Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 12 of 40

Chapter 12: Duet

The Grange hall at Owls Head had a dance floor, a stage, a kitchen window and a plastic skeleton wired to the rafters, and on Halloween night it held two hundred people in costume.

I was Bonnie.

Paulie had rented me a drop-waisted green dress, a beret and a toy tommy gun with an orange tip.

Eben was Clyde, in a gray pinstripe suit and a fedora.

The suit fit him in a way that made me forget my own lines.

His pants had no pockets.

"Hold these," he said at the door, and handed me his truck keys.

I put them in my little beaded bag and forgot about them.

"Don't look at me like that," he said.

"Like what?"

"Like you're deciding where to bury me," he said.

"I'm not deciding anything. I'm Bonnie."

"Bonnie shot people," he said.

"Bonnie shot with you."

He put a hand over his eyes, and I saw him fighting a smile, and lost another round against myself.

The hall was full of friends in terrible costumes.

Gordie was a hot dog.

Paulie was a very good Marie Curie.

My mother and Linwood came in wearing matching red and blue sweatsuits and felt hats, and I stopped them at the coat rack.

"What are you two?"

"Crayons," my mother said.

"Which?"

"I'm red," said Linwood, with dignity. "She's blue."

"Why?"

"It's a couples costume," Linwood said.

"You're a couple?"

"We're a pair of crayons," my mother said, and sailed off to the buffet.

I stood there with my toy gun and my heart beating, because it was the first time anybody had said the word.

By ten o'clock Gordie had set up the karaoke machine on the stage, and the hall was singing at the top of its lungs.

The petty officer did an astonishing, shrieking power ballad.

The Hannaford manager did a song I won't describe.

Then Paulie took the microphone, in her white lab coat, and tapped it.

"We have a special number," she said. "It's a Truce Clause activity. Please welcome the maid of honor and the best man."

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