Touched Up by Leo Dufresne
Synopsis
No one should smile before the sun rises. On the
happiness scale, content is about as good as you can get to in these dark
hours. I wake early most every morning because content works for me. Since
becoming the father of two, this tiny portion of the day is all the me-time I
have left. If people were honest, which they mostly aren’t, I think they would
admit to wanting more time alone. It’s 5:47 AM and I’m sitting quietly in the
kitchen, where there are no responsibilities, no guilt, and no unmet
expectations. Simply silence.
Mitch Pederson, a
forty-something executive in the high-tech world, made no allowance for
blackmail in his comprehensive plans to ascend to the top of an electronics
company. His carefully ordered world quickly unravels into a chaos that
threatens everything he cares about. As he puts the pieces of his life back
together he discovers something about himself that is much more than the sum of
the parts.
EXCERPT
It’s a small blue
envelope, the kind you’d include with a bouquet of flowers. I look around to
confirm that my car is the only one tagged. Signs are posted throughout the
parking lot forbidding solicitation. Coming closer, I notice that my first name
has been typed on the outside of the envelope. I remove the little card from
inside.
Oil and Water. Home
and Business. Some things just aren’t made to mix. Maybe you should consider
again the contract you agreed to? Your time is running out. Do something soon
or your wife will know you really don’t care about her.
I spin around
quickly and scan the parking lot again. This time I take in the nearby surface
streets. Looking for anything out of place. Two gardeners, Mexicans, at work on
the landscape surrounding the parking lot, a mechanical engineer, can’t
remember his name, been here a couple of years, is getting out of a blue Volvo
sedan on my right, a young man and a woman having an animated conversation on
the sidewalk across the street. A crow starts cawing loudly somewhere to my
left.
This is a business
district. What is a couple doing on the sidewalk? I struggle to keep my pace
beneath a run as I move in the straightest path toward them. My hands form into
fists and I crumple the note. The hell with being coy. I start to run, keeping
my eyes locked on them.
They’re facing each
other, hands on their hips, bent forward at the waist. Two roosters squaring
off for a showdown. I’m still too far away to make out what they’re saying, but
their mouths are moving rapidly. When the distance between us nears fifty feet
the woman turns her head in my direction. The man follows her lead and twists
his upper body toward me, hands remaining on his hips. I recognize him as one
of our marketing types.
As I approach to
within twenty feet, he speaks, “Can I help you?”
“How long you been
here?”
The man’s face
contorts, “Almost two years.”
“Not with CommGear
you dumb ass.” I come to a stop with just under five feet between us and point
violently at the sidewalk he is standing on, “Here! How long you been here!”
The woman, blonde
with a blue dress cut too short for this neighborhood, moves closer to the man.
Sweat has caused her make-up to smear into an odd-looking mask. Her entire body
is taut. The roosters are both facing me fully now as we each wait for the first
act of aggression.
Wrong bogey. Before
they can answer, I reverse course and sprint back across the street. The
gardeners have stopped their work and now huddle together. I veer in their
direction, not reducing my speed. As I near them they stare at me and take a
couple of steps back. One of them mutters a word in Spanish I don’t recognize.
The younger of the
pair, bigger than his partner by over a foot, is holding a rake. He turns it
over in his hand so the business end is up and facing me. The other man grabs
his arm and steps forward. He begins to speak rapidly in Spanish. With every
other word he seems to pick up his pace. It’s been over two decades since my
last conversational Spanish class. If he asked me where to buy a blue plate or
when the library closes, I might be able to understand him. I turn again toward
my building. As I head off I hear the voice of the other man. Many of his words
I do know and they weren’t learned in a classroom.
PURCHASE
The son of a career Air Force serviceman, Leo spent his childhood living the nomadic life of
a military brat. Having survived the constant uprooting, Leo draws upon the time spent in the four corners of the US as well as Europe to develop his characters.
Leo has finally settled down in San Diego, California with his wife of over thirty years. Aside from writing, and engineering (the necessary day job), he enjoys time with his children/grandchildren, running distance races and all things baseball.
"I write contemporary novels where I stress a character's beliefs to the point of breaking and then I follow along for the ride.My goal is to offer readers a pause in their lives to think about what they believe and why."~ Leo Dufresne
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@TheSeriousReadr
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