Here’s a new excerpt from the book I’m doing heavy revisions on. And I mean heavy. Even the location is new. And so are the characters. Don’t be confused when you read, because names have been changed. But the characters are different in ways that go beyond their names. At any rate, here is a scene I hope you like. And by the way, you could have seen this a week earlier when you were on my mailing list.
Clouds were gathering as I dropped the bags in the communal dumpster, and the smell in the air made it clear we were in for more rain. In the minute it took me to start my car get to the end of the alley, the suggestion morphed into outright insistence. A tall, gray-green thunderhead loomed directly ahead of me as I turned right onto Murdoch Avenue. It covered the sun, forcing me to turn on Ellie’s headlights by the time passed the Mall. Ellie was my nickname for my dark green Mustang convertible. She was a beautiful, powerful car that loved dry pavement. I had agreed to meet my friend at Jackson Park, another mile or two up the highway, where she worked as a manager of the municipal swimming pool. As I turned on my blinker and turned right, the rain came in sheets. There was no pitter patter of a few warning drops. It was just not raining and then suddenly it seemed I was driving underwater. The angry wind buffeted the car as if some unseen power was trying to stop me from driving up 34th Street toward the park. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell Gates what I’d found out. Maybe I think too much.
The universe must have realized its efforts were for naught, for the wind abated as I pulled into the parking lot of the community building across the street from the pool about five minutes ahead of schedule. The rain continued to roar, albeit somewhat less vociferously than before, on the convertible top and windshield of my car. I left the engine running and the wipers on. After a minute, my friend’s car, a red, older model Honda Civic, pulled up beside mine. I killed the engine, picked up the envelope of pictures I hoped she wouldn’t want to see from the seat beside me, and reached into the backseat for my umbrella. I know, I know. Umbrellas don’t exactly scream “hardboiled thug,” but I’d forgotten my trench coat and it still felt like I’d parked under Blackwater Falls. At least it wasn’t the girly purple one Pip had gotten me years ago that I had carried reluctantly out of respect for her until it mercifully succumbed to a sudden gust of wind. I was appropriately morose when I reported the loss to Pip, but hurried to replace it with the more masculine black number I now sported.
Gates hit the unlock button as I circled her car. She had a small child, so I wasn’t surprised to see her pitching toys and fast food bags into the backseat as I opened the door. I closed the umbrella as I got in, taking a good soaking in the process. There’s just no good way to close an umbrella while trying to get into a car, especially when it’s a tiny car and you’re a not-so-tiny person. You work so hard to stay out of the rain and then have to get your arms and legs wet trying to close the stupid thing.
Gates Powell was twenty-eight years old, but looked at least fifteen years older at the moment. Her shoulder-length wavy tresses were pulled back tight in a ponytail, which was being held in place with a clover green scrunchie. Her lips, normally full and voluptuous, simply seemed puffy in the middle and pinched in around the edges, drawn down into what had become a chronic frown.
“Hi, Gates. How are you?” I realized as I said it that it was a moronic question.