4

In his dream he'd continually insisted that Nadean keep searching his bedroom for a specific book that he was certain would help him identify the little dying lizard in the bathtub, but she kept returning empty handed, telling him that the old book was extinct.

His eyes opened and stared dully over the bulge of his pillow toward the small, crude, handmade bookcase beside his bed. Extinct, he thought. Why would she say that the book was extinct? It was missing. But in fact, it was not missing at all. He could see the spine protruding past those of its neighbors on the top shelf, categorized alphabetically by author, the white paper dust jacket dog-eared and even beginning to darken along the damaged edges. It happened to be a book about dinosaurs.

Curious, he pushed himself into a sitting position and huffed with surprise at the sensation of unpleasant stiffness in his lower neck and upper shoulders. He rolled his head and shrugged deeply, thrust his shoulders far forward and back, then rose to perform a few good stretches. It had been a very long time since he had slept nude in this house. He generally wore some type of shorts at least out of modesty. The air was dry and cool. He found it refreshingly brisk. Snatching the book from the shelf, he cast it upon the bed, and then rummaged through his suitcase for clean clothing.

The house was quiet. His mother was visiting family in Pennsylvania and his father had abandoned them years before. Nadean was sleeping in.

Geoff shaved, combed his hair, applied deodorant and Deep Woods aftershave. He went downstairs to raid the pantry for a can of ginger ale, and then returned to his bedroom to peruse the book he'd dreamt of.

On the cover was a simple and not likely accurate line drawing of a bipedal dinosaur, something with a serpentine head and long neck arched like a horse's, with chubby, stubby arms that reminded him of an infant, an eggplant-shaped body, plump drumstick legs and a very long, stiffly held tail. It very much resembled a drawing of the creature he had dissected during the night as rendered by a semi-talented fourth grader.

"Dromaeosaurus," he recalled. What he'd thought was a comprehensive guide as a teenager had proved to be a vast collection of dinosaur names paired with more simplistic drawings and very little data describing them. In fact, recent revelations had made some of the entries obsolete as animals thought to be from certain groupings turned out to in fact to be from others.

He lifted the cover and began to skim the contents, noting with surprise that roughly half of the pictures had been colored with pencils. "Nadean," he sighed with a slight grin.

Easily half the listed creatures were bipeds, although the drawings showed only slight variations between them. Many animals, he knew, were only identifiable from mostly incomplete fossil sets. There was still a lot of guesswork in the field even if it was educational in nature. He'd never really had much interest in dinosaurs himself, knowing them mostly as the stop-motion villains from a number of bad movies, until the year before when he'd been shanghaied into going on an actual dig.

His mother, being a very religious sort in a rather peculiar manner for she also believed in witchcraft and paranormal forces, did not believe in dinosaurs. When pressed by her small son for details on the creatures, she'd shown her ignorance by quickly changing the subject or ordering him to complete some chore that had become abruptly critical. She'd even once directed him to ask their priest about them, and the poor man had merely smiled benignly as if to imply it was up to individual families to decide where they would stand on the issue and not something he was qualified to discuss.

Geoff paged through the bipeds, looking at size estimates. He did not think that the creature was a dinosaur, but he hoped to find the closest apparent relative in the hope that the accompanying information might give him a clue as to what animals it may have evolved into.

Nadean poked her uncombed head around the doorframe playfully. "Gopher."

"Yellow."

"Know what it is, yet?"

He shook his head and held the open book up for her.

"I colored them based on modern animal patterns."

"So I noticed. I actually recognized the triggerfish and clownfish, ruby-throated hummingbird-"

"I thought I'd start with more primitive animals for the earlier dinosaurs, then work my way up."

He nodded. "Interesting."

"Was the book valuable?"

"Parts of it are obsolete," he admitted. "But as to historic value-"

She shrugged. "I'll be a famous artist some day and then the book will be worth a fortune."

"I see."

"Breakfast?"

"Please," he said, and then glanced at the wind-up clock that sat atop the bookcase. "Lunch is more like it."

