Sweet Saturday: When Marco met Nikki

This week's Sweet Saturday Sample is a scene from The P-town Queen.  The first time Marco sees Nikki, he is sitting on a bench near the pier. He meets her not long after:

 

I went through the door and there, in the corner of the room, was a metal desk and sitting on the desk was the redhead from the pier. I couldn’t have been more surprised if it had been Fat Phil sitting there. My stomach did a loop-di-loop, like I was in the sixth grade and just found out the popular girl had the locker next to mine. I told myself to quit being a dumb ass. I had exactly two cents rubbing together in the pocket of my only pair of pants.

            She was talking to the guy from the pier. The younger one that looked like her. She caught me in her gorgeous brown eyes, blinked a few times, and asked if she could help me. “Yeah, yes,” I said. “I’m here about the research. The assistant. Job. Research assistant.”

           “Find me an office and they will come,” said the guy.

           To which the redhead gave him a look that might have killed him. “And how is it that job applicants magically appear?”

           “The flyer,” I said. “At Ella’s Place.”

           “Flyer at Ella’s Place?” The redhead had turned the killer stare at me.

           “They weren’t. She didn’t. They were under the counter. I saw. I was. I really need the job.”  I took a deep breath. “So if you tell Dr. Silva. I’m available. For an interview.” Jesus, Mary and Joe, it was lucky that drool didn’t come running out of my mouth.

           The guy put a hand to my shoulder and said, real quiet, “She is Dr. Silva,” which really made me feel like the friggin idiot I’d turned into.

           “Nick Silva? She’s Nick Silva?”

           “Nik as in Nicola,” said the guy.

              “It’s a mistake. My mistake. I’m mistaken. Sorry.”

           “She makes people nervous. But she’s not so tough. I’m her brother, I ought to know. Billy.” He held out his hand.

           “I do not make people nervous,” said Nik Silva.

           “Ask her about Rusty’s boat.”

           Nik sighed. “There is no job. Mr.…?”

           And here’s where thing got dicey. In giving myself a new identity I forgot to give me a new name. Any self-respecting witness protection program will give you a new name and I sure as hell didn’t want to use the old one. Nik Silva was kind of staring at me again and my pulse rate was up around two hundred, so I spit out the first thing came into my head.

           “Parker. Parker Bench.” I wished, right after I said it, that I could have taken it back. I wished I’d have come up with something, anything, else: Jerry Lewis or Phillip Morris or Captain Crunch. Just about anything would have been better than Parker Bench.

The P-town Queen is coming to Champagne Books in June of next year.


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