Suzie’s House 216 : How to Alter a Fond and Tranquil Moment

“Hey, Babe.” Vin settled on the lawn chair next to Miranda. With a beer in one hand, and the grill’s special, long-handled spatula in the other. He stared cross the backyard at the same row of trees and hulking Victorian house’s backside that Miranda had been staring at. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

He waited for a few minutes to see what she said. Miranda wasn’t really the kind to wax rhapsodic over the turning of Autumn leaves. She probably hadn’t noticed the way this last hurrah of Summer made the heat feel odd, as if it could turn to cold in a flash. Whatever happened to be buzzing around the back of her mind now was all-consuming, just like all the rest of the bee hive of thought she carried around.

He smiled a little. The way her dysfunctional mind worked was an endless source of fascination for him. He loved it.

“Hmmm?” Miranda broke out of her internal world enough to glance at him. She rediscovered the beer in her hand, and took a swallow.

“A penny for your thoughts.”

“Vin, if I had a penny for every time you said that I could go buy a new pair of boots. Jimmy Choo style.”

“Jimmy Choo does boots? I thought he only did shoes. Maybe only sandals with deadly heels.”

“He does boots too.”

“With deadly heels, I’m sure.” He saluted the absent designer with a lift of his can of beer. “That all you’re worried about?”

“No. It’s something Suzie said.”

“I heard her yelling at you right before I brought the steaks out to the grill.” He waved his super duper spatula. Every great cook should have one.

“You know about Ben’s flashdrive, right?”

“Ben has a flashdrive? Wait, what’s a flashdrive?” He kind of thought he knew, but wasn’t entirely sure.

“You call them thumb drives. You know, that Attaché thing you plug into your computer to store files?”

“Oh. Right. Right.” Great. Yet another new thing with a dozen names he had to memorize. In a dozen years, they’d have gone the way of the Beta Max.

“So anyway, a while back I caught Ben creeping out of his mother’s room with this thumb drive. Seems she found it on his floor and picked it up without thinking. It has his writing on it, so he’s pretty possessive about it.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Vin nodded.

“So Ben told Lisa about it and Lisa told Tracy. Tracy snuck into his room and took it. I caught her at Suzie’s desk, putting stuff on the flahsdrive.”

“So you stopped her.”

“Um… well, no. I kind of helped her. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She flicked her currently-jet-black hair over her shoulder and looked away.

Vin groaned. Whenever Miranda thought something seemed like a good idea, there was going to be a problem somewhere.

“So… I kind of added a naughty picture file.”

“Naughty?”

“A close up of a girl in a skin colored swimsuit. The thing is, in the thumb-nail image the computer generates you can’t tell there’s a swimsuit. Suzie saw it and pitched a fit.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah. That’s what she was yelling at me about. She said I was corrupting Ben. The thing is, I’m thinking maybe she was right. I feel bad about it.”

“And now you think you’re a bad woman.”

“Yeah.”

“You aren’t.” He put one arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “If you were, you wouldn’t worry about it.”

She gave him a thankful smile, and didn’t argue. Vin counted that as progress. He might have elaborated, but something slipped in the grill, which sizzled and spat. Dark clouds rose from it.

“Oh no! The steak!” Vin leaped out of the chair and dashed to the grill.

Except for one black lump in the hottest part of the fire, the meat was done to perfection.

If you enjoy Suzie’s House and would like to see more, please leave a comment. Suzie’s House is powered by its readers.

Suzie’s House is – for the first time in it’s existence – moving to a new day! Starting from June 22nd, Suzie’s House will be posted on Wednesdays. There will be no new episode next week.