Charlaine Harris - Midnight Crossroad

“Bobo?” Fiji called. “You here?”

“In my chair,” he said, and she began working her way through the furniture and assorted items that had been left there over the years. Away from the front windows, the pawnshop was dim and dusty, with a lamp left on here and there to guide the visitor.

Bobo was pleased to see Fiji. He liked her freckles and her gentleness and her cooking. It didn’t bother him that Fiji said she was a witch. Everyone in Midnight had a past, and everyone had a freaky side. Some showed it more than others. Backlit by the daylight streaming in the big front window, Fiji picked her way carefully through the decades of accumulated items that filled Midnight Pawn. She smiled when she reached Bobo.

“ Hola , Fiji!” Bobo said, flipping a hand toward the rocker that he’d favored before he’d tried out the velvet chair.

She smiled even more happily after his greeting and sat her generously curved derriere in the rocking chair. “How are you, Bobo?” she asked, a little anxiously.

“Good. And yourself?”

She relaxed. “Fine as frog’s hair. What are you thinking about today?”

“My new neighbor,” Bobo said promptly. He had never lied to Fiji.

“I took him some lemonade and cookies,” she said.

“What kind of cookies?” Bobo asked, because to him that was the important point.

She laughed. “The sand tarts.”

Bobo closed his eyes in exaggerated longing. “You have any left over?”

“I might have kept some back, after I had a good look at him. He didn’t look like much of a cookie eater.” In fact, Manfred’s thin body had made Fiji all too conscious of her own curves.

Bobo slapped his stomach, which was still quite flat. “Not my problem,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” she said dryly. “I’ll bring ’em over later.” Then she paused, just on the verge of saying something else.

“Out with it,” he said.

“I recognized him,” she said. “Manfred.”

His brilliant blue eyes opened wide. “From where?”

“From the newspapers. From People magazine.”

Bobo sat forward, his lazy contentment destroyed. “Maybe you better tell me,” he said, but he didn’t sound excited. “I’m surprised you didn’t come over before.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I . . .” She stopped dead.

“What?”

She looked as though she wished she’d sink through the floor. “You’ve had enough to deal with since Aubrey took off.”

“You really don’t need to coddle me, Feej,” he said. “Women leave guys every day. I felt pretty damn bad about it, but she’s gone and I haven’t heard from her. Aubrey’s not coming back.” He forced himself out of the abyss always waiting to swallow him. “So what’s the deal with Manfred?”

“Okay, then,” Fiji said, shrugging. “He’s a psychic.”

Bobo began to laugh. “A phone psychic? No wonder he was so interested in the phone and Internet situation here. He must have asked me a dozen questions. I couldn’t even answer all of them.” Midnight was very fortunate in getting excellent cell phone service and Internet service, purely by chance. A division of Magic Portal, a major Internet gaming company, was located just close enough.

Fiji’s lips tightened. “Ha-ha,” she said flatly. “Listen, I know you’re not a computer person, but Google his name, okay? You know how to Google, don’t you?”

“I just put my lips together and blow?” Bobo said.

Fiji caught the reference, but she wasn’t in the mood for jollity. “Bobo, he’s the real deal.” She wriggled uneasily in her hard wooden rocker. “He’ll know stuff.”

“You saying I have secrets he might reveal?” Bobo was still smiling, but the fun had gone out of his eyes. He combed his longish blond hair back with both hands.

“We all have secrets,” Fiji said.

“Even you, Feej?”

She shrugged. “A few.”

“You think I do, too?” He regarded her steadily. She met his eyes.

“I know you do. Otherwise, why would you be here?” Abruptly, Fiji heaved herself out of the rocker. Her back was stiff, as if she intended to march out of the store. But instead, as he’d known she would, she wandered through the pawnshop for a minute or two before she left. Fiji always found it impossible to leave without looking at the pawned things in the store . . . on counters, on shelves, in display cases. Countless items, once treasured, sat in weary abandonment. Bobo was surprised to see her face turn a bit sad as she reached the door and cast one look back over her shoulder.

Bobo imagined that Fiji was thinking he fit right in.

Manfred worked every waking hour for the next few days to make up for the time he’d lost moving. He didn’t know why he felt impelled to work so hard, but when he realized he felt like a squirrel at the approach of winter, he dove into making the bucks. He’d found it paid to heed warnings like that.

Because he was absorbed in his work and had promised himself to unpack three boxes every night, he didn’t mingle in Midnight society for a while after that first lunch with Bobo, Joe, and Chuy. He made a couple more grocery and supply runs up to Davy, which was a dusty courthouse town—as bare and baked as Midnight but far more bustling. There was a lake at Davy, a lake fed by the Río Roca Fría, the slow-moving, narrow river that ran northwest–southeast about two miles north of the pawnshop. The river had once been much wider, and its banks reflected its former size. Now they sloped down for many feet on either side, an overly dramatic prelude to the lazy water that glided over the round rocks forming the bottom of the bed.

North of the pawnshop, the river angled up to hug the western side of Davy and broadened into a lake. Lakes meant swimmers and boaters and fishermen and rental cottages, so Davy was busy most weekends year-round and throughout the week in the summer. Manfred had learned this from reading his Texas guidebook.

Manfred had promised himself that when he felt able to take some time off, he’d hike up to the Roca Fría and have a picnic, which the guidebook (and Bobo) had promised him was a pleasant outing. It was possible to wade the shallows of the river in the summer, he’d read. To cook out on the sandbars. That actually sounded pretty cool.

Manfred’s mother, Rain, called on a Sunday afternoon. He should have expected her call, he realized, when he checked the caller ID.

“Hi, Son,” she said brightly. “How’s the new place?”

“It’s good, Mom. I’m mostly unpacked,” Manfred said, looking around him. To his surprise, that was true.

“Got your computers up and running?” she asked, as though she were saying, “Have you got your transmogrifinders working?” That shade of awe. Though Manfred knew for certain that Rain used a computer every day at work, she regarded his Internet business as very specialized and difficult.

“Yep, it’s all working,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, the job is going all right.” A pause. “I’m still seeing Gary.”

“That’s good, Mom. You need someone.”

“I still miss you,” she said suddenly. “I mean, I know you’ve been gone for a while . . . but even so.”

“I lived with Xylda for the past five years,” Manfred said evenly. “I don’t see how much you could miss me now.” His fingers drummed against the computer table. He knew he was too impatient with his mother’s bursts of sentimentality, but this was a conversation they’d had more than once, and he hadn’t enjoyed it the first time.

“You asked to live with her. You said she needed you!” his mother said. Her own hurt was never far below the surface.

“She did. More than you. I was weird, she was weird. I figured it would suit you better if I was with her.”