Free Unexpected Dismounts by Nancy Rue Page B

out that the holes in the nylon rendered it pretty much useless.
    “You better shake like a dog before you come any farther, Miss Angel,” Sherry said from behind the counter. “I just mopped in here.”
    I had to admit the place had improved since Sherry started clerking for her dad again a month before. She’d been in his employ some before she got clean, though the word worked had been used loosely back then. But now the piles of tires were straight and dusted, and I could actually tell what color the floor was still trying to be. Beyond the counter, through the now-clear glass window, I could see a land yacht primed for a paint job. That alone made me coax out a smile.
    “Business is picking up, I see.”
    “That’s your friend Stan’s car,” Sherry said.
    “Very cool. He sold me my motorcycle.”
    “He tried to sell Daddy one.”
    “I’d pay a great deal of money to see that, actually,” I said to Maharry.
    He squinted his already minuscule eyes behind thick, smeary spectacles. “He’s not the only one trying to sell me things I don’t want.”
    “Who else?” I said.
    “You don’t want to know,” Sherry said.
    The grit of her teeth told me I did. “Who?” I said again.
    “Some fella come in here wantin’ me to invest my money in the …” Maharry ran a hand over his slicked iron hair. “What did he call it, Sherry Lynn?”
    “Save the City Project,” Sherry said.
    “‘Save’?” I said. “That’s just another word for running people out of their own neighborhood so money can be made off of it. You know that, don’t you?”
    The tiny veins in Maharry’s old cheeks seemed to rise to the surface. “You think I was born yesterday? I told him not to let the door hit him in the backside when he got the Sam Hill outa my store.”
    “Good for you.”
    I tried to catch Sherry’s eye, but she was crouched behind the counter, muttering something about twenty years’ worth of receipts stuffed under there. I turned back to Maharry, who was shuffling once more toward Stan’s waiting car.
    “You know they’ll be back to try to get you to sell, don’t you?” I said.
    “They already were.”
    I held my breath. Even though business had grown from none at all to a car a week, I didn’t see how much longer Maharry could keep C.A.R.S. open. Sherry had said he had no retirement funds set aside, that he wanted to just breathe his last with his head under somebody’s hood. But the way he was breathing right now, he would spend time in a nursing home before that. A good offer had to be tempting.
    “What was the deal?” I said.
    “Too good to turn down.” Maharry turned and creased his wrinkles. I swore some dust puffed out, which allowed me to see the small twinkle. “But I did.”
    He resumed his shuffle through the glass door. I went to the counter and leaned over to look at the top of Sherry’s head. She was on the floor, surrounded by piles of yellowed slips of paper.
    “Do you believe this?” she said. “Who keeps receipts from nineteen seventy-two?”
    “You got me. I can barely find mine from last year.” Much to Chief’s chagrin. “Can I ask you something, Sher?”
    She looked up at me, and I had to smile into her eyes, eyes I’d first seen dulled by addiction and hopelessness, now alive with irritation and importance and all the things that make up a normal human being.
    “Is it about Zelda?” she said.
    “Yeah, that’s one thing.”
    “I haven’t seen her.”
    “You’ll let me know if you do.”
    “Of course.” Sherry shrugged. “She gets on my last nerve, but she’s my Sister.”
    I nodded and watched her dip into the mass of receipts again. I might have let it go, not stirred her out of the peace she’d been able to find, if it hadn’t been about Desmond.
    “I also wanted to ask you about Sultan,” I said.
    The light left her eyes. “What about him?”
    I tried to use Chief’s teaspoon approach. “I just wondered if you’d heard any scuttlebutt on what