"God, I love sleeping late!" she gushed, plunging her hands through her unkempt hair. "So, scrambled eggs or pizza?"

"Both?"

Her eyebrows rose. "Well that sounds novel!"

He shook his head in amusement as she departed happily down the hall.

She hadn't been gone long when Geoff heard the distinctive sound of a vehicle making its way along the long, dirt driveway. It was moving too quickly for a stranger and in fact sounded like it had gone around the house to the rear. He continued his research. A moment later he heard a quick, loud knock, and then Nadean called his name just before he heard her unlatch the front door.

Geoff flipped the open book down atop the bedspread and made his way to the hall, listening intently.

"Well, ain't you a sight for sore eyes!"

"Heh," Nadean replied.

"Ain't got no hug for your long-lost cousin?"

"We're not related."

Geoff knew the voice and inwardly cringed, hesitating near the top of the stairs.

"I brought goodies."

He heard paper crinkle.

"Doughnuts? It's lunch time," she said.

"Geoff here?"

"You heard me call him."

"So I did."

The tall blond reluctantly descended into view.

"Gopher!" The other man teased.

"Ha, ha," Geoff responded. "What trouble are you in this time?"

"Doughnut?" he offered.

Geoff stepped forward and reached into the bag, withdrawing something oozing sweetened cream and shedding rainbow colored sprinkles. He grabbed the opening for a better look within. He wasn't overly fond of filled doughnuts.

"I didn't know what you liked," the newcomer mentioned.

"Maybe if you weren't always on the run," McKenna commented, taking a large bite of a peanut-butter filled chocolate-iced and finding it palatable.

"Didja get my present?"

Geoff nearly choked on the dough in his mouth. He spat the wad into his hand, and then looked as miserable as a cat that had just leaped by accident into a puddle. Nadean had departed to retrieve a beverage for him. Glancing about angrily, he spiked the wet mess into one of his mother's ashtrays. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Debatable."

Wiping his palm with a tissue from a convenient dispenser near the ashtray, he neared the other man threateningly. "How could you treat an animal that way? How could you do that knowing who I am?"

The young man with the prematurely greying hair lifted one open palm and the doughnut bag between them. "Is it okay?"

"She died!"

"It was a she?"

"I'd know, wouldn't I?"

"Calm down," the visitor said, accepting the glass of juice Nadean had brought and pushing it at Geoff. "Have some wine."

"It's cranberry juice!" blurted the girl.

The guy sniffed it. "Really? Pretty color. Drink it," he insisted, thrusting it Geoff's way. "Do you know what it, she is?"

"I haven't a clue."

"Well now that surprises me," the guy said, handing the bag of doughnuts to Nadean. "You didn't plant it in the backyard like a dead dog, didja?"

McKenna swallowed and swished the remaining claret colored juice in the little jam jar glass decorated with two-tone popular cartoon characters. "Of course not. I performed a necropsy."

The silver-haired guy looked from brother to sister, then back again. "Oh, you're sick."

"What?"

"You'd admit that in front of her?"

"It was an autopsy!" Geoff clarified hotly.

"Oh. You shoulda just said so. And, what? You think somebody cacked her?"

Nadean tried not to smile. She knew her brother's old school chum was trouble, but always found him greatly amusing.

Geoff rolled his eyes. "She had kidney stones."

"No kiddin'? Eh?"

"Probably from a poor diet."

The guy shrugged. "Hell, I didn't know what to feed her. She seemed to like hot dogs, though."

Geoff drained his juice to prevent an argument. Handing the glass to Nadean, he said, "What was it and where did you get it from?"

"I'm not the maid!" Nadean sniped, setting the empty glass down roughly behind him.

He watched her retreat to the kitchen and turned to lift the glass before it left a ring on his mother's end table. He noticed the balled-up tissue and wad of half-chewed dough in the ashtray and collected everything with a sigh.

The guy asked, "You wanna go somewhere? Get some lunch?"

"Let's," the blond agreed, heading for the kitchen.