Read Online Light Errant by Chaz Brenchley - Free Book Online

fuller of the two tubes on the shelf above the sink. Good manners, I’d thought, to take a little of what they could best spare.
    â€œHe’s got a passion for it. Any kind of mint. You can’t even suck a Polo around Fizzy, he’ll be down your throat for his share. We have to use herbal toothpaste, it’s just too gross else, or too much like hard work fighting him off. Someone left the spearmint. We ought to give it away, I suppose, but...”
    â€œBut you like to watch your visitors being orally molested?”
    She grinned, nodded. “Something like that. It’d be such a shame to spoil Fizzy’s fun altogether.”
    I glowered at her, took a mouthful of coffee and swilled it around my teeth, gave Fizzy the benefit of that; breathed out fiercely in his direction, and watched him recoil across the table. And then of course coaxed him back and tickled his ears until he jumped heavily down into my lap, pawed my groin for a few seconds in a way that I really wished he wouldn’t, and finally nestled into a warm furry, purry heap with occasional sharp bits.
    Fun over, his and mine both. I sipped coffee, waited for the questions. Here they came.
    o0o
    â€œWho was it, then? Beat you up like that?”
    â€œMy father.” Easy one, for starters; easy now, at least, in the clear fluorescent light of a kitchen morning. Though I’d expected it to be Jon doing the interrogating. It was still pretty easy, saying it to a stranger. I even managed a romantically-twisted smile to go with.
    â€œJesus. What for?”
    â€œI don’t know, he didn’t say. We’re not on speaking terms.”
    â€œDon’t be flippant, Ben. That’s pretty serious, what he’s done to you.”
    â€œYeah, well. I’m hardly going to sue him for assault, am I?”
    A quirk of her head acknowledged the point, though I don’t think either one of us knew quite which I meant, that I wouldn’t sue him because he was my father or that I couldn’t sue him because he was a Macallan and legal remedy was not a viable option in this town.
    â€œDo you really not know why he did it?”
    â€œNot really. I mean, something I did before I left,” I killed his brother, the family’s main man , “he’s not going to be happy about that; but he must know by now, why I did it. This was, what, a fairly extreme reaction? After so long, I mean...” And he’d been in tears when I found him, or I thought so, and that didn’t fit either with my long-held image of my father. Okay, all kids expect their parents to be adult all the time, to cope with anything; but something drastic must have happened to bring him to this, weeping in a public place, even where he thought he was alone. I couldn’t get my head around it.
    â€œThere’ve been a lot of changes here,” Jon said. “It’s not the same town any more.”
    No. On one level that was hard to believe, for anyone who grew up in the place; tyranny enforced by absolute power makes for stable government, by and large. Things don’t tend to change. But what I’d done must have shaken my family to its roots, hence by definition the city to its foundations; I should never have expected to find it just as it had been.
    â€œWhat’s different?” I asked; and was answered by Janice, with one final question of her own.
    â€œHave you got any plans for the day?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAll right, then. We’ll show you.”
    Jonathan twitched at that, like he wasn’t sure of the wisdom. Fair enough. I was in no position to take offence. Even if people didn’t remember me, they’d know me for what I was, a full-blooded Macallan with the face to prove it; if they did remember me, they might know that I wasn’t after all the harmless sport I’d thought and advertised myself and tried so hard to be. In either case, being seen out and about with me might be