Free Planet Willie by Josh Shoemake Page B

shiny
and good. You just want to pluck them right off the canvas for a bite. Liberate
the apple, so to speak, or as my acquaintances in ALF might say. Unfortunately
for the apples, I’m about the only one in there paying them any attention. Harry Shore may be right about his daughter’s poor business sense, but then I catch sight
of the woman who must be his daughter, and I forget all about Harry Shore.
    She’s over by
the bar in a little circle of socialites, anxiously looking out across the gallery. She’s no hard-edged New York type, Fernanda. No, she’s still all Gulf of Mexico. Light green sundress of the sort girls used to wear, showing her shoulders
but covering her knees. A distant smile that comes into focus when somebody
turns her way. Dark blonde hair she hasn’t tried to make too fancy. I felt it
out on the sidewalks, I sniffed it on the air. Spring has most definitely
arrived, and I couldn’t be happier to be among the seasons again.
    Somebody says
something funny, and it seems to take her a minute to remember to laugh. She
covers her teeth with a fist, then quickly shifts the hand down the string of
pearls around her neck, pulling them through her fingers like they’re rosary
beads. It’s times like these when I want to walk over and tell a woman about my
heavenly circumstances. Not to save her soul or any other part of her. Just to
get it off my chest and maybe see her eyes light up. I’ve been stuck on a cloud
for the past five years, I want to tell her, and then I guess I’m always hoping
she’ll believe me for once and say a little prayer that the switchboard might
hear and get me made human again. Hell, even angels still hope for miracles.
But of course the mysteries never stop, and while I wait on miracles I’ve still
got a case to work.
    She sees me
watching her and gives me a vague smile, as if I might be some client she can’t
afford to ignore, which only confirms my suspicions of her poor business sense.
I reciprocate with a little something of Swedish origin I call the Smorgasbord
– just light it up in all directions, there’s something for everybody in there,
and I’m sure hoping that includes Miss Shore.
    Then at that
very moment – and this may well be the effect of the Smorgasbord – she tugs the
necklace a bit too hard, and it snaps. Pearls scatter across the floor,
clicking like teeth as they hit, rolling up under the bar and through the legs
of patrons of the arts. Her hands fly up to her neck, and her eyes go big and
moist. I catch a pearl against my boot and kneel to pick it up. Then I crawl
across the floor to round up a few of the others, which when freed from the
necklace are proving to be lively little critters. She’s down hunting them too
and depositing them in a champagne glass she’s got in one hand, her mouth
twisted shut like if she were to let go of herself now, she might just scatter
loose across the floor like those pearls.
     I crawl over
and deposit a handful into her glass. She looks up at me with green eyes that
match her dress. Wrinkles mark the corners of her eyes and mouth, the kind
you’ll see in a woman who’s gotten pleasure out of life. Freckles cover her
cheeks and make me wish I could scoop them up too and maybe put them in my
pocket.
    “Cast not your
pearls before swine,” I say with a little wink.
    “Now you tell
me,” she mutters, sounding even more Texas than she looks. “I think I’m
supposed to know you,” she says, shooting out an arm to catch a pearl, “but I
can’t quite place the name. I’m sorry, it has been a rough night.”
    “Call me
Willie,” I say, dropping another pearl into the glass. “Capital W as in Wow.
I’m from Texas.”
    “You don’t
say,” she says distractedly, scanning the floor.
    “South Texas, actually,” I say. “But I do manage to get up here occasionally to see the art.
Great lover of the fifteenth century, I am.”
    “Interesting,”
she says, though she’s not looking it. If she’s