The Donzerly Light by Ryne Douglas Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

of laying down, but did not. And the quarters, they rolled on their edges, one chasing the other in a repeated circuit around Jay’s whiskey neat.
    Again his head shook, but slow this time, in disbelief. He eased one hand back toward the coins, one finger stretching out to touch one of the dancing dimes. Closer, closer, the coin waltzing back and forth, away from his hand, then closer, closer, and finally tapping gently against the tip of his finger and falling over.
    As did the others. Instantly, as if in some connected sympathy with their sister dime whose revelry had been discovered, then stilled. All nine coins tipped to on side and came to rest where they had frolicked, small, quiet clicks rising from the tabletop.
    And Jay’s eyes ballooned at them, at the sight, his hand recoiling once again. They had stopped, but they had all come up heads. All heads.
    “Holy shit.”
    “You got that right,” Bunker said, reacting to the exclamation uttered behind him, though to something altogether different than what was captivating his friend. “Man, would you look at her.” He had turned his chair away from the table like Steve’s, giving him the same easy angle of observation from which he could watch the dancers on stage, or spy Christine Mellinger where she now sat, alone and gorgeous, closer to the show than they were, her head moving gently to the music and her eyes savoring the near naked women almost within reach.
    Steve shook his head. “I don’t know, Jude. You sure she does guys?”
    “Guys with green,” Jude answered, staring past Jay and watching the show in a portion of the mirrored wall at the back of the club. It took him a moment, but from the corner of his eye he noticed his friend fixated on something. Something completely devoid of breasts, large or small. Something on the table. “Yo,” he said over the lip of his drink. “What are you bug-eyed at?”
    Jay glanced up at Jude, then back to the change. The nine coins. The eighty seven cents. The two quarters, two dimes, three nickels, and two pennies that had put on one hell of a spooky little show and were now laying there showing the profiles of four dead presidents. “Did you see...”
    Jude kept his drink in hand but let it rest on the table. “Did I see what?”
    Jay snapped another quick shake through his head. His face felt loose wagging back and forth, like the wet folds of a flag flapping in the rain. It did not have the desired effect. Nothing had changed. The coins were still there, still all heads, and the memory of what they had been doing a moment before was mostly fresh in his mind, fuzzing in and out some like a canyon echo. Not perfectly clear, but they had done what he saw. Hadn’t they?
    So what was he supposed to say to Jude now, if even he wasn’t sure of the memory trapped in his head? What? ‘Hey, Jude, did you see the change dancing like I did?’ Yeah, right. That would be a gooood idea. Good for some serious razzing at S&M come Monday.
    “Farmboy.”
    “Yeah?” Jay looked up. “No. Nothing.” He shook his head for emphasis. “It’s nothing.”
    Bunker and Steve, rapt with the sight of Christine Mellinger and wishful wonderings of just what a threesome with her and another chick would be like, weren’t catching any of what was happening behind their backs. Jude, though, was catching plenty from his friend’s suddenly detached demeanor. “Are you okay?”
    Jay nodded and swept a hand over his hair. “Yeah. I mean...yeah Fine. Fine.”
    “You sure? You were looking at the table like it was going to jump up and bite your face off.” Jude grinned wryly. “Not that that would be any great loss...”
    “Was I?” Jay asked distantly. He was staring at the coins again. All of them heads. Nine coins that had come up heads! What were the odds of that?
    “You’re doing it now,” Jude informed his friend. “Hey. Knock, knock. Farmboy, are you all there? Do you need to puke or something? ‘Cause puking can be