Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Read Free Page B

she was describing.
    If it wasn’t for anti-depressants, Xanax and HGTV, Jules would’ve been very much at home in the island’s old asylum. Right now, she was OD-ing on one of those half hours where a couple pretended to look for a house and invariably narrowed it down to three choices. The half-hour inevitably ended with one of them saying to the other, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” and then the show cut to whatever shitbox they decided to buy. This is what passes for a TV show now. Bring back the Lone fucking Ranger.
    I turned the corner into the living room, where Jules was sprawled out on my poor excuse for a couch in her panties and an Anchorman T-shirt she had nabbed at a Marshall’s close-out for $2.99. It was purple and featured Will Ferrell sitting at a desk with no pants. She was overcharged.
    The house show went to commercial so she was free to talk to me.
    “So – what crap job do you get to do now?”
    “I’m not sure. And when I am sure, I still can’t tell you.”
    That got her attention. I always told her everything. I had nobody else to listen to my shit.
    “What?”
    “You heard me. Howard’s suddenly talking about secure lines and everybody’s acting like I’m the guy that’s going to bring down the government.”
    She sat up and considered me.
    “So you’re doing something important. That should make you feel good, right?”
    “I don’t like important. Important means somebody’s watching over your shoulder and sticking their fingers in your business.”
    “So why’d you take the job?”
    That’s when I removed the big, fat envelope from my pocket. Her eyes almost came out of her head.
    “HOLY FUCK.” Then, because she’s Jules, “Those aren’t all ones, are they?”
    I shook my head slowly. “I gotta look at some files on the computer and see what this is all about.”
    “You’re buying me a nice dinner tonight, right?  OFF this godforsaken island, right?”
    “Do I get sex?”
    “Oh, when don’t you, asshole?”
    I shrugged with a smile. The commercial was over and she was back eyeing real estate, the kind neither of us would ever buy. We could never be suburban. Or stable, for that matter.
    Jules was nice, but I didn’t know if it would go much past where it was. She kept her hair blonde even though it was brown and her weight went up and down more than the stock market, but she was cute, if a little snarly. Then again, I liked unreasonable women, maybe because I needed somebody to shout in my fucking ear to make me feel something. She had been a cabaret singer with some limited success, then her acute acid reflux did some damage to her vocal cords – which made her a singer who couldn’t sing. However, yelling wasn’t a problem.
    Even though she had lost her singing voice, luckily she wasn’t stupid and got a job as an assistant at a law firm. She hated it, but the medical plan covered her meds and the salary allowed her to save up for the operation that would restore her instrument. She was close to having enough money, but I wasn’t sure why she was bothering. She was in her forties now and wasn’t about to become a star, especially since her repertoire stopped at 1963 with Eydie Gorme and Blame It on the Bossa Nova . She claimed not to listen to any music that came afterwards, except for some Broadway shit.  That’s why we got along; I loved Sinatra and knew all the standards. But I also loved the Beatles, the Stones, Nirvana and even Kanye West, which drove her insane.
    “After what that asshole did to Taylor Swift?” she’d shriek at me.
    I’d reply, “Listen to their music side-by-side. You’ll know who deserves to have an award taken away.”
    That was another problem - she lived in the past and wanted both of us to get a condo there together. Despite Howard’s opinion of me, I still wanted to pretend maybe something new might work, but she wasn’t budging. In her words, “The passage of time can kiss my ass.”
    Whenever she