Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

When he wriggled to be free, I got up and clipped his leash back on. As we turned to leave, a familiar voice called my name. I looked around and saw Flynn Kenyon waving at me as he walked across the grass. Sunlight achieved a moment of radiance by glinting off his soft white hair, cut expensively and brushed back from pale eyes capable of glowing hot. He was a tall thin man with the patrician manner of the old-fashioned politico or salvation salesman. He sold business machines which seemed a waste of his saintly aura.

When he wasn’t selling typewriters, he was tirelessly devoted to community service. His statuesque, pedestal-like virtue might have made him insufferably stuffy if it weren’t for his old world charm.

I liked him, though it seemed an impertinence.

“Good morning, Mr. Kenyon.” Respectful vacuity. It's my special gift. I brushed at the grass clinging to my skirt, trying to bury my unease. Flynn used to be Rosemary’s father-in-law and still is the grandfather of her children. I wasn’t sure what that made him in my life.

“Why so formal? Just because Dag left his family, it doesn’t mean I have.” His voice was deep and rich, like New Orleans bread pudding drenched in rum sauce. His eyes twinkled like Santa’s.

“Being called Isabel makes me feel formal.”

“Ah, that explains Muir’s singular lack of progress.” The twinkle deepened. “He was disappointed not to see you last night.”

“I was helping out with the youth choir.”

“So he said.” Addison sniffed his shoes and Flynn studied him thoughtfully. Addison returned the favor, only with his tongue hanging out. “So this is The Dog.”

Muir and Addison didn’t like each other.

“He was walking me,” I proffered, still lost in vacuous.

“Does he still bite off side mirrors?”

I smiled. “I told Muir he should buy American. Addison's a very patriotic dog.”

Flynn laughed, throwing his head back until the sun put a halo around his white hair.

Without thinking, I asked, “Are you sure Muir is your son—Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”

He shook his head, the smile still lighting his eyes with unfamiliar warmth. “Don't apologize, Stan,” he emphasized my name, as if to let me know he followed my wishes, not his own, “I’ve had the same thought myself from time to time. He’s very like his mother.”

“I’m sorry.” Didn’t mean to say that out loud.

“So was I. Often. But it all worked out.”

She'd died, I recalled, several years ago.

“And just lately Muir has surprised me—with his knack for these computers. Very useful.”

“He helped me buy mine.” I tried not to sound depressed. I'd wanted to buy a word processor, but Muir wouldn't hear of it. He insisted that I would want record keeping capabilities and a host of other things, failing to take into account that fact that I am a writer, pure and simple. I leave my bookkeeping to accountants, and the other things I don't have time for. “He's studying modems for me. He wants me to have the latest.”

This time my lack of enthusiasm did register with him.

“Don't you want a modem?”

“I’m not sure I want Elvira talking to strange computers. I saw a movie once where a computer took over this guy completely, right down to his love life. And what if she gets one of those viruses—what would I give her?”

“Elvira?” Flynn arched an elegant brow at me.

“My computer. I named her that because she's better built than I am.”

This time he surprised me by grinning. It made him almost human, which didn't suit him. Some people aren't meant to be human.

“I always liked you, you know. It would have been much better if Dag had married you.”

“Better for who?”

“For Dag, of course. Rosemary is a charming girl, and very lovely, I like her very much, but she was too intense for Dag. He needed someone with a sense of humor.”

I wanted to point out that no one could be happy with Dag because he was a toe rag and that having a sense of humor wouldn't have made him anymore palatable, but I held my tongue—for once. It seemed time for a change of subject. All there was the slab of cement. I rubbed it with my toe.

“What do you suppose this is for?”

“The pig.”

“The pig?” Surely I hadn’t heard him right.

“An M114A2.”

“A what?”

He grinned again. I wished he wouldn’t.

“It’s a howitzer. Artillery gun, towed.”

“They’re putting a howitzer in a park?”

“It’s to be part of a memorial for the members of my Guard unit that died in foreign wars.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure it will be very…nice.”

“The dedication ceremony is next Tuesday evening, part of a rally for our troops. Some of my former unit has already shipped out to the Gulf.”

“Is this the God Bless the USA rally?”

He looked surprised. “Are you going to be there?”

“I play keyboard with Star Dust, you know, your back-up band for Lee Greenwood,” I prompted.

“You play keyboard with young Jerome? Well, well. It ought to be an interesting evening, don’t you think?” He smiled again, but this time the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He stared into the distance as if he saw something besides a rally in a brown little park.

I stared, too. It was a good thing the howitzer hadn’t been there last night.

When I got to Macy’s a bit past the agreed upon time, I found Rosemary assessing long skinny tubes that looked like white Simpsons, but turned out to be the body shapers.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, consciously casual. “I stopped to buy a new dress for my date.”

“Since when do you buy clothes for Muir?”

I thumbed through a rack of mega bras. “Not Muir. Mike Lang.”

Rosemary pulled me away from the bras. “Who?”

“Addison’s vet.”

“Really? Cute?” I nodded. She pulled a girdle off the rack. “We’d better get you shaped up for it, then.”

I thought about Mike in his sigh-popping robe and nodded. “So how do we do this?”

“It all depends on what we want,” Rosemary said. “If the problem area is the stomach, then we choose this one.”

“What