Irish Chain by Earlene Fowler Read Free Book Online

wheelchairs parked along the sidelines like covered wagons pulled close for the night. A piccolo-voiced young woman in a skintight, red metallic dress organized a conga line. The enthusiastic leader was a lady with hair the same pale blue of this morning’s sky driving a motor-driven wheelchair with a Dodgers baseball pennant taped to the back. Snaking past us, she tossed her head back, showed a mouthful of dentures and screeched a loud arriba.
    Ramon and I looked at each other in surprise, then burst out laughing.
    “Maybe somebody better check the alcohol content of that punch,” I said. “Things are starting to get wild. And speaking of wild, where in the world did you get that tie?” I squinted in the shadowy light at his wide necktie.
    “You like it?” He held it up for my closer inspection. On a pale brown background, a wavy-haired Veronica Lake-twin cocked her hips in a frozen hula. A dark brown fringe around her impossibly narrow waist jiggled when he shook the tie. “Three old dudes offered to buy it off me. I got it at the Woman’s Shelter Thrift Store down by the bus station. Everyone grunge-shops there.”
    “It looks perfect with your suit,” I said. He wore a dark brown double-breasted jacket that almost reached his knees, and baggy, cuffed pants. “Where’s your machine gun, Mr. Capone?”
    “Step up to reality, Benni. What do you expect, a gray wool job like some old lawyer dude? Only a loser would dress like that.”
    I looked around at the other kids his age. He was right. Except for the colors, which ranged from Todd’s pure black suit complete with matching black shirt and tie to one kid’s jacket and pants in a particularly stomach-turning shade of pea green, all his classmates were dressed identically.
    “Well, don’t mention that to Gabe when he gets here. You’re sort of describing his favorite suit.”
    “That’s different. He’s an old guy. What’s he got to look good for?”
    “Remind me to repeat that remark to you when you’re forty-two. Now, you get out there and start asking some of these ladies to dance. They’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.”
    “I hate to dance,” he complained. “I think I should get extra credit for that.”
    “Just get out there and make someone’s grandma happy.” Before he could protest further, a voice as smooth as a soap opera villain’s interrupted us.
    “Everything looks quite marvelous, Benni.”
    I grimaced at Ramon and turned to face Edwin Montrose, manager of Oak Terrace Retirement Home and general mosquito in the ear for the last month as we planned the prom. “Thank you, Edwin.”
    “Gotta dance,” Ramon said. I shot him an evil look. He rolled his eyes and eased away, leaving me in the slithery man’s clutches. Edwin’s strained enthusiasm and uppity manner had not made him a favorite with the Cal Poly students, so I’d been running interference during the whole project.
    He wasn’t extremely popular with the senior citizens either. The women in my quilting class referred to him behind his back as “Mr. Ed” because of his long-limbed spare frame and a perpetually tanned face with the sunken-cheeked look of a horse. Somewhere between the age of forty and fifty with protruding too-blue eyes and black, vinyl-looking hair, he was the type of man who would ask you to dance even if you had your head practically lying in your lap avoiding eye contact, then argue with you when you said no.
    “Our guests seem to be enjoying themselves,” he said, laying a damp hand on my shoulder. I moved back slightly, but it remained glued to me, stubborn as a horsefly. He had, unfortunately, bought into the fallacy that lonely widows were always in the market for the attentions of any available man, and nothing I could say or do would convince him otherwise. His behavior this last month had bordered on sexual harassment. I considered twisting my head and giving his hand a good, hard bite. The only thing stopping me was the