The Donzerly Light by Ryne Douglas Pearson Read Free Book Online

you say, buddy. Whatever you say.”
    Jude finally looked toward her, his drunken eyes surprisingly crisp with an almost hateful glare. This was his place. He had brought them here, had initiated them into the world of Buffalo Kabuki. He was the one with the thing for less than ample bosoms. And here, walking right into this place, was Miss 40D herself. And even worse than her just being here, she looked to be enjoying the show.
    “Fucking bi bitch,” Jude muttered, wanting to say more and to say it louder. And he could think of plenty more to say, gloriously hurtful things that he might have let fly if pretty little Suzy hadn’t reappeared right then with their seventh round of drinks.
    “I’ll take that,” Jude said, taking his GT before it could be properly placed on a fresh cocktail napkin. He took a long swig of it and looked away.
    Suzy put the three remaining drinks on the table and gathered the change—a couple of ones and some coin—from her tray.
    “Keep the paper, Suzy,” Jay said, though her name came out pretty thick, sounding something more like Sthwoozee .
    “Thanks,” she said in a polite and robotic way, then stuffed the tip in the front pocket of her very small apron and deposited the remainder of the change on the table next to Jay’s whiskey neat before heading back toward the bar.
    “You are very, very welcome,” Jay said to the air where she had been, his eyes savoring pretty Suzy’s departing wiggle once more until he became aware of something.
    A sound.
    And odd sound which his ears strained to define. It was not the music, not even some subtle part of it—if the euro-techno beat that blared from BK’s sound system could have had any subtle undertones. Neither was it chatter, though there was a jointed freneticism about it. Like many voices blathering away at once, low and quick, but without being voices at all. Small sounds. Sounds of...movement.
    Motion.
    He caught sight of it not out of the corner of his eye, but low in his vision. Low and right before him. On the table. His gaze peeled off Suzy’s ass and angled down toward the movement.
    Jay’s hands gasped back from the sight.
    What the hell...
    Near the center of the table, where the waitress had left the change he hadn’t kicked back to her, the coins were moving. Rolling like tires and spinning like tops and wobbling like garbage can lids blown aground by a gust of wind. All moving like coins would when dropped on a hard surface. Except...
    Except Jay couldn’t remember pretty little Suzy dropping them. He blinked back the few seconds to when she had been there and tried to see that moment again. Had she dropped them? Or laid them gently?
    She had laid them gently, he remembered. Right. There hadn’t been any clatter of coins raining upon the table. She’d just laid them there. She had.
    So then, why were the coins moving?
    Jay glanced at Jude’s profile, and at the backs of Steve’s and Bunker’s heads. All were intent upon their own parts of the show, on stage and off. None of them had set the coins to motion. So how had...
    And then that wondering ceased to be very important at all as Jay’s somewhat numbed cognitive abilities clicked out of neutral and realized that, during the thirty or forty seconds that he had been pondering how coins could have been made to roll and spin and wobble as they were, they had kept on rolling and spinning and wobbling.
    He stared at them through a storm of blinks and gave his head a quick shake to clear the sour mash cobwebs that had to be vexing his ability to see and think. But when the shudder had run its course, the coins were still there, and they were still moving.
    Jay leaned close over the table and examined them. There were nine coins—two quarters, two dimes, three nickels, and two pennies. Eighty seven cents. The two dimes and the two pennies were whirling in circles, like pirouetting ballerinas on stage. The three nickels oscillated lazily, flatly, seeming on the verge