Flings Read Online Free

getting out of there anytime soon. Dylan’s spent the whole day with the helper by this point, which Danny and Ellen agree is not to become a habit, but once in a blue moon like this won’t damage his psyche irreparably, and the truth is even if they haul ass they won’t make it home before bedtime. Danny could call the helper and tell her to keep Dylan up, but then they’ll all pay tomorrow. Forget it, Ellen texts him back; it’ll be fine this one time. He agrees, signs off xoxoxo, and turns to Rachel, who’s looking exhausted, so they head for the cross-harbor ferry, board, and find an empty bench on the upper deck where they sit, side by side, midway between two alien skylines on a small ship bobbing in the far-flung waves.

SUNGOLD
    T wenty minutes max in the mushroom suit—that’s the official rule. But it’s still a smallish company and there are only two suits to share among twenty-one franchise locations, so there’s pressure to make the most of your turn while it lasts. When the thirtieth franchise opens—late next year, if you believe HQ’s projections—they say they’ll order a third suit, and at fifty a fourth one, which sounds good until you realize that the proportion of mushroom suits to restaurants is actually in decline. Anyway, our turn started this morning and Ethan, that savvy entrepreneur, is eager to leverage this brand-growth opportunity, never mind that it’s 95 degrees out with 100 percent humidity. He’s a real trouper, Ethan. Especially since it’s me in the suit and not him.
    It’s hard to stand upright in the suit, much less walk in it. I had to be led out here and planted on the corner where I’m sure to be seen by traffic in all directions. My own view, meanwhile, is like peering through the hair catch in a shower drain. “Wave your hands,” Ethan advised me. “See if you can get people to honk.”
    Well, plenty of them do honk, but not because I’m waving my hands. The suit doesn’t have hands. They’re honking because the suit is bruise-purple, furry, and mottled with yellow amoebic forms across a cap like a stoner’s idea of a wizard’s hat blown up to the size of a golf umbrella, though I prefer to think of myself as a huge diseased alien cock. When sweat gets in my eyes I can’t wipe them. The hair catch goes from HD to blurry. It’s not that big of a switch.
    Different people respond to the suit in different ways. Children stroke the fur, tug the cap if they can reach it. Then they ask it for presents. Their moms don’t want them to touch it—“That’s dirty, sweetie,” they say, which is true, every square inch of it, inside and out—but they do want, inexplicably, for Junior to stand next to it—“Big smile now”—for a cell phone picture to text to Daddy, some guy in an office park scrolling through an emojis menu, looking for the one that says, Why is our son standing in the shadow of a huge bruised dick?
    Frat boys throw a shoulder as they pass by, rarely bother to look back and witness my flailing attempts to stay on my feet. They know what flailing is; they’ve seen it. Their mandate is to induce, not to observe.
    Bicyclists want me to get out of their way, which is not a realistic request given my ranges of speed and movement, but also, fuck them, they ought to be riding in the street. It’s not my fault that’s illegal in this backward-ass college town—though, having never ridden a bike myself, for all I know it’s a Florida-wide thing. Anyway they scream at me. I would lunge toward them if I could lunge at all.
    Black teenage boys—now this is interesting—will cross the street to avoid me. They’ll sprint into traffic; I’ve seen it through the hair catch. And these are the same suave posses who practice their rhymes at full volume on the steps of the public library, who hit on girls