Free Body Movers by Stephanie Bond Page A

equipment at his buddy Chance’s apartment.
    He stood and stretched the kinks out of his neck, a
    bothersome side effect of spending so many hours bent
    over a keyboard.
    Whew. Thank goodness the business with the police had
    been settled yesterday in court. Liz Fischer was a
    godsend…and a hottie. Too bad a woman like her would
    never take him seriously—movies like The Graduate and
    PS gave guys like him false hope.
    Walking to the bathroom connected to his room, he
    rubbed his sore mouth, working his jaw. He wished he
    knew who had sent the guy who’d jumped him in the
    courthouse bathroom, but the thug seemed to prefer to
    talk with his hands. In truth, the guy could have been
    working for either one of the people that he owed—Father
    Thom being his biggest creditor. Then again, the guy
    robbing him could have been a coincidence.
    But he doubted it.
    The worst part was that he’d been carrying the fifteen
    hundred that Chance had paid him for deleting the
    speeding tickets—money he’d planned to take to Father
    Thom this morning. Instead, he’d have to scrounge
    together a few hundred from his various hiding places and
    beg for more time.
    He thought about showering, but decided that fresh
    deodorant and mouthwash would suffice. If he got the ass-
    kicking he expected from Father Thom’s thugs, a soak in a
    hot tub of water was probably in his near future anyway.
    He rooted around the floor for a cleanish pair of jeans and
    pul ed a T-shirt from the laundry basket of clothes he
    hadn’t gotten around to folding. He dressed and shoved
    his feet into his old Merrell slip-ons, mourning his brown
    suede Pumas, and kicked Hubert’s decaying shoes near his
    trash can.
    In the fifty-gallon glass aquarium on the other side of the
    room, a mouse scurried around, terrified. A pang of
    remorse hit him and he walked over, unlocked the pin and
    slid the screen top aside. With a practiced hand, he
    captured the mouse and held it up by its tail.
    “Relax, buddy, you got a reprieve. Einstein must be fasting
    again.” He stared down at the black-and-gray spotted
    axanthic ball python, all six feet of his longtime pet coiled
    disinterestedly in a corner. “Finicky reptile, are you sure
    you aren’t female? Or vegetarian?”
    Einstein didn’t move, and would likely stay in his stoic
    position for the next several hours. The police search, with
    al the activity and noise, must have traumatized him.
    Wesley slid the cover closed, locked the pin, then returned
    the lucky mouse to a smaller container. Sometimes he
    thought that Einstein didn’t eat out of sympathy for his
    prey. When he did feed, it was as if he would begrudgingly
    relent, then coil around and squeeze his prey to death
    before it had time to react, and swallow it promptly, as if
    to get it over with. Carlotta thought the snake was a man-
    eater, but Wesley could barely get him to eat enough to
    sustain his monstrous size.
    Wesley sometimes wondered, though, what his pet could
    kil and consume if it were motivated.
    Hearing a noise in the hallway, Wesley frowned. He’d
    hoped to be out of the house before Carlotta got up, partly
    because he didn’t want to worry her, and partly because
    he didn’t want to face her. The fact that she wasn’t
    normally an early riser told him that she probably hadn’t
    slept wel , and no doubt he was the cause. Frustration
    tightened his chest. He just needed some time and space
    to get things worked out with his creditors and to
    investigate his father’s case. Although he appreciated his
    sister’s concern, her hovering was making things more
    complicated.
    He made his way around the room and checked various
    hiding places—the hem of the curtain, the hol ow leg of his
    metal bed, inside his worn copy of The Catcher in the
    Rye—and counted up three hundred sixty dol ars.
    He heard a muffled voice and realized that Carlotta was
    calling his name. God, he hoped she hadn’t set the kitchen
    on fire again.
    He grabbed