Read Online The Egg Code by Mike Heppner - Free Book Online Page B

make sure the neighbor kids don’t jump on the roof or nothing. That’s when I listen to ’em. It’s like watching two birds with one stone, or whatever.”
    “I’ve heard the tapes. The man has a beautiful voice.”
    Saying this, Donna remembered her husband’s voice. Smooth. A practiced cool.
Honey, help me with this.
Derek and his speeches.
Here,
get me a glass of water. I can’t speak when my throat’s dry.
She smiled. She wanted to be near him. She wanted to run her fingers along the hard veins on the backs of his hands. She wanted him to be perfectly quiet while she did this.
    “They’re okay.” The woman popped a fresh tart into her mouth. “I get my health care to pay for ’em. Hell, yeah! My husband thinks it’s wrong, he thinks I’m pulling a fast one. He was out two years on a broken cheekbone, this ain’t no different.”
    Donna gave the woman a strange look.
My husband,
she thought. Sneaking away, she felt the urge to proclaim herself, to stand apart from the rest of these lonely and desperate people. Just ahead, she saw a young couple purchasing two cups of soda from a concession stand. Coming closer, she smiled and offered her hand. “Hi there, I’m Donna Skye. I’d like to thank you for coming to my husband’s lecture.”
    The young woman nodded, still holding both sodas. Her body was long and thin, like a flame drawn toward the ceiling. Her partner was less thin, less handsome; his neatly trimmed beard was a bad choice, aesthetically speaking, and his blue eyes gleamed tentatively, as if waiting for someone to take his picture.
    “Wow . . . wee.” He looked around, feeling cocky. “Boy, they know how to treat you right around here, unh?”
    “Steve, take your drink.” The woman nudged him in the gut with one of the cups, spilling a little on his shirt.
    “Door-to-door service.”
    “Steve, she’s trying to be polite, so why don’t you take your drink, before it gets on my vest.”
    “Oh, right.” The man took the cup and absently set it on the counter. “I’m Steve Mould, ma’am. Hi there.” He started forward with his hand, then, catching himself, made a fist.
    Donna laughed. “Hi, Steve.”
    “And this is my fiancée, Lydia.”
    “Very nice to meet you.” Lydia curtseyed with her head.
    “Okay, hi.”
    “Wow and double wow.” Steve’s barrel chest swelled with a contented sigh.
    “When I saw you two together, I figured you were newlyweds. I guess I wasn’t too far off.”
    “Steve”—Lydia spoke out of the corner of her mouth—“don’t leave your drink on the table.”
    “Oops!” He reached for the cup. “Sorry ’bout that.”
    “We’re going through the early stages,” she added, winking at Donna. “I’m systematically rebuilding his brain from the ground up.”
    Steve smiled thickly as the others laughed at him. Donna liked this woman. She admired the way she seemed to steer her man from one thing to another, guiding him with a sure hand. Donna wondered what Derek would do if she tried that technique with him.
Honey, stop. Just
leave the glass where it is.
    “It takes awhile,” she said. “Derek and I were a little shaky at first, but we got used to it.” Yes, the early years. Hard times for newlyweds. Derek and Daddy on the verandah. Nice gray suits. Open briefcases, papers fluttering in the wind. Donna sitting behind the closed French doors, bouncing a plastic birdie on a racket. Derek’s knuckles on the glass:
How
you doing in there, kid?
    The sound of the convention center filled her ears—a rush of present noise. Steve was saying, “With a fella like that, he’s gotta be making a quarter-mil easy.”
    “Steve. Don’t be rude.”
    “It’s not rude. I’m saying he’s doing great. What’s rude about that?”
    “It’s the kind of thing that people don’t talk about.”
    “Doggone.”
    “Well, it’s okay.” Donna smiled, her voice descending a short scale.
    “I should be so lucky to shine the man’s shoes with my