Call Me Ishmael

Chapter 3

Author's Note: Yes, it's me again. Blah blah blah, the book is available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

I could tell that Finnie recognized me right away.  “You’re that smelly guy from the lake!”  She pointed, just in case I thought she meant someone else, I guess.  Maybe she and Niles pulled people from sinking homemade boats all the time.  After all, everybody needs a hobby.  

“Yep.”  I waved, like a teenage paperboy tossing a newspaper on an especially high front porch.  That’s all I could think to say.  I had forgotten I was still holding the gun.  Finnie’s eyes reminded me right away.  They grew huge and wide, but stayed brown.  She possessed the most knockout eyes I had ever seen.  I couldn't pull my own eyes away.

“You’ve got a gun!”  Her voice was a tight squeal.  

I forced myself to break the magical contact I was having and studied my hand.  A gun?  Me?  Yes, I did have one, there, in my hand.  “And I’m not afraid to use it!”  I shouted.  Shouted?  Shouted?  I raved, I ranted, I spewed words like a madman.  I think I was a madman.  I had escaped a murderous, ugly hit man, and life was again stretching in front of me, like a long ribbon of Christmas wrapping paper.  I knew somewhere, some-when, there would be an end, but I couldn't see again.  That mattered.  

Abruptly, I stopped laughing.  The mysterious would-be assassin was still laying somewhere in the woods behind me, and no amount of groin kicks would keep him down forever.  He would be very anxious to snip my wrapping paper off the roll for me.

I gestured with my gun hand.  “Where’s Niles?”

“Who?”

“Niles.  The guy on your boat.”

“Oh.  I don't know.  He’s around here somewhere, I guess.  Can I see your gun?”

“What?”

“Your gun.  Could I, you know, see it?  I really like guns.”  Her eyes, I realized, were fastened on the gun, not me.  Oh well.  

I shook my head.  “No.  Listen, there’s some guy trying to kill me.  He wrecked into me, and now someone stole my truck.  Finnie, do you have a car or something?  Can you help me?  Will you help me?”

Finnie's eyes darted to mine, and then leaped back to the gun.  The girl had a positive fixation.   “Sure.   My Bimmer’s right over there.”  She was, I realized, talking to the gun.  She shrugged her shoulder, a movement that flowed down her torso, across her midsection and ended somewhere in the vicinity of her hip.  Her hair followed a half-second behind.  Two thousand hit-men could have been behind me and I would not have strayed.

Now would be a good time to die, I thought.  But I had to move, poetry in motion or no.  I shook the fog out of my fried brain.  “What about Niles?”

She shimmered across the grass, her perfect toes smashing a Styrofoam cup.  I smothered a quick burst of jealousy.  After all, it was just a cup.  “He’s got his own car.  Come on, Stinky.  If you’re bringing your gun.”

I checked my hand.  Yes, I still had the gun.  “Sure.  Let’s go!”

She ran toward her car.  She ran, and just as she took off, the wind picked up, pushing her, thrusting her long blond hair in front of her, snapping like a flag on a mast of a fine ship…a sloop, in fact.  I followed behind her, still trying to catch my breath, although my fatigue was long gone.  She unlocked her doors with a click on her key chain as we approached her car.  She opened what I thought was the passenger door, and I opened what I thought was the driver's door just as I saw Hercules emerge from the greenery.