Bare Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

been so painful, the breakup of our marriage so agonizing, I wasn’t sure.

    Back to Tamela. Where was she? Had Tyree harmed her? Had they gone to ground together? Had Tamela run off with someone else?

    As I drifted off, I had one final, disquieting thought.

    Finding answers concerning Tamela was up to Skinny Slidel .

    When I awoke, scarlet sun was slashing through the leaves of the magnolia outside my window. Birdie was gone.

    I checked the clock. Six forty-three.

    “No way,” I mumbled, drawing knees to chest and burrowing deeper beneath the quilt.

    A weight hit my back. I ignored it.

    A tongue like a scouring brush scraped my cheek.

    “Not now, Birdie.”

    Seconds later I felt a tug on my hair.

    “Bird!”

    A reprieve, then the tugging began again.

    “Stop!”

    More tugging.

    I shot up and pointed a finger at his nose.

    “Don’t chew my hair!”

    My cat regarded me with round, yel ow eyes.

    “Al right.”

    Sighing dramatical y, I threw back the covers and pul ed on my summer uniform of shorts and a T.

    I knew giving in was providing positive reinforcement, but I couldn’t take it. It was the one trick that worked, and the little bugger knew it.

    I cleaned up the guacamole Birdie had recycled onto the kitchen floor, ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts, then grazed through theObserveras I drank my coffee.

    There’d been a pileup on I-77 fol owing a late-night concert atParamount ’s Carowinds theme park. Two dead, four critical. A man had been shotgunned in a front yard onWilkinson Boulevard . A local humanitarian had been charged with cruelty to animals for crushing six kittens to death in his trash compactor. The city council was stil wrangling over sites for a new sports arena.

    Refolding the paper, I weighed my choices.

    Laundry? Groceries? Vacuuming?

    Screw it.

    Refil ing my coffee, I shifted to the den and spent the rest of the morning wrapping up reports.

    Katy picked me up at exactly twelve noon.

    Though an excel ent student, gifted painter, carpenter, tap dancer, and comic, promptness is not a concept my daughter holds in high esteem.

    Hmm.

    Nor, to my knowledge, is the Southern rite known as the pig pickin’

    Though my daughter’s official address remains Pete’s house, where she grew up, Katy and I often spend time together when she is home from theUniversity ofVirginia inCharlottesvil e . We have gone to rock concerts, spas, tennis tournaments, golf outings, restaurants, bars, and movies together.
    Never has she proposed an outing involving smoked pork and bluegrass in a backyard.

    Hmm.

    Watching Katy cross my patio, I marveled, yet again, at how I could have produced such a remarkable creature. Though I’m not exactly last week’s meat loaf, Katy is a stunner. With her wheat-blonde hair and jade-green eyes, she has the beauty that makes men arm-wrestle their buddies and perform swan dives from rickety piers.

    It was another sultry August afternoon, the kind that brings back childhood summers. Where I grew up, movie theaters were air-conditioned, and houses and cars sweltered. Neither the bungalow inChicago nor the rambling frame farmhouse to which we relocated inCharlotte was equipped with AC. For me, the sixties were an era of ceiling and window fans.

    Hot, sticky weather reminds me of bus trips to the beach. Of tennis under relentless blue skies. Of afternoons at the pool. Of chasing fireflies while adults sipped tea on the back porch. I love the heat.

    Nevertheless, Katy’s VW could have used some AC. We drove with the windows down, hair flying wildly around our faces.

    Boyd stood on the seat behind us, nose to the wind, eggplant tongue dangling from the side of his mouth. Seventy pounds of prickly brown fur. Every few minutes he’d change windows, flinging saliva on our hair as he whipped across the car.

    The breeze did little more than circulate hot air, swirling the odor of dog from the backseat to the front.

    “I feel like I’m riding in a clothes dryer,” I