Free The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler Page B

pants.”
    “Oh, her.” Actually, I could have done worse. This one was very tight-lipped about ghosts, preferring to hog all of the credit for herself. And she never, ever phoned. Had a pathological fear of human contact—and she didn’t much care for dealing with writers either.
    I sat down on the edge of the bed, groaning. “I don’t get it. Thor’s a lot older than I am, and he feels perfectly fine this morning. He even had a swim before we hiked home.”
    “Yes, he’s probably out there right now picking up one entire side of the barn all by himself,” Merilee said drily. “With his jaws.”
    I took a sip of my coffee. “You don’t like him, do you?”
    “I don’t dislike him.” She sat next to me, suddenly uneasy. “I do think he drags you a bit close to the abyss sometimes.”
    “Maybe that’s where I have to be—if I’m ever going to create anything decent again.”
    Merilee swallowed, her brow creasing fretfully. “Hoagy, has it ever occurred to you that whatever it is you’re reaching for … that it’s not there?”
    “Only every day, Merilee. But it is there. It has to be there.”
    “What if it isn’t?”
    “I’ll know.”
    “What then?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Aren’t you frightened?”
    “Of course I am. The fear is what drives me.”
    “You frighten me sometimes, darling.”
    “Just sometimes?”
    “You have this way of getting stuck inside of whatever you’re searching for. You’re like the mime in the glass box.”
    I stared at her. “Merilee Gilbert Nash, you’ve just compared me to a mime!”
    She reddened. “I merely meant—”
    “Why, that’s positively the second worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
    “What’s the worst?”
    “That night you said, ‘Are you a devotee of the Brothers Gibb?’ ”
    “Merciful heavens, Hoagy. I didn’t know you. W-We’d only just met. I was trying to make conversation.”
    “You were trying to pick me up,” I recalled, grinning at her.
    “And I succeeded,” she pointed out huffily.
    “Only because I was easy.” I slipped Grandfather’s Rolex on my left wrist, and Thor’s bracelet on my right, hefting it. It was a clunky damned thing. She noticed it, of course. “Thor gave it to me last night,” I explained.
    “You mean like some form of male bonding ritual? How cute. And look —it’s got lions and tigers and bears, oh, my! Lions and tigers and—”
    “I didn’t expect you to understand,” I grumbled. “It’s a …”
    “Yes, dear?”
    “It’s a guy thing.”
    “Yes, dear.”
    In the distance I heard the thud-thud-thud of death metal blasting from Dwayne’s eight-inch woofers, followed by the crunch of his tires on the gravel drive. Through the casement windows I could see him hop out of the truck, clutching a Styrofoam cup of coffee from Bess Eaton donuts, his shoulders hunched against the cold. He began to unload his stuff.
    The chapel door opened and Clethra came padding out in Thor’s big fisherman’s knit sweater and nothing else. She closed the door gently, sidled barefoot over to Dwayne and bummed a cigarette off him. She lingered there, smoking it, her head tilted up at him coyly. She was playing with him, much the way a kitten plays with a garter snake, Dwayne ducking his head bashfully. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
    “Aren’t they cute?” observed Merilee.
    “Adorable.”
    “She’s an extremely dull girl, actually. It’s astonishing.”
    “What’s astonishing? That she’s so dull?”
    “That Thor would give up everything for her.”
    “Strange things happen to us fellers when we get older, Merilee.”
    “Strange things happen to you when you’re younger, too. Let’s face it, mister, you’re just strange.”
    “What did you two do last night?”
    “Well, I pickled my cucumbers …”
    “Careful, Merilee. You know what that kind of talk does to me.”
    “And then I made a nice roaring fire up here …”
    “Whew, it sure is a good thing we have a