Winging
It - Excerpt
So
here he was, dressed up in his best suit and tie and driving as slowly as he
could manage without actually being late to his mother’s brownstone.
What
was this latest one’s name—Francine? No,
wait. Francine had been the one from the
last dinner party. This one was named
Olivia and was probably every bit as much a carbon copy as all of the others
who had come before. His mother had a
type. Polished, poised, and possessing a
family pedigree that could probably be traced all the way back to the Garden of
Eden. Possibly even earlier. And they were all nice. They were always nice. They just weren’t for him.
And
perhaps it was time to make that fact abundantly clear to his mother. Just as soon as he did a little fact checking
with his childhood obstetrician first.
The
light turned green. Simon was just about
to put his foot on the gas pedal again, when someone opened the back door of
his car and dived inside.
“That
way!” the newcomer barked at him, her eyes wide and frantic in his rear view
mirror as she leaned forward in a mass of unkempt dark curls to point past him
and through his windshield. “Drive!”
“What?”
he responded brilliantly, blinking at her reflection as a fragrance that
smelled vaguely like an odd combination of strawberries and paint fumes
enveloped him.
“Go,
go, go! We’re losing him!”
Well,
that didn’t sound good at all, whoever the aforementioned “him” might be, so
Simon hit the gas. The car leaped
forward with a squeal of its tires, something it had probably never done before
in its entire existence. Volvos weren’t
the most popular cars for chases. But
since this appeared to be a genuine emergency—the first in Simon’s life,
actually—it was gratifying to see his car rise to the challenge.
“Which
way?” he asked, peering in vain for someone who looked like he might be fleeing
the scene and feeling adrenaline begin to course through his veins at the
prospect. A purse-snatcher, maybe, or
even a burglar who’d been caught mid-burgle… Simon didn’t exactly possess mad
street-fighting skills, but he could probably take on one of those kinds of
guys all right. Certainly from behind
the wheel of his car, anyway. Kind of
gave “defensive driving” a whole new meaning.
“Left—go
left!”
He
gave the steering wheel an abrupt yank, earning a few honks from other
drivers. Oops. “Are you sure? I don’t see—”
“Left
again. Hurry!”
“Who
exactly are we chasing?”
“Frankie!”
was her muffled reply, and when he looked back in the mirror again, he saw that
her head and half of her torso were hanging out the window. In fact, she wasn’t replying to him at all,
he realized. She was calling out
instead. So much for his purse-snatcher
theory.
A
runaway child perhaps? Or maybe an
errant boyfriend, he considered with a pang of regret and a sour taste in his
mouth since she was pretty in an unusual sort of way. It would be just his luck to have an
attractive woman throw herself into his car only to ask him to drive after
another man for her. And it would be
just like Simon to do it. Chivalry had
been one of the things drilled into him as a boy, too.
Ah,
well, he thought with an impish sort of satisfaction. Then his mother really would have no one but
herself to blame if he showed up a few minutes late for dinner this evening,
would she? At least, that was the tack
he was going to take, especially if she started pulling out sonograms or
something like that when she expressed her displeasure. “What’s this Frankie of yours look like?”
There
was no reply, just another frantic calling of the name. With her head out the window as it currently
was, she probably couldn’t even hear him.
He
rolled down his window to stick his own head out, and when he was sure he could
do so without wrapping the car around a tree or a lamppost, he risked a quick
look back and called out, “I said, what does Frankie look like?”
They
must have made an interesting picture to the folks in the cars around
them. Interesting in a cautionary tale
sort of way. Kids, take a good look, because if I ever catch you doing that…
“Green—He’s
green.”
“He’s
wearing green?” Yanking his head back in
and veering around a slowpoke in front of them, Simon looked through the
windshield in vain. There was no one in
green that he could see, not unless you counted that wizened little old lady in
the green muumuu who was hobbling out of a candy store up ahead, and she really
didn’t look like a Frankie. Or like
someone you’d have to chase by car.
Ah,
wait. The mysterious Frankie might be in
a car himself. Simon squinted ahead,
trying to get a look at distant drivers wearing green.
“No,
I said he is green. Oh, shoot—he just zigged right!” She smacked her hand—a very nice hand with
bright blue nail polish on the tips of her fingers and what looked like a smear
of plum-colored paint on one knuckle—against the doorframe in obvious
frustration and wailed, “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“He
is green?” Simon repeated in
surprise, zipping into the right-hand lane and rather impressed if he did say
so himself by his ability to do it without clipping any of the fenders around
them. Car chases were turning out to be
pretty invigorating. Who knew? “Who are we chasing—Kermit?” Could she mean that he had green hair
maybe? Frankie could be a surly
adolescent younger brother with a penchant for hair dyes and body piercings,
and not his passenger’s boyfriend after all.
Simon perked up. He could handle
surly adolescents. He did it every day.
“No,
Frankie the parrot.”
“I’m
chasing a bird?” he asked in
disbelief, suddenly feeling a lot less like Steve McQueen roaring through the
streets of San Francisco and a whole lot more like a certain coyote after a
certain roadrunner. Unless, of course, Frankie
the Parrot was some sort of street name.
A really, really lame street
name…
