All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred sixteen)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

Chapter Four

Counterfeits

(part one hundred sixteen)

 

 

 

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He said: “I saw they had his name pasted up over the othern’s, fell sick.”

“So Allen,” he said, “is a little bit known around here.”

“People,” he said, “would come out to buy a ticket if they saw Allen was in the show.”

She smiled. “They would, probably.”

The role was of an old friend, the grown-wealthy hero’s schoolmate, who knows and has come to tell why he cannot marry that girl.

“Cincinnati the stomping grounds…?”

“What are you asking?”

“You said the locals like Allen. Got his start here?”

He could count on her face what feelings occurred. Fondness for Allen …well, damn. Unexpected. But chief was anger at himself. She feather-smacked him again, Richard less inclined to find it uncalculated.

He ducked her swinging back to look him in the eye. “You don’t like Allen?”

“You know it, he took me on for pay. Asked and received. So I don’t consider liking enters into it.”

They rode without speaking until the driver called Fountain Square.

Lightly, stepping out, she said: “He had his start in New York.”

Second or third start.

They reached the fountain’s perimeter, where she elbow-hooked Richard’s arm, positioning him to catch spray like a man. As they passed each figure she would point. Her words, though, vis à vis these boy-nymphs, were not a lady tourist’s.

“Cookesville. A man named Eugene Ebrach has a house there.”

Assuming the game was to look a fond couple, he inclined his head to hers. “Ebrach an old friend?”

“I have a friend who knows him.” She had spent something telling him this much. If she nursed this loathing, she would end the day telling Allen to be rid of Everard.

But a name could be dropped, far from any delicacy towards its owner. “Jerome?”

They strolled to the next figure. A drop of water from his cap brim struck Richard’s nose. She bent; he ducked in next to her.

“Does he call himself Honoré?”

“Oh, ho.” He should not have let himself say oh ho. “Calls himself Thomas B.” He felt his arm squeezed. “I don’t know what he does for Ebrach.”

“Does? Ah. He works at a job. He is that much recovered.”

Richard said, “You haven’t asked me about the other Gremots.”

She was not going to ask him about the other Gremots.

But within this irritating lapse, it came to him. The one whose reach Allen’s wife could fear in this city. He scanned the square for policemen. He entertained knocking her down to give himself a head start.

He said: “What you want me to do? Take your card up to Honoré next time I visit?”

She was peering at him, avid.

 

 

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred seventeen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)