Read The Bible Repairman and Other Stories for Free Online Page B

even at this distance he was sure he caught her pears-and-cumin scent.
    He sprinted the last few yards, and her arms were wide so he hugged her when they met.
    “George,” she said breathily in his ear. The fruit-and-spice smell was strong.
    “Shy,” he said, and hugged her more tightly. He could feel her breastbone against his, and he wondered if she had been wearing a padded bra when he had first seen her. Then he held her by her shoulders at arm’s length and smiled into her squinting, elfin eyes. “I’ve got to make a call,” he said.
    He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, flipped it open and tapped in Christine’s well-remembered number. He was already ten minutes late for their meeting.
    “Christine,” he said, “I’ve got to beg off … no, I’m not going to be home. I’m going to be in Orange County –”
    Cheyenne mouthed
Overnight.
    “– overnight,” Sydney went on, “till tomorrow. No, I … I’ll explain it later, and I owe you a lunch. No, I haven’t sold it yet! I gotta run, I’m in traffic and I can’t drive and talk at the same time. Right, right – ‘bye!”
    He folded it and tucked it back into his pocket.
    Cheyenne nodded. “To avoid complications,” she said.
    Sydney had stepped back from her, but he was holding her hand – possibly to keep her from disappearing again. “My New Year’s resolution,” he said with a rueful smile, “was not to tell any lies.”
    “My attitude toward New Year’s resolutions is the same as Oscar Wilde’s,” she said, stepping around the pool coping and swinging his hand.
    “What did he say about them?” asked Sydney, falling into step beside her.
    “I don’t know if he ever said anything about them,” she said, “but if he did, I’m sure I agree with it.”
    She looked back at him, then glanced past him and lost her smile.
    “Don’t turn around,” she said quickly, so he just stared at her face, which seemed bony and starved between the wings of tangled red hair. “Now look around, but scan the whole square, like you’re calculating if they could land the Goodyear blimp here.”
    Sydney let his gaze swivel from Hill Street, across the trees and broad pavement of the square, to the pillared arch of the Biltmore entrance. Up there toward the east end of the square he had seen a gray-haired woman in a loose blue dress; she seemed to be the same woman he had seen behind them on Hollywood Boulevard yesterday.
    He let his eyes come back around to focus on Cheyenne’s face.
    “You saw that woman?” she said to him. “The one that looks like … some kind of featherless monkey? Stay away from her, she’ll tell you lies about me.”
    Looking at the Biltmore entrance had reminded him that Christine might have parked in the Hill Street lot too. “Let’s sit behind one of these balls,” he said. And when they had walked down the steps and sat on the cement coping, leaning back against the receding under-curve of the nearest stone sphere, he said, “I found your book. I hope you don’t mind that I know who you are.”
    She was still holding his hand, and now she squeezed it. “Who am I, lover?”
    “You’re Cheyenne Fleming. You – you’re –” “Yes. How did I die?”
    He took a deep breath. “You killed yourself.”
    “I did? Why?”
    “Because your sister – I read – ran off with your fiancée.”
    She closed her eyes and twined her fingers through his. “Urbane legends. Can I come over to your place tonight? I want to copy one of my poems in the book, write it out again in the blank space around the printed version, and I need you to hold my hand, guide my hand while I write it.”
    “Okay,” he said. His heart was thudding in his chest. Inviting her over my threshold, he thought. “I’d like that,” he added with dizzy bravado.
    “I’ve got the pen to use,” she went on. “It’s my special pen, they buried me with it.”
    “Okay.” Buried her with it, he thought. Buried her with it. “I