I’m waiting for dark.”

As I’ve mentioned before, Adam and rakkity and I are fans of the writers Michael Connelly and Lee Child. We’ve read them all, and we usually round robin the new book which can found in the Murder/Mystery/Mayhem aisle. As rakkity prepared to fly across the pond, I informed him that Lee’s newest, “Nothing to Lose,” would hit Britain’s stores first.

He sent me this synopsis of chapters one through ten written in the author’s style:

Chapter 1
Reacher is walking/busing/hitch-hiking from Maine to San Diego, and enters Colorado at the town of Hope, just inside the Kansas Border. Reacher gets a good meal there, including his favorite, a bottomless cup of coffee, and a cheap hotel to sleep in. He buys some clothes and throws the old ones away.

Chapter 2
Continuing his walk west the next morning, Reacher finds that the asphalt pavement ends at the border of Hope, where it changes to gravel in the neighboring town of Despair. He walks into town, looking for a coffee shop. He finds one, but is refused service. This puzzles Reacher, but he is ready when four tough guys approach him and tell him to leave town.

Chapter 3
Using implied and direct threats to the restaurant’s owner that he’ll mess up the restaurant with the blood and guts of the 4 above-mentioned thugs if he isn’t served coffee, Reacher gets his cup of coffee. Then he goes outside to deal with the thugs.

Chapter 4 (By now you have noticed that these chapters are really short.)
Reacher gets ready to waste the 4 thugs, but he lets them off easy by slugging only one of them, so hard he’s unconscious before hitting the ground 10 feet away.

Chapter 5
Reacher gets taken to the jailhouse for the night by the cops of Despair. In the morning, he’s released and driven to the border of Hope, where Despair’s cop warns him not to re-enter town. Reacher does not take the warning lightly.

Chapter 6
As Reacher walks into Hope, a cop car pulls up. The driver is a beautiful woman who tells Reacher about the strange town of Despair, which has the world’s largest metal re-cycling plant, and where everyone is paranoid.

Chapter 7
Reacher ignores the advice of Hope’s female cop, and buys stuff (garbage bags, flashlight, etc) to continue his westward walk through Despair, with a goal of finding out why Despair is full of misanthropes.

Chapter 8-10
Reacher sneaks into Despair in the dark, and watches all the town’s cars driving into a gigantic building. Trucks carrying metal to be re-cycled head into its vast portals. He evades the ever-circling guards, and enters the building.

(That’s as far as I got in London-Heathrow’s Borders shop yesterday.)

–Ed

Diane’s an avid NetFlix subscriber. She’s on the three movie plan  and is almost always satisfied with her picks. Today’s arrivals : Juno, A Mighty Heart, and Harrison’s Flowers. I always struggle with those mailers and Diane always shakes her head.

“Diane, how do you open this thing?”

“Honey, those are made for morons and they got to the right address.”

***********
Peter and I stopped in TJ Maxx to look for a temporary rug for the master bath which I’m remodeling. Matt and Joe ripped out the old tiled floor and I hammered in a new one, a temporary sink, and today I added the new toilet. Given how things are, I can’t dilly dally so we were without a sink for only one day and the toilet was missing for two. I told Diane that when I started I was anxious about how long we’d have a non-functional mess, and now that it’s again useable,  I’m back in my comfort zone. A functional mess.

I’m straying too far. My point is that we didn’t find a rug but I did steer Peter to the Hawaiianesque shirt racks. I told him about the one in K-Mart that I’d wanted, but had missed out on when someone else stole it from me after the price tumbled to four dollars.

“Thirty-six new, and now it’s ten dollars,” I said, “That’s the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks.”  He tried one on – I think it had beige palm trees swaying  against a black background.  He slipped it off over his head and said,   “This shirt is like putting a sign on my chest that  says hit me.”

Goose’s comment reminded me that I wanted to point back to his website. He chronicles his preparations, his trip and what’s he’s been up to so far in Colorfulrado. Wanna take a trip back in time? Watch his road trip video.

