The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Read Free Page A

rejoin more refined company momentarily,” she said. “For now, I have business. With Alistair.”
    I shrugged and hinted at a nod.
    “Ooo,” Charlie crooned. “Risky business?”
    “Hardly,” Fiona assured him. She stacked on another two layers of cream and put a lid on the super-cookie. She turned to me. “So. Are you in?”
    Rehearsing my response hadn’t helped, because all I could say was, “I … Yeah … I think I am.”
    “Good. I’ll come by after school.”
    Charlie started to raise his hand, and I slapped it back for fear he’d make an obscene gesture. It didn’t seem to bother him, though. He was too busy watching Fiona lick her finger and then run it along the cookie cream until it was smoothed out and singular.
    When she finished, she held the cookie up like a trophy. “Quadruple Stuf,” she said. “Can’t buy that in a store.”
    Then she took it down in one bite and chewed it as she stood and set off into the rumble of the cafeteria.
    *   *   *
    Every girl who invites herself to your place has the same intention—that’s what Charlie’s older brother, Kyle, told me once. Kyle knew his share of girls, but obviously he didn’t know any like Fiona.
    That afternoon she rang our bell, and I was quick to answer. “Hey,” I said, opening the door and motioning with my head down the hall. “This way.”
    “I remember where your room is,” Fiona said. “We played Legos there once.”
    “Oh. Hello, Fiona.” My mom, fresh from her after-work shower, stood at the top of the stairs, her postal uniform expertly folded and tucked under one arm. She looked down at us as she brushed her wet hair. Water dripped over her turquoise sweat suit.
    “Hi, Mrs. Cleary,” Fiona chirped. “Alistair said he’d help me with some homework.”
    “He did, did he?” My mom moved the brush over her mouth to conceal a smile. “Well, it’s … it’s been a long time.”
    “It has,” Fiona said.
    “And if we keep this up, we’ll have no time for the homework,” I interjected. “We’ll be done by dinner.” I tugged at Fiona’s sleeve and took off down the hall without saying another word to my mom.
    Minutes later, Fiona was sitting on my bed, her back resting on pillows against the wall and her lap holding the tape recorder. “I’d prefer you in the tweed,” she told me.
    “Excuse me?”
    “The jacket I gave you. It was my grandpa’s. He’s dead. But he was a writer, too. It still has his library card in the pocket. As my grandma told me, it probably has some inspiration left in it too.”
    I pulled the box out from under my bed and retrieved the natty old thing. The sleeves were about five inches too long, and my hands were buried up to the fingertips.
    “Well, isn’t that civilized?” Fiona said.
    Not true, but I played along. “So how do you want to do this?” I slumped into a beanbag chair that I kept in the corner.
    “I talk and you interpret. Simple.” She pressed Record . “Kilgore here will keep the record straight.”
    “Kilgore?”
    “The tape recorder. I name things. If you name things, then you treat them better.” Fiona motioned with her chin to a poster tacked to the opposite wall. “Does she have a name?”
    “She” was a bikini-clad model spraying a Lamborghini with a garden hose and, no, she didn’t—at least, not one I knew. I lowered my eyes.
    “We’ll call her Prudence, then,” Fiona said. “Now whenever you wake up, you can say, ‘Good morning, Prudence, how’s tricks? Still in the car washing game, I see.’”
    “‘How’s tricks’?”
    “‘How’s things,’” Fiona explained. “Slang from the good ol’ days. Learned it from a kid in a newsie cap.”
    “A newsie cap?”
    “We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
    Yes we were, but I didn’t even know where we were supposed to be starting. Perhaps the obvious place. “You were born…?”
    “Ah yes, chapter one,” Fiona said. “I was born on August 11, 1977. I was born in the