Texts from Bennett by Mac Lethal Read Free Book Online

and gave me a look of deep sincerity. You could tell by her facial expression alone that she was impressed with the house and excited to stay with us.
    “It’s nice, isn’t it?” Harper said, with forged enthusiasm. She was being a true champion.
    “Hi! I’m Lillian! But you can just call me Lillian!” my aunt said.
    Harper, with a natural inability not to be sarcastic in such a situation, however politely, responded with: “That’s easy. I’m Harper. And . . . you can call me Harper!”
    “Did you meet my son, Bennett, Harper? He’s your age and could treat you right! Bennett, damn it. Son, put on a shirt and some perfume so Harper will like you better.”
    “What?” Bennett said, looking at Lillian crazily. “Mom . . . you off them Oxy pills like crazy right now!”
    Harper shuffled over to the side of me and vaguely leaned against me to indicate our bond.
    “Uh, yeah, Aunt Lillian, Harper is my girlfriend,” I said.
    “Ohhh. She is? Boy, you like ’em young! She looks like she’s fifteen!” Lillian said.
    A NOTE FOR CHRIS HANSEN
    Harper was twenty-seven. She looked twenty-seven, which is something I liked about her. She definitely didn’t look fifteen. She looked like a woman! (!(!!))
    I stuck my hand out to shake Tim’s, but he gave me a closed-fist dap in return.
    “I don’t exchange germs with strangers,” he said.
    “Oh. Okay,” I said, giving him the fist bump back.
    “Uh. Tim, this is Harper, she’s my fian—”
    “I heard you introduce her to Lily. No need to say it twice, now,” he said, cutting me off. “It’s bad enough that we’re standin’ outside where the CIA can film us and what not. So please, Harp, Haribou, Harpey, whatever . . . darlin’, don’t you try to shake my hand either. Let’s just get ourselves inside,” he smugly said to Harper in a heavily twanged hick draw before spitting his chewing tobacco onto our lawn. “Fancy lil’ neighborhood like this . . . you know the CIA got freakin’ billion-dollar flies that fly around with cameras in ’em, right? Lil’ robots filmin’ every move you make and sellin’ the info to China. Your neighbors are probably investment bankers or members of the Skulls. Yeah. I prefer the indoors, but it’s certainly nice to meet you folks.”
    It was then that I noticed that in addition to flawlessly quaffed hair with a shoulder-length mullet growing down the back of his neck, he wore a dingy, stain-covered T-shirt with that wonderful catchphrase of the nutty everywhere:
    9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB
     . . . in bright, metallic orange letters, which were sitting on top of a picture of George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden superimposedto appear to be shaking hands, with sinister grins on their faces, and two burning World Trade Center buildings behind them. To top that off, Skoal-mouth wore reddish-crimson thrift-store slacks, a pair of high-end canvas-colored flip-flops, and purple-framed, glittery sunglasses on his face. Hannah Montana sunglasses. Yes. With a Hannah Montana logo on them.
    All I could think of doing in the face of such a getup on such a man was ask, “Why Hannah Montana?”
    To which he replied, “Hannah is a small town in Montana my grandfather grew up in. They export a lot of coal and cattle.”
    To which I concluded he was so full of shit and out of touch.
    I had heard from other family members that he was a conspiracy theorist, but I had at least assumed his conspiracies had some sort of academic merit. Nope, nothing but tall tales with lacunae in the credibility. Tim definitely wasn’t working with a full deck of cards.
    Across the street, one house to the right, my Sudanese neighbor Edgard Amsalu, sat on the top step of his front porch, massaging the shoulders of his exotic, magnetically attractive wife, Mariam. Edgard had plenty of reason to rub Mariam’s shoulders. She was a stunning African woman, with onyx-colored skin that visibly absorbed the day’s glowing particles of sun and swirled