When Pigs Fly Read Free Page B

his car keys on the kitchen table, and he vaguely remembered having left his car in the parking lot at The Snake in the Grass. After a brief chat with the police department, he called to cancel his MasterCard and found out that he had already purchased a four-thousand dollar plasma TV in Tucson that very morning. They made TVs that expensive? He didn’t know, but now he was pissed.
     
    He washed down a handful of Tylenol for a shattering headache, then stepped out the front door and looked down the empty dirt road. The front yard was all gravel and barrel cactus, and the road to town a graveyard waiting for his bleached bones.
     
    In the shimmering air, a mirage appeared—not the kind you see on the Interstate’s endless stretches of asphalt, but the vague form of a woman. She took gradual shape as he stood still, afraid to step toward her lest she evaporate. Mack sensed her beauty, if such a thing were possible without catching a single detail. Maybe last night’s bender had tangled his thoughts, or maybe it was today’s scorching heat.
     
    The woman was Mary, his wife of thirty years, who had died two years ago on the eve of their long-planned trip to Arizona. Mack had been inconsolable for days, sad for weeks, lonely for months. Then a year and a half ago, he came to Arizona for a vacation by himself and never went home, renting a house in the hamlet of Pincushion. Now she furrowed her brow the way she’d always done when Mack’s foolishness frosted her.
     
    “About that woman,” Mack said.
     
    “ You’re Dumpster diving for dates, dear. Don’t.”
     
    He started to speak, but she held up her hand. “ Ciao, love. ” She faded into the desert.
     
    Down the hill, a police cruiser stirred a cloud of dust as it wound past the saguaro and the old wire fence. Mack closed his eyes and said a prayer of thanks. The blue and white Crown Vic sported a gumball on the roof and “Pincushion Police” on the door. A young, wiry cop stepped out and asked the usual questions. “Sounds pretty embarrassing,” he finally said with a smile. “We’ll see about your car.”
     
    When the cop left, a cactus wren let out a raucous cry that sounded like a backfiring muffler.

Chapter 3
     
    Same time, back East
    “Rule number one, B and E.” Ace quizzed Frosty. They were casing the back of a home in Lowell. The neighborhood was full of old ranch houses and split-levels from the ‘60s, with overgrown maples and pine trees and tree roots that buckled the asphalt under driveways. Most of the kids around here were grown, and the parents were likely all off to work to pay for their mortgages and second honeymoons and save for retirement. Still, you had to be careful.
     
    “Be sure no one’s home,” Frosty replied.
     
    Ace smiled. His little brother was catching on. They hid behind a pine tree and looked at the back of the cute bungalow, out of sight of other houses. Its gray shingles were all curled up and covered with pine needles, and its gray clapboard siding looked like somebody hit it with a hammer in eleventy-two places. An old lady walked down the side stairs, all prim looking with her white hair and her purse, and got into a van already full of old folks. The codger van backed down the driveway and headed toward town. Instinct told Ace there was something special in this house, something even better than the high-definition TV they’d lifted last week, though instinct didn’t tell him exactly what.
     
    “Rule number two?”
     
    “Double check rule number one.”
     
    Ace nodded and picked up his cell phone from where he’d dropped it on the ground. Those shiny green leaves they were standing in, they weren’t poison ivory, were they? Luckily, they both wore latex gloves so they wouldn’t leave prints. He punched in a number. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Anybody else was home, they would have picked up by now. His nose itched, and he scratched it. But the itch was playing keep-away—every time Ace