussed with the spokes, not knowing whether they should be straightened or bent. I scrunched the Kevlar panels together and tried to slide the runner back down the rod, but the damage was irreversible. The mechanism was shot. “It was brand-new,” I grieved in a small voice. “It was unbreakable. It matched my raincoat.” But worst of all, “It was automatic.”
    The group surged forward, carrying me with it. I pouted for a few seconds over the loss of my umbrella, then pitched it into a nearby trash receptacle before we maneuvered up the stairs to the bridge.
    “The triangular paintings under the gables were painted in the seventeenth century by Heinrich Wagmann,” Sonya began. I hugged my hood more closely around my face and shifted my feet from side to side. I couldn’t hear what Sonya was saying anymore. I checked my watch to see how much more time we were scheduled to walk around. Two hours and twenty minutes. Great. In two hours and twenty minutes I’d be suffering frostbite and would need to have my fingers and toes amputated, which would be a real waste considering how much nail polish I’d bought recently. I sneaked up behind Dick Teig, hoping his head would give me some protection from the wind.
    “Say, Sonya,” Dick Rassmuson called out in a cloud of cigar smoke, “how much would it cost me to buy a house around here?”
    “We discuss paintings this morning! In two days you may ask me about real estate.”
    “Then how about cars?” Dick persisted. “What’s your average car sell for?”
    “You may ask about automobiles when I arrive at that part of my talk on day four.”
    “What did you say is the name of this river we’re crossing?” George Farkas wanted to know.
    “I didn’t say! You don’t need to know that now!”
    Wally had been right. Sonya knew everything there was to know about Lucerne. If you asked her on the right day, she might even be willing to share the information with you.
    The wind chased us along the bridge. An octagonal stone tower rose from the depths of the river and abutted the bridge near the opposite shore. It had a witch’s cap of a roof and looked like part of a castle. “This is the Water Tower,” Sonya told us. “It was erected in the fourteenth century and measures 140 feet from top to bottom. The people of Lucerne have used it as a watchtower, a corner pillar of the city’s fortifications, a prison, and a torture chamber.”
    I wondered what kind of torture the Swiss had used on their prisoners. Probably forced them to take the walking tour, with a test afterward.
    By the time we left the bridge and struck out along the promenade toward a two-towered stone church, the rain had diminished to sprinkles, but the wind was still howling off the water and cutting through every layer of clothing on my body. Sonya led us to a plaza that fronted the church and positioned herself in front of an old-fashioned black wrought iron lamppost. “Behind you is the Jesuit Church…”
    I stood on tiptoe to see her. Black coat. Black slacks. Black hair with neon yellow highlights streaked across the front. Lily Munster meets Dennis Rodman. Off to my right, Dick Teig and Dick Stolee wandered toward an area where granite steps led down into the river. I suspected that, in the summer, this would be an ideal place to sit and dangle your feet in the water, but today, I was more interested in getting inside the church to get out of the wind.
    “We can proceed into the church now,” Sonya instructed. “Please use the door on the left and remember, this is a church, so…”
    “Balls!”
    I turned to my right to see an object that resembled a clump of parched sod swirling in the air above Dick Stolee’s head. I heard Nana whistle through her dentures behind me. “Boy, when his hair decided to fall out, it went really fast. Lookit him. Bald as a Q-Tip. Poor