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May I Walk You Home, Sarah Morgan?
A Love Story (sort of)
By James Vincent Frank Abbott Press
Copyright © 2012James Vincent Frank
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0721-0
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Flight Call
THE SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT through the curtains crept up his face, but Jonathan Burns just dozed away, that is, until from inside his head he heard a young woman cry out his name.
The shock wave raised goose bumps from head to toe, freezing him rigid, unable to open his eyes. Images flashed before him in a fluorescent fog—grotesque faces peering at him, checking him out, grinning and scowling, floating among ancient artifacts glistening with unknown powers.
The menagerie scattered like leaves in the wind, and he found himself within shifting realms, cities, a succession of otherworldly skylines melting into one another, then into lush natural environs in neon colors fit for high fantasy. Each of these radiated its singular qualities until displaced by one more refined, angelic, subtle.
Some of it seemed familiar, but the extravaganza flickered away too coy for recognition of anything, so he declined to open his eyes or even roll over, and soon he drifted back to sleep.
* * *
Sarah Morgan snapped her wrist hard, flinging the blended, grim red at the margins of the blank canvas. The too thin spatter just stared back at her as if trying not to laugh at her first attempt, so she loaded a wider brush to dripping and flung dollops until the paint was drooling down the margins.
"Wipe your mouth, little man," she said. "At least act like you've seen one before."
On the card table at her right posed her model, a foot-tall statuette of an archangel in full stride, threatening to march right through the swirls of color on the broken mirror piece serving as tonight's palette. The little fellow apparently did not notice her scolding, nor did it seem to mind the oversized wax hand she had molded onto it.
The original broke off when Bobby threw the piece into his studio trash bin in disgust with some unnamed patron. She never saw Bobby mad before, so the guy must've been a real pain.
The replacement hand looked silly on the gray figurine. So did the swizzle stick in its grip standing in for a scimitar supposedly raised in eternal homicide.
"That's what happens when you play with yourself too hard," she said. "And Bobby oughta know."
She dressed the bloodstains into swirls with an oiled rag.
"By the way," she added, daubing away, "if you use your left hand, it feels more like someone else is doing it."
Bet Bobby knows that too.
She frowned at her effort, needing even more paint to pull off a raging vortex of clouds in all its various shades. That meant more blending, thicker applications, hours teasing it into shape inch by inch. Another all-nighter loomed before her.
She felt it coming but could not prevent it—a rush of anxiety stabbed her in the gut, buckling her knees. She grasped the lampstand, but it fell back with her against the wall and flashed a quiet nova. As she slid down the wall, a howl erupted from her depth, surprising even her, though she only managed to emit a hoarse, wordless pleading.
She sat on the floor in another of her panic attacks, her trouble. There would be no help—not now, not ever.
Grunting hard and angry, she got up, replaced the bulb and went back to work.
* * *
Jon stirred at the insistent knocking on his door.
"Burns, you awake?"
If you don't move, it won't kill you and eat you.
More knocking.
"It's important, Jon."
And if it does, hopefully, it'll be in that order.
Young Polly had a cool head, so something needed attention.
At the door, his bare feet stepped on paper and cellophane, the mail. A wave of relief swept away the morning grogs—the welfare check for Vera, food stamps to boot. He would eat today, something other than noodles, and then get out of town.
He opened the door and winced at the brisk ocean breeze on his bare torso.
"Come on in," he said.
She shook her head. "You shou—"
"I don't bite."
"Hey, I don't even know why I'm doing this, except for Vera maybe. And your room still stinks."
Time to shut it.
"Some guy in the manager's office," she said. "From social services. I heard your name. It's an inspection, he said. Routine."
He waited.
"Anyways," she said, "he's been here for like a half hour, and the sheriff just pulled in, and I'm like hey, that's routine?"
Jon shielded his eyes from the sunlight glaring off the pink adobe huts to see the Santa Cruz Sheriff's prowler idling across the square in front of the manager's hut. His heart rate doubled. The manager knew Vera and the baby were gone, and he was way behind on rent, so the old bat wasn't about to do him any favors.
The possible scenarios whirred through his mind, none promising.
Arms folded, Polly smiled victorious. "At least Vera's not here for this part," she said. "Goodbye, Jon."
The little minx—she knew before she knocked he would never see her again, one way or another. Good thing he'd already loaded a half dozen boxes with his books in the car. He'd been hanging around for one last weekend in the low-income housing, waiting only for this month's benefits.
He ripped some clothes off the rack and crammed them into his hardshell suitcase. He thought to pull the hard drives out of the desktop, but a firm knock at the door changed the plan.
"Jon Burns?" came the manager's voice.
He peeped through the mail slot for a close up of her varicose veins below the fuzzy hem on her pink nightgown. Behind this vision stood two sets of dark trousers, the brown pair tucked into jackboots.
He tore his beloved comforter off the bed. After shoving it out the bathroom window, he squeezed his short, lithe frame through and fell out onto the back alley. He crawled halfway back inside and tried to jimmy out the suitcase, scraping his knuckles in the process, but it stuck tight in the window frame. Summoning everything he had, he yanked it through, ripping out the rotted casement. He landed hard on his backside as the suitcase flew over his head and the window shattered on the asphalt. He trotted across the parking lot and shoved everything into the back seat of his once-yellow car.
Somewhere along the side streets to downtown Santa Cruz, his vise grip on the steering wheel relaxed. He licked his scraped knuckles and palms.
Drain the bank accounts, sell the food stamps at the co-op, gas up and be gone. I-80 might still be closed in Wyoming, so he'd have to take the southern route, head down State 99 to I-40. That meant the whole day and then well into the night just to get out of California, looking at a whole lot of nothing on the way down. He lit a long cigarette butt and inhaled deeply.
I could use a little nothing right now, thank you. And a lot would be just fine.
* * *
Sarah gazed through the canvas, tapping a tooth with her pinkie fingernail, the brush sticking out from her fist. The speakers moaned barely audible grunge, the low volume a concession to her campus apartment neighbors. Her smock, a now sleeveless denim shirt nearing disintegration, allowed her arms free movement, its front tails in a knot with threadbare rabbit ears above her otherwise naked frame.
Satisfied with the swirling background, she lined up materials for the next phase, the archangel himself—itself, whatever. The drag from pushing herself through to sunrise for the umpteenth time pressed in on her, caffeine both essential and useless at this point. But now she could fade into the canvas with hours of fine brushwork on the wing feathers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from May I Walk You Home, Sarah Morgan? by James Vincent Frank. Copyright © 2012 by James Vincent Frank. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
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