Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel Read Free Page A

question them, even though I had no idea what they would eventually mean. This one would initially result in Hank having to warm the lasagna up and Ms. Willa tsk-tsk ing about my manners. Chief would just sit on the side porch, feet perched on the railing, waiting. Getting it.
    Desmond, on the other hand, yelled, “Oh, yeah!” and clung to me like a long-armed koala bear. I had the irresistible urge to play.
    We inched our way amid the trails of wilting tourists jaywalking across the Avenida just about anywhere they pleased to get to their suppers at O. C. White’s and the Santa Maria and the A1A Ale Works. A mile would take us to the fort and back, but I didn’t check the odometer. I would know when to turn back. The almost violent power that told me to go would thrust us forward until it just as firmly said stop. It was a sort of coerced freedom that I never tried to explain. Most people thought I was sufficiently crazed as it was.
    So with Desmond calling out, “Oh, yeah!” and leaning with me as if we’d been somehow Velcroed together, I answered the whisper to go another mile and chugged behind the tired traffic along Castillo Drive. Finally we broke free at Orange Street and cruised past the crumbling City Gates that kept no one in or out and drove on heedless of the funky shops and pubs that beckoned visitors in search of respite from the heat and the history. I turned left on Cordova, the street tourists seldom made it to when the sun was bearing down this hard.
    I teased Desmond with the throttle at the intersection, and he hollered, “That is what I am talkin’ a bout !”
    Grinning inside my helmet, I gave the Classic just enough gas to make Desmond yell again and let the Methodist church and Scarlett O’Hara’s pub go by in one blur. With Flagler College in sight on the right I slowed down, but Desmond was already squeezing my rib cage and croaking, “Copper, Big Al.”
    I glanced in the side mirror and groaned. Blue lights flashed atop a cruiser. Its whoop signaled me to pull into the student parking lot.
    I would have blamed God, except that the Nudge had just been to go another mile . God hadn’t indicated how fast.
    I could feel Desmond’s skinny body flatten into my backbone. One year with me wasn’t enough to shake the aversion to law enforcement that had been ingrained in him the first twelve. I was starting to suspect it was in his DNA.
    “Busted,” he said.
    But as I watched the officer climb out of the cruiser, I shook my head. “Maybe not, Des,” I said. “It’s Nicholas Kent.”
    “Well, shoot, we got nothin’ to worry about then.”
    “Let him tell us that,” I said. “Which means, say a word and you lose helmet privileges indefinitely.”
    As usual, that guaranteed silence.
    I raised my visor and tried to look contrite as young Nick Kent stood beside me, freckled hands on his hips. He was wearing shades, but I could still see his Opie Taylor eyebrows knitted together.
    “What were you thinking, Miss Allison?”
    “I wasn’t, Nick. I’m sorry.”
    “Do you know how fast you were going?”
    Even if I’d had a clue I couldn’t have answered with Desmond death-gripping the air out of me. I could practically hear him gritting his teeth. His impression that our favorite cop was going to let us off had clearly faded.
    “Forty in a thirty,” Nick said.
    “Are you serious?” I said.
    He nodded solemnly.
    This was the point at which I expected the freckles to fold into laugh lines around his eyes, but he kept his boyish mouth stern.
    “If you have to write me a ticket, I totally understand,” I said.
    Nick pulled a pad out of his back pocket, and my heart turned over. He really was going to give me a citation, and any minute now Desmond would crack a molar. I’d have to add dental fees to whatever this was going to cost me.
    Officer Kent scribbled briskly on the pad and tore the page off, while I peeled Desmond’s arms off so I could breathe.
    “Just a warning this