Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen by Glen Huser Read Free Book Online Page A

operas with me. Not only will you attend, but you will appear to like them.”
    â€œOperas?”
    â€œI know what an accomplished little actress you are, my dear.” For an instant the fake smile becomes somethingof a grin. “You will appear to enjoy them because I, your benefactress, am enjoying them.”
    â€œAnd when the operas are over?” she asks. “You’ll go home and I’ll take my course in Vancouver?”
    â€œActually, no,” I say. “At that point we shall reverse roles. I’ll become your companion — your chaperone, if you prefer — in Vancouver. At least I’ll retain the role of the person with the purse strings. We will drive back together at the end of the two weeks.”
    â€œDrive!”
    â€œCan you drive, Tamara?”
    The wheels are spinning, I can tell, in her mind. She’s wondering whether to tell the truth.
    â€œNo,” she says.
    Good. She recognizes the folly of lying to me.
    â€œBut I could learn,” she adds.
    â€œYou will learn. You’re old enough, I know, for a learner’s permit. And my license doesn’t lapse until September. Before my legs failed, I drove regularly.”
    â€œI need to give the Universal Style guy a thousand dollars by Tuesday.” Tamara watches me. “Or at least five hundred.”
    I meet her gaze. “If I give you the money, you are agreeing to commit to this project with a full realization that, as world adventurers, we will need to do whatever’s necessary to achieve our goals.”
    â€œWhatever’s necessary?”
    â€œShort of murder, of course. Or grand larceny. There will be...” I search for the right term, “the creation of fictions. Small deceptions. If I read you correctly, you have some talent for those.”
    She’s silent for a minute, her long fingers playing with a cardigan that looks like it’s spent a month or two on a Value Village rack.
    â€œWhat about you?” she says. “Are you a good liar?”
    â€œLiar,” I laugh. “Such a harsh term. I’m clever, Tamara. Top of the class when I got my Education degree. My legs have pretty well given out but I haven’t needed any pins put in my brain yet. And, while my mind is still good, I long to sit one last time before the bonfire of the gods.”
    This time she does arch those painted eyebrows.
    â€œWagner knew,” I laugh. “He lets us glimpse that other world. And what do we see? The reflection of the earth and humanity with all its spectacle and follies. And glory. The stories we come up with will be small, Tamara. Small coinage compared to the currency in which the immortals deal.”

9
    She’s a witch with a list, the Wrinkle Queen. Sitting there at a patio picnic table at the Sierra Sunset Seniors’ Lodge. Wearing dead rats and smoking her skinny cigars. Old and crazy.
    She reads her list out slowly, stopping after each item as if she’s waiting for me to applaud. Every time she pauses, smoke drifts out past her dentures. Sometime today she must have patted powder all over her face. It makes her look like a hundred-year-old geisha.
    I can’t help her with number one on her list. Getting her nephew Byron out of her hair for the time we’d be gone. Seems like Miss Barclay gave Byron signing power when she thought she was booking into the cemetery a few months back.
    â€œByron likes to keep a close check on me,” she says.
    â€œThe way you might keep an eye on gilt-edged securities.I wouldn’t put it past him to get some doctor to agree that I wasn’t fit to travel.”
    â€œWhere’d you get the idea about the Philippines?” I ask her.
    â€œByron’s a man of few words, but I asked him once what he’d do if he won the Lotto and he said he’d get a boat and sail to the Philippines where you can live like a king on very little for a very long time. His idea of paradise, I guess.