The Brandywine Prophet

11.1 The Chorus Room

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE CHORUS ROOM

“Oh shoot! Oh shoot! Where’s the alcohol? I thought I told you to unpack the first-aid kit!”

“It’s okay, baby-boo! It’s just a bee sting!” Hyde dropped his shorts, plopped into his recliner and inspected his thigh. The flesh was bubbled and pink and the stinger stuck in the center like a blackhead. “Just get a tweezers and some triple antibiotic.”

“I’m looking! Did you unpack the first-aid kit?”

“Calm down, sweetie. It’s probably under the guest-room bed.”

“What the heck is it doing there?”

Kayla found the instruments required for extraction and rushed back to the living room to tend to Hyde’s wound on bended knee.

“Ouch, dangit that smarts!”

“My poor baby in his itty-bitty whitie-tighties! How did a bee get in your shorts, anyway?” She rounded the stinger with an alcohol-dipped q-tip.

“They were everywhere. Sarah was complaining about the hive just before it got me.”

“Did you have a good time with your new buddy?”

“Don’t say ‘buddy.’”

“Did you have a good time with your new friend?”

“Said he’d let me borrow the lawnmower from his stables.”

“You better, mister. Think he used to have horses in there?”

“Maybe when he was a kid. Who knows.”

Giggles lifted her front paws to Hyde’s knee and observed the procedure with pointed ears.

Kayla removed the tweezers from the plastic kit. “You smell like smoke and citronella. Should I be worried?”

“I had a cigar with the guys.”

“Bad boy!” She worked the cold tips of the tool into his thigh. “Your mom died of lung cancer.”

“From cigarettes. You don’t inhale cigar smoke. Ow! Careful!”

“Do you think they liked their rock?”

“I’m sure they loved it.”

“Am I trying too hard?”

“No, baby. If you want new clients in a new neighborhood--”

“I hope it works. They’re such nice people.”

“Sarah invited us for Easter Dinner but I told her it’s our cooking night.”

“So sweet.”

Hyde thought about Stanley’s comments in the bar. “What do you think William did that was so crazy?”

“He’s tall. Maybe he was a circus freak.”

“I’m serious.”

“Drugs?”

“Probably. Maybe he killed somebody.”

“That’s horrible. Does God want you to think like that?”

“It’s the way he walks. He holds himself like he’s proud of his mistakes.”

“Got it!” Kayla held up the pinched tweezers.

“Thanks, baby.”

“Don’t touch it. I’ll put the cream on.”

The cream was colder than the tweezers but Kayla’s generous slathering of the clear gel quickly eased the ache. “Was William nicer today than he was at the bar?”