Admittedly he's not overly upset when he gets conned into looking after the hottest female sports star around. After all, Brenda Slaughter is intoxicatingly gorgeous, funny, successful and single - and she seems to have mislaid her agent.
But then Brenda's father disappears and the mob starts leaning on her. And the more Myron tries to help, the closer he gets to losing his heart - and his life.
September 15
The cemetery overlooked a schoolyard.
Myron
pushed at the loose dirt with the toe of his Rockport. There was no stone here
yet, just a metal marker holding a plain index cards with name typed in capital
letters. He shook his head. Why was he standing here like some cliché from a
bad TV show? In his mind’s eye Myron could see how the whole scene should be
played out. Torrential rain should be pounding o his back, but he would be too
bereaved to notice. His head should be lowered, tears glistening in his eyes,
maybe one ruing down his check, blending I with rain. Cue the stirring music.
The camera should move off his face and pull back slowly, very slowly, showing
his slumped shoulders, the rain driving harder, more graves, no one else
present. Still pulling back, the camera eventually shows Win, Myron’s partner,
standing in the distance, silently understanding, giving his buddy time alone
to grieve. The TV image should suddenly freeze and the executive producer’s
name should flash across the screen in yellow caps. Slight hesitation before
the viewers are urged to stay tuned for scenes from next week’s episode. Cut to
commercial.
But
that would not happen here. The sun shone like it was the first day and the
skies had the hue of the freshly painted. Win was at the office. And Myron
would not cry.
So why
was he here?
Because
a murderer would be coming soon. He was sure for it.
Myron
searched for some kind of meaning in the landscape but only came up with more
cliché. It had been two weeks since the funeral. Weeds and dandelions had
already begun to break through the dirt and stretch toward the heavens. Myron
waited for his inner voice-over to spout the standard drivel about weeds and
dandelions representing cycles and renewal and life going on, but the voice was
mercifully mute. He sought irony in the radiant innocence of the schoolyard-the
fade chalk on black asphalt, the multicolor three-wheelers, the slightly rusted
chains for the swing cloaked in the shadows of tombstones that watched over the
children like silent sentinels, patient and almost beckoning. But the irony
would not hold. Schoolyards were not about innocence. There were bullies down
there too and sociopaths-in-waiting and burgeoning psychoses and young minds
filled prenatally with undiluted hate.
Okay,
Myron thought, enough abstract babbling for one day.
On
some level, he recognized that this inner dialogue was merely a distraction, a
philosophical sleight of hand to keep his brittle mind from snapping like a dry
twig. He wanted so very much to cave in, to let his legs give way, to fall to
the ground and claw at the dirt with his bare hands and beg forgiveness and
plead for a higher power to give him one more chance.
But that
too would not happen.
Myron
heard footsteps coming up from behind him. He closed his eyes. It was as he
expected. The footsteps came closer. When they stopped, Myron did not turn
around.
‘You
killed her,’ Myron said.
‘Yes.’
A block
of ice melted in Myron’s stomach. ‘Do you feel better now?’
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