Free The Bones of Old Carlisle by Kevin E Meredith Page A

smiling
quizzically.
“Mista Franklin don’t like hard to get, honey,” Homans
instructed. “Just go along wid’ it.”
The man Homans was calling Mista Franklin, with thinning red
hair, dressed in the sort of burgundy coat and pants only the
unlearned mistake for a business suit, leaned in for another kiss,
simultaneously sliding his hand down the front of her dress to her
groin.
“No,” the girl said, grabbing his arms. It wasn’t a scream, nor a
protest, simply a statement. “No.”
Franklin relaxed, she let him go and he backed away with his
hands up, a sort of grimacing half-smile on his face. Was he happy or
sad? Arrowroot wondered. Probably both, like most people most of the
time, he thought.
The girl smiled back in a confused away, which Mr. Franklin’s
drunken brain interpreted as an invitation, apparently. He advanced
again, one hand behind the girl’s neck, the other back to her groin.
“Okay, you love boids, get a room,” Homans said with a
grotesquely feigned laugh, trying desperately to make the sad scene
before her into something more.
Having had enough of this, the wedding girl grabbed Mr.
Franklin’s upper arms and lifted him up a foot, his feet dangling, and
shook him like a rag doll.
“You need to go away,” she said, and in one fluid motion swung
him up and over the railing, suspending him high above the Mittelkopp.
“Does water kill you?”
“What the hell?” Mr. Franklin demanded slurrily. “You fucking
hairy bitch.”
“Hold on, hea’!” Homans protested. “Oh my gawd, put him down!”
Mr. Franklin’s form became a burgundy blur until it hit the
water, at which point it became a man again, badly-dressed and
partially submerged.
Homans, whose discretion and unflappability were assets in her
chosen profession, watched in what appeared to be stunned disbelief as
Mr. Franklin’s head surfaced, he looked around and started swimming to
the pier.
“You’re a fuckin’ freak!” she shouted at the girl. “Mistah
Franklin, you okay? That wasn’t supposed to happen! Oh my gawd, she’s
a fuckin’ freak! Mistah Franklin, swim to the pee-yah. That’s right,
find the ladda, they-ya.”
With Mr. Franklin nearing the pier, Homans turned her attention
to the wedding girl. “My gawd, you coulda killed him!” she said.
“What’s the matta’ with you? Hea’s everyone’s tryin’ to help ya and
you go and do that! No wondah ya betrothal found anothah matta to
occupy his toym with.”
The girl just looked at her, without speaking.
Homans lowered her voice, muttering a few things Arrowroot
couldn’t hear, then raised it again. “You see, I know you don’t have
any papahs, and you’re from Mexico, so let’s see what the police have
to say.”
“Yes,” the girl replied.
Homans stomped off, a door slammed and the wedding girl turned to
watch her would-be client drag himself up a rusty ladder to the pier.
Arrowroot shivered in sympathy for the man, but the girl betrayed no
concern for him, nor any reaction to the mountain air, growing colder
by the minute.
Once Mr. Franklin was back on dry land, the girl looked down,
noticing Arrowroot for the first time. Their eyes locked and he smiled
while she remained expressionless.
“Good evening, Miss,” Arrowroot yelled up, removing his helmet.
“I would like to speak to you. Can you stay there for a moment?”
She kept staring in an answerless way, telling him with her
apathy he needed to hurry upstairs before she wandered off again. Or
got arrested. Or killed someone.
At the main entrance to the Eden Hotel, Delilah Homans was
barreling out just as Arrowroot was entering.
“Hello, there, Miss Homans,” he said. “Where you off to?”
“To the police to report a voy-lent alien,” she announced, all
her discretion gone.
“Oh, you mean that girl in the wedding dress?”
“Exack-ly!” she shouted.
“The girl that tossed Mr. Franklin into the river?”
“Exack-ly! Oh my gawd!”
“So there you