Yoharie (part seventeen)

Yoharie

Stalking

(part seventeen)

She watched Trevor’s garage door, goosed by the remote, jerk open. He was just home, just pulled in. Then Hibbler from nowhere drove…slowly…through her line of sight. He tapped his horn. He had seen her within an inch of flipping him off.

Maybe. Maybe that agitated wrist was a thing he’d come to know, in women. His intrusion made her that touch more irritated, place lost in her rehearsed talk with Trevor.

But not a talk…

Just a diplomatic goodbye.

And not a goodbye…

Just a rejecting of his beloved Totem-Maker.

Probably a goodbye.

Worse, she told herself, than if Hibbler were The Creep in its atavistic form, without complications. But Kate’s job to plumb those, if she would. An almost cool person…

Probably cool, if you went to her salon…

Clutching a picture of some insane hair. Eighties hair. Any member of that band, Kajagoogoo. Or Aimee Mann…

This is what I want. Bleach, beads, mousse, everything.

Kate would say, no. Your hair was not made for that. (Sigh.) A cool person, who had to have seen something in Jeremiah to marry him.

Some.

Thing.

“Hey. Traffic’s clear.”

Giarma scurried to Trevor in his doorway, clutching a book. “I’m finished. Have it back.”

Well, she’d kept Totem three days, even stayed up past one reading the first chapters.

“Finished, great. Now I have a proposition. Maybe you won’t like it.”

“What?”

“Come in.”

His living room smelled like McDonald’s; the bag was there, on the coffee table.

“Better eat that,” she said. “Don’t let your fries get cold.”

“Have some if you want.”

“Oh…”

“No, go on. My greasy fingers haven’t been in there yet.”

“All right.”

“By the way, I got you a Diet Coke.”

He went to the kitchen, and she heard the sound of a hand rummaging an ice bin. Hers, though, was in his fries.

17

Yoharie

Yoharie (part eighteen)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)