Gone in a Flash by Susan Rogers Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

best they could to keep out of the rain.
    When Mr Smith awoke next around five a.m., he noticed two things: one, it had stopped raining, and two, a dog was peeing on him. But he didn’t bat an eye. He just closed them both and went back to sleep.
VERA’S STORY
TUESDAY
    Well, she did bring me a cup of coffee the next morning, made with a Mr Coffee machine in the kitchenette, but I’m thinking she just passed the coffee over the filter without actually putting any in, it was that weak. Just as well I’m not one to complain.
    She was walking around OK, so I had to ask, ‘You get them contacts in OK?’
    Rachael laughed, and it was a nice laugh, I’ll give her that. ‘Yes, thank you! All’s well in that department.’
    She’d told me the night before about her contacts. I’d remarked upon the fact that she’d put a bunch of stuff in the bedside table drawer.
    ‘You’re gonna go off and forget that stuff,’ I’d said. ‘Sure as shooting.’
    ‘No, not this stuff! I’m blind as a bat, and these are my glasses,’ she said, holding up a pair of glasses that really didn’t need to be introduced, for goodness’ sake, ‘and this is my contact stuff. My eyes are weird and I can’t wear the soft contacts. Mine are glass and I can only wear them like eight hours without taking them out.’
    ‘That must have been hard on the bus!’ I said, more sympathetic than I should have been, under the circumstances.
    ‘It was difficult,’ she said, ‘but with the stop at the Wal-Mart it worked out OK.’
    I patted her on the back as we headed down to breakfast.
    According to Sister Edith’s itinerary, Monday was travel day, Tuesday was sightseeing day, and the meeting started on Wednesday. Very important business took place during the Southern Baptist National Meeting every year. Like voting on whether or not women could be preachers, and whether or not to baptize homosexuals, or allow them in church at all. Real important stuff like that. But also there was a lot of fun, I’d heard. I’d never been to one and I was pretty much excited, I can tell you.
    But today was sightseeing, and I knew we’d be heading to the White House and I had to work on getting me an invite to see the president. I’d contacted my congressman, Avery Mapleton, and told him I’d be visiting, but he didn’t reply, which p.o.’d me some since I called people to vote for him during his last campaign. I figured he owed me. I was gonna handle him first. Then the president. I had some words for him about social security and Medicare. A lot of my friends shunned me for a while because I’d voted for a black man, but personally, I don’t care what color he is as long as he doesn’t mess with my social security and Medicare, know what I mean? So now we had to talk. I needed to keep him on the straight and narrow.
    But it was gonna take a while to get there. The itinerary showed us going to Monticello in the morning, and the Smithsonian in the afternoon. She hadn’t even put in a time for the White House. But I figured, the Smithsonian’s a museum, right? How long could we hang around a museum?
    ‘So what do you want to do today?’ Alicia asked Bess.
    Bess shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should wake up Megan.’
    They were sitting on the sofa in the family room, watching MTV. E.J. was in her under-the-staircase office, writing about somebody ripping somebody else’s clothes off.
    Alicia leaned her head back and screamed toward the stairs, ‘Megan!’
    Bess laughed. ‘Oh, that’s gonna work!’
    Alicia’s feet were in Bess’s lap. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you by getting up.’
    ‘Excuse me? Taking your feet off me would not disturb me! Putting your feet
on
me disturbed me!’
    Alicia swung her long legs off Bess’s lap and the sofa, and made it to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Megan!’ she screamed. ‘Get up!’
    ‘Gawd! You people!’ Megan said, coming to the head of the stairs, a pillow in one hand while the other