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FICTION
Stone Wall
She came out from the part of the wooded path where an animal might suddenly appear. She was talking fast. I didn’t know her from Adam. She seemed to be the kind of girl who does what girls do at an hour when nice girls are at home in bed.
Smoking a cigarette although I wasn’t a smoker, I gave her the last of them. She said no to my Zippo lighter. With a semi-laugh, she held up a lighter of her own and lit the cigarette.
“Rebecca Boehler? I know of her,” I said. “Wasn’t that her father on the news the other week?”
“I mean, that’s all she keeps hearing from everyone.” She took a slow, long drag. The red spark in the dawn altered the shadow of her face.
“The guy kind of made a spectacle of himself, don’t you think? The lawyer holding up a briefcase to shield his face. What did you expect?”
She exhaled with a poetic deliberateness. “I really need to find her.”
“I’m not hiding anybody,” I said. “Promise.”
After the long, drunken walk from Mike Gray’s place, I’d been cursing the Burns brothers, nonstop. Whatever I had to do, though, to avoid waking up with a face full of baby powder. The two of them — complete turds — made shirtless beer funneling contests a routine.
