an olfactory delight.”
“Maybe one day when I have my own shop, we can work together and smell the same.”
“The ice-cream business doesn’t move me. I love to fry.”
“I guess it’s true,” she said.
“What?”
“Opposites attract.”
“Is this the new flavor came in last week?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Cherry chocolate coconut chunk?”
“Coconut cherry chocolate chunk,” she corrected. “You’ve got to get the proper adjective in front of chunk or you’re screwed.”
“I didn’t realize the grammar of the ice-cream industry was so rigid.”
“Describe it your way, and some weasel customers will eat the whole thing and then ask for their money back because there weren’t chunks of coconut in it. And don’t ever call me adorable again. Puppies are adorable.”
“As you were coming toward me, I thought you looked sultry.”
“The smart thing for you would be to stay away from adjectives altogether.”
“Good ice cream,” I said. “Is this the first taste you’ve had?”
“Everyone’s been raving about it. But I didn’t want to rush the experience.”
“Delayed gratification.”
“Yeah, it makes everything sweeter.”
“Wait too long, and what was sweet and creamy can turn sour.”
“Move over Socrates. Odd Thomas takes the podium.”
I know when the thin ice under me has begun to crack. I changed the subject. “Sitting with my back to all those koi creeps me out.”
“You think they’re up to something?” she asked.
“They’re too flashy for fish. I don’t trust them.”
She glanced over her shoulder, at the pond, then turned her attention once more to the ice cream. “They’re just fornicating.”
“How can you tell?”
“The only thing fish ever do is eat, excrete, and fornicate.”
“The good life.”
“They excrete in the same water where they eat, and they eat in the semen-clouded water where they fornicate. Fish are disgusting.”
“I never thought so until now,” I said.
“How’d you get out here?”
“Terri’s Mustang.”
“You been missing me?”
“Always. But I’m looking for someone.” I told her about Fungus Man. “This is where my instinct brought me.”
When someone isn’t where I expect to find him, neither at home nor at work, then sometimes I cruise around on my bicycle or in a borrowed car, turning randomly from street to street. Usually in less than half an hour, I cross paths with the one I seek. I need a face or a name for focus, but then I’m better than a bloodhound.
This is a talent for which I have no name. Stormy calls it “psychic magnetism.”
“And here he comes now,” I said, referring to Fungus Man, who ambled along the promenade, following the descending rapids toward the tropical koi pond.
Stormy didn’t have to ask me to point the guy out to her. Among the other shoppers, he was as obvious as a duck in a dog parade.
Although I had nearly finished the ice cream without being chilled, I shivered at the sight of this strange man. He trod the travertine promenade, but my teeth chattered as if he had just walked across my grave.
PALE, PUFFY, HIS WATERY GRAY GAZE floating over store windows, looking almost as bemused as an Alzheimer’s patient who has wandered out of his care facility into a world he no longer recognizes, Fungus Man carried stuffed shopping bags from two department stores.
“What’s that yellow thing on his head?” Stormy asked.
“Hair.”
“I think it’s a crocheted yarmulke.”
“No, it’s hair.”
Fungus Man went into Burke & Bailey’s.
“Are the bodachs still with him?” Stormy asked.
“Not as many as before. Just three.”
“And they’re in my store with him?”
“Yeah. They all went inside.”
“This is bad for business,” she said ominously.
“Why? None of your customers can see them.”
“How could slinky, slithering evil spirits be good for business?” she countered. “Wait here.”
I sat with the fornicating koi at my back and the unfinished ice cream in my right hand. I had lost my appetite.
Through the windows of Burke & Bailey’s, I could see Fungus Man at the counter. He studied the flavor menu, then placed an order.
Stormy herself didn’t serve him but hovered nearby, behind the counter, on some pretense.
I didn’t like her being in there with him. I sensed that she was in danger.
Although experience has taught me to trust my feelings, I did not go inside to stand guard near her. She had asked me to wait on the bench. I had no intention of crossing her. Like most men, I find it mortifying to be ass-kicked by a woman who doesn’t even weigh 110 pounds after Thanksgiving dinner.
If I’d had a lamp and a genie and one wish, I would have wished myself back to Tire World, to the serenity of that showroom with its aisles of soothingly round rubber forms.
I thought of poor Tom Jedd, waving good-bye with his severed arm, and I decided to finish my ice cream, after all. None of us ever knows when he’s approaching the end of his road. Maybe this was the last scoop of coconut cherry chocolate chunk that I’d ever have a chance to eat.
As I finished the final bite, Stormy returned and sat beside me again. “He’s ordered takeout. One quart of maple walnut and one quart of mandarin-orange chocolate.”
“Are
