Read 14bis Plum Spooky for Free Online

you‘d never hurt me.”
    “True, but I have ways.”
    “Magic?”
    “Muscle,” Diesel said.
    “You‘d physically force me to go with you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why?”
    “It‘s more fun when you‘re along. And you make it diffi-cult for Wulf to zero in on me.”
    “Let me guess. This is about cosmic dust, right? Our dust mingles together, and Wulf gets confused.”
    Carl gave me the finger.
    “Carl‘s tired of hearing about cosmic dust,” Diesel said. “It‘s getting old.”
    “Then maybe you want to explain the whole zeroing-in phenomenon to me.”
    “It‘s not a big deal. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and get a creepy feeling that you‘re not alone? Or maybe you‘re looking for a guy, and you get this feeling that he‘s in the coat closet, so you open the door, and there he is. It‘s like that… but Wulf and I operate at a higher level.”
    “Why do I make it difficult for Wulf?”
    “When I‘m with you, some of my chemistry changes, and it becomes more difficult to trace my sensory imprint. At least, that‘s the theory. I‘m told it has to do with sexual attraction and expanding blood vessels. There‘s more, but the expanding blood vessels is the good part.”
    I‘d never actually seen Diesel‘s blood vessels in all their expanded glory. I had a feeling it was a spectacular sight. And just the thought of it scared the bejeezus out of me.
    “As long as they don‘t expand too much,” I said to Diesel.
    “Your loss,” Diesel said.
    “Anyway, I can‘t go with you to night because I promised my mom I‘d be over for dinner.”
    “Sounds good. We‘ll eat dinner with your parents, and then we‘ll check out Scanlon‘s apartment.”
    History was repeating itself. As always with Diesel, I was going down as the big loser in the power struggle.

FIVE
    P OT ROAST, SPAGHETTI with red sauce, roast chicken, kiel-basa and sauerkraut, meat loaf, minestrone, stuffed manicotti, baked ham, pork chops with applesauce, lasagna, chicken paprikash, and stuffed cabbage stretch in a time line from my birth to this afternoon, pulling together my Hungarian and Italian genes, forever binding together food and parental love.
    Dinner at my parents‘ house is always at six, it‘s always served at the dining room table, and it‘s always good. To my mother‘s dismay, my current lifestyle isn‘t nearly so civilized. Left to my own devices, I eat standing over my kitchen sink when I get hungry, and my culinary expertise relies heavily on peanut butter and white bread.
    My parents live in the Chambersburg section of Trenton. Their house is small and narrow, cojoined on one side with an identical twin differing only in paint color. There‘s a minuscule front yard, a slightly longer backyard, and in between is a small foyer off the front door, living room, dining room, and kitchen, with three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The bath is far from luxurious, but it has a window that opens to the roof over the kitchen. This window was my escape route all through high school whenever I was grounded. And I was grounded a lot.
    We were all seated at the dining room table—Diesel, Carl, my mother, my father, and my Grandma Mazur. My Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents when Grandpa Mazur bought a one-way ticket to God‘s big theme park in the sky. Grandma buys her clothes at the Gap, her sneakers at Payless, and her Metamucil at the supermarket. She has short gray hair, and more skin than she needs.
    “Isn‘t this nice,” Grandma Mazur said, setting the green bean casserole in the middle of the table, taking her place opposite me. “This feels just like a party. Can‘t hardly remember the last time Diesel was here. It feels like ages. And anyway, it‘s always a treat to have a handsome man in the house.”
    My father stopped shoveling slabs of pot roast onto his plate, his lips compressed, and his eyes fixed on his knife as if he was contemplating carving something other than cow. He mumbled a