Free Dark Arts by Randolph Lalonde Page B

said. Not the greatest thing
he could have said in that circumstance, as far as Bernie was
concerned. “Best thing about coming home is meeting you again.”
    “I enjoyed our ride,” Bernie barely heard
her say. It wasn’t in her nature to look nervous, it didn’t seem
like something that happened to her often, but she definitely
seemed like it then, even though she had turned around and was
closing the distance between them.
    “When did Max get a new girlfriend? She’s
right and tight,” Scott said.
    “Thank you,” Susanne said. “Isn’t my niece
lovely?”
    “Um, sorry, ma’am,” he replied
sheepishly.
    Maxwell and Miranda came back down to the
bus’s side door. Both of them looked more contented than he’d seen
either of them all day. “Feeling better,” Max said, taking another
pull on his cigarette. “I’m afraid mental boy inside is going to
get the rest of those sandwiches,” he told Susanne. “It’ll give him
something to do once he calms down. Mind if I take that peeler
too?”
    “If I can have it back when you’re
finished?” Susanne said uncertainly. “What are you going to do with
it?”
    “Don’t worry, I’m the sane one, you’ll get
it back,” he reassured her. “Might be tomorrow though, but we have
a few in the main house.” He finished the second half of his
sandwich, then his cigarette and took the orange peeler out of the
bottom of the tin. He looked to Bernie and nodded. “Get that ciggy
and follow me.”
    Bernie snatched Scott’s freshly lit
cigarette out of his mouth and followed Maxwell onto the bus with
Miranda in tow. Scott closed the folding doors behind.
    There were two slim bunks in the middle of
the bus with a narrow bed behind. Zack was sitting cross-legged on
the bottom left bunk in his underwear. “The heat frees me,” he
said, wiping sweat off his chest with a tattered sheet. “I shed my
sins and inhibitions simultaneously. I will be pure.”
    Max put the tin on one of the front seats,
sliding the orange peeler into his back pocket. “How’re you feeling
now?”
    “Like I’m pure-ing,” Zachary said before
breathing deeply.
    “Good, I’ve got a story to tell you,”
Maxwell said. He picked a cup up and drew water from a barrel
strapped into one of the rearmost long seats. “Feeling like some
water?”
    “I don’t trust you, Max,” Zack said
calmly.
    “All right, Bernie can give it to you, but
you’ve got to drink something, mate.”
    Bernie took the plastic cup of water and
handed it to Zack, who grinned at him and slurped it loudly.
    “You remember that nutter we met in
Rockland? Wouldn’t come out of his room?”
    “Jeeeeeeves,” Zachary said. “I thought it
was funny because he sounded more British than you.”
    “Right,” Maxwell said, smiling a little – a
good sign. “Did anyone tell you why he wouldn’t come out?”
    “No, but I tried,” Zack said, drooling a
little water.
    Bernie remembered it, they
were at the Nyack Motor Inn, and the desk clerk made the mistake of
telling them not to bother the only other person at that end of the
building, he was a resident named Jeeves who rarely left his room.
He remembered her saying that, rarely , not never, but Zack was sure
she said never, so later that night, after their gig down the road,
Zack got away from the band and started pounding on his door,
drunkenly inviting poor Jeeves to party at three in the
morning.
    They were ejected from the Nyack Motor Inn,
and ended up sleeping in the bus that night. What Max was going to
do with that story, Bernie had no idea.
    “So, I had some time to chat with the desk
clerk, and she told me all about Jeeves,” Max said calmly, taking a
seat on the bunk across from Zachary.
    “She didn’t,” Zack said. He looked to
Miranda and held his glass out. “Refill! Water, it makes me
alive!”
    Miranda smiled kindly at him and refilled
his glass. Zachary watched her every movement.
    Maxwell waited until the plastic cup was
back in his hand