Goose’s comment reminded me that I wanted to point back to his website. He chronicles his preparations, his trip and what’s he’s been up to so far in Colorfulrado. Wanna take a trip back in time? Watch his road trip video.

John and I were sitting at the counter of our local greasy spoon when someone shouted, “Call 911.” I’d just wiped up some runny yellow with my wheat toast. Two girls to the left of us stood up, alarmed, but the commotion was occurring around the bend in the counter, to our right. I slid off my stool and thought, “Finally, someone to resuscitate, I haven’t done this in a long time.” A couple of steps and there she was, a girl of about sixteen flat on her back on the floor wedged between two stools, with her head at a funny right angle against the counter.

People were hollering the usual, “Give her air, be careful of her neck,” all against the silly drumbeat of call 911. Too much TV I thought.

The fallen girl looked like one of Matt’s friends with that blemishless skin that screamed sacrifice me now and the rains will come. That was my first clue that she was okay. Nonetheless, kneeling over her I had to do something so I felt her carotid artery. Then I knew for sure she okay, not because her pulse lub dubbed against my fingers, but because she opened her eyes and yelped. I fully understood the yelp. Had I been Matt she might’ve smiled.

This all brings me to another one of my pet peeves.

If you read our local newspaper’s police beat you’ll see things like, “Resident saw car parked outside neighbor’s house and called the police,” Suspicious looking man in black hat spotted on Arlington St, police called,” “Stray dog, police called.” As Matt is fond of saying, we didn’t call the police when our house caught fire. We called the fire department on their chat line after we put the fire out. Matt doesn’t want the police near him for any reason, and I don’t want to bother people.

The girl on the floor? The rescue squad arrived and she walked into the ambulance.

He looked like Raymond Carver, but with modern, rimless reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. His brown hair  combed neatly back from his furrowed brow which looked ready for spring planting, like mine. I’d stopped in at our local auto parts store for front brake pads for the Mazda, and I carried this funny collection of bills from our trip to Aruba. Hundreds, fifties and lots of singles.

“You want the knock offs for thirty or original equipment for seventy?”He asked.

“What’s the difference?”

“Maybe ten thousand miles.”

I chose the cheaper pads and I gave him a fifty. I said, “Can you use ones? I’d like to get rid of all these so I can sit down again.”

“I’ll take all you’ve got.” Ray’s lookalike replied.

As he pulled change from the register I dealt those dollar bills into a neat stack and laid them on the counter. He didn’t watch me, he didn’t pay much attention at all, and when he asked how many I said, “Twenty.”

He picked up the pile and dropped them in the singles slot in the register and handed me a twenty.

“Give or take three or four.” I said.

He smiled.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked.

“I’m not, I’m from Oregon.”

Same as Carver, I thought.

“How did you know?”

“You didn’t count those bills.”

“I trust everyone.” He said.

I was happy to see Applewood’s heron had returned, and once again, as he stalked his prey, I stalked him. This first photo taken through my truck window at maybe twelve feet. As I opened my door and walked around the back of my truck the great bird flew away, down this narrow pond and out of sight. There are all kinds of trees obstructing my view and he usually lands far back in the reeds. Sometimes I give chase, this time I chose to give up. Then I heard or felt something and as I swung my camera up there was he was flying overhead. These kinds of quick shots are so hit or miss because it’s hard to know what the camera’s focusing on. But I’d say I got my prey.

I was happy to see Applewood’s heron had returned, and once again, as he stalked his prey, I stalked him. This first photo taken through my truck window at maybe twelve feet. As I opened my door and walked around the back of my truck the great bird flew away, down this narrow pond and out of sight. There are all kinds of trees obstructing my view and he usually lands far back in the reeds. Sometimes I give chase, this time I chose to give up. Then I heard or felt something and as I swung my camera up there was he was flying overhead. These kinds of quick shots are so hit or miss because it’s hard to know what the camera’s focusing on. But I’d say I got my prey.