“Saw your light on when I was walking Avi. Thought you might like some company.”
Andrea looked up at him from the camper steps, two bottles of beer in one hand, a canister of mixed nuts in the other.
Could have phoned, he thought, stepping aside to let her in. She slipped by, her aura brushing up against him, turbulence and confusion roiling in her wake. Unsteadied, he felt his way onto the bench, where he’d drifted into sleep, trying to sort himself out after his encounter with Steam Donkey John and White Raven. She settled into the spot where they’d been sitting just a few minutes before, it seemed, but judging by the darkness out of doors, a lot longer.
“Hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look like shit, Buddy.”
“Thanks,” he scowled. “I was doing a bit of thinking. You woke me up.”
“Oh! That explains everything,” she laughed. “Here, this is the best medicine I can prescribe for troublesome thoughts. Well, it’s all I have on hand at the moment.” She twisted the top off one of the beers and slid it across the table, then popped open the can of nuts and placed it between them. “How you feeling?” She opened her own beer.
“Like I look.”
She smiled empathetically.
“Seriously,” Andrea insisted.
“Tell me, can Zoloft cause hallucinations?”
“Don’t think so. Drowsiness and sometimes increased appetite. Beneficial effects are a reduction in neurosis and anxiety and more relaxed—even extroverted—behaviour in social situations. What kind of hallucinations are we talking about, Buddy?”
He clammed up.
“Buddy?”
“You aren’t my first unexpected visitor tonight,” he wrestled the words out, then described haltingly his conversation with Steam Donkey John and White Raven. “I could see right through them—literally, not metaphorically,” he concluded. “They were sitting right where you are now.”
Whether Andrea believed in ghosts or not didn’t matter. All that mattered to him was that she knew about his encounter with Muraltown’s spooky denizens.
It would have been a lie not to tell her, he figured.
“Wow! That does take us to the other side of weird.”
There wasn’t much to say after that. His confession left him deflated. Instinctively, still gazing into each other’s eyes, they reached for the can of mixed nuts, their hands scrabbling like spiders over the rim, touching, intertwining, flesh-to-flesh, neurone-to-neurone…
“I’m old enough to be your father,” he cautioned.
“I’m too old to be your daughter,” she corrected.
“What is it you see in me, Andrea? Honestly. You could have just about any eligible bachelor in Chemainus. Why would you want to start something up with an ancient, lunatic, soon-to-be-divorced specimen like Buddy Hope?”
Her smile shocked him. That he could be the locus of such happiness didn’t make sense. Then Andrea began to hum, a slow, rich melody that you’d dance close to with your girl. As she crooned, the lyrics came to him…
I want a man with a slow hand I want a lover with an easy touch I want somebody who will spend some time Not come and go in a heated rush…
They leaned over the table, lips seeking lips, hands communicating the contours of neck, spine, breasts. A bottle of beer tipped over, rolled off the edge, and thudded onto the linoleum floor as they sidled off the dining-nook bench, down the short passageway, into the camper’s bunk.
Next: Gotcha!