The Mosquito Vine
an excerpt

Raferty looked up and pretended to laugh along with some scatological joke one of them had just unleashed upon the world. Glancing out the window over the kitchen sink, he noticed the light outside was waning. As he chugged the last of his beer, he worked up the nerve to leave.
“Hey, you guys wanna keep down in here?” a dark haired girl said, entering the kitchen. She’d walked in from one of the rooms beyond the kitchen, and was holding a little paperback novel in one of her hands.
“Sorry Shirley!”
The girl, Shirley, huffed over to the sink and filled a little tin cup up with water.
“How much longer you gonna sit here and swim in that beer?” she asked the oldest boy, who’d just finished up an anecdote on fellatio.
“Hell…I dunno, few more hours?”
“Go read yer book!” another one of the boys growled.
Shirley shot him a venomous look, but said nothing to him.
“Fine, fine…just don’t forget that we have to go home sometime. Daddy’s not going to be at work all night…”
The boys snickered as she marched primly back out of the room.
“Shit,” Shirley’s brother growled.
Raferty waited until they were once again engrossed in another questionable discussion before sneaking out of the room and down the hallway. There were three doors—one was a large closet or store room (packed full of boxes and random junk), the second was Ahcom’s bedroom (which he discovered was occupied, even before he’d placed a hand on the door knob), the third was a small bathroom. The door was open, he stuck his head inside, Shirley was sitting in the empty bath tub. She had the little red paperback inches from her face. Raferty stood there in the doorway, quietly watching her read.
“Your mother know you like staring at strange girls in the bathtub?” She said, her eyes never leaving her book.
“Ah…um…”
“Oh another brilliant conversationalist I see,” she said setting her book down in her lap and turning to look at him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to creep up and then stare…”
“Of course you didn’t baby-doll…but that’s exactly what you did,” she said rolling her eyes. “Now scoot. I’m trying to kill some time.”
The two of them locked eyes, eventually Shirley raised an eyebrow. Raferty was certain she’d told him to do something—but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it had been.
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” she blanched.
“Yes you did.”
“When?” she asked, dog-earing one of her book’s pages.
“Just now, I think.”
“I think you’re wrong, I didn’t say anything.”
“Did you say something, after the whole ‘staring’ thing?”
She looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling, “Oh yeah…I remember now—I said ‘scoot.’”
“Oh,” Raferty said leaving.
“Wait!” she called. “What’s your name?”
“Simon. Simon Raferty.”
“You’re friends with Ahcom?” she asked skeptically.
Raferty was getting a little sick of this question, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Shirley said smiling. “You just seem a little…too nice to be one of Ahab’s drinking buddies.”
“Well I am,” Raferty said convincing no one. “I am a drinking buddy…”
Covering her mouth, Shirley laughed. It echoed in the tiny bathroom.
“What are you reading?”
“A book,” she grinned.
“I can see that, does it have a name?”
She turned her paperback around so he could see it.
“Starbrite,” she said sweetly. “It’s about a horse.”
This is how Simon Raferty met Shirley Jones.