Available Darkness Season 2

isolated somewhere else, don’t make contact. Let me know and I’ll come right away.”
    John handed Larry a cell with his number preprogrammed. “Call me, anytime. Day or night.”
    “Day?” Larry said, eyebrows furrowed.
    “Yeah, they made this special suit for me with a helmet that blocks out the light. It looks stupid, but I can travel in daylight when I need to. I can’t feed or anything with gloves on, so it’s semi-useless, but it does give me more freedom.”
    “Cool, is it like a super hero outfit? Like Batman or some cool shit?” Larry asked, giddy like a kid. It looked like he might start clapping.
    “No,” John couldn’t help but smile. “Nothing that cool. It looks military, kinda like that Harbinger squad we took out at the hotel, actually.”
    Larry wrinkled his nose. “That shit is lame. If I was designing your outfit, I’d make it bad ass, black with flames and shit. Maybe a big fucking Captain America star on the chest. People would know to back the fuck up when you hit a room. Of course, we’d have to come up with a cool name.”
    “Like what?” John asked, playing along.
    “I don’t know, something cool, though. No pussy shit like Flash or Ant-Man. It should probably at least have one obscenity in it. I dunno — if it were up to me, I’d call you Captain Fuck Yeah!”
    “Captain Fuck Yeah?” John asked, laughing.
    “Yeah, though it would probably limit your marketing potential with toys and shit. Imagine kids asking their parents for the new Captain Fuck Yeah action figure? Your movie would have to be R. A hard R, not that weak shit in theaters nowadays. We’re definitely looking at a far smaller potential for dollars.”
    John laughed as he eyed his empty glass. He was thirsty for more — drink, laughs, and perhaps another ogle at Amanda.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 6 — Hannah (Hope)

    Hannah Quinn was running late, again. So, of course, traffic and weather were both horrible, conspiring against Hannah and her Honda Element packed corner to corner with flowers.
    Every bloom had to be at His Father’s Holy Grace Church by five to noon, or Hannah would surely get screamed at by Cori Truman, the city’s biggest, flashiest and most grand standing wedding coordinator.
    This wasn’t just a wedding — bread and butter for any florist who knew how to build and bill them — it was the biggest wedding gig Hanna’s Bucket Boutique had ever done. The bride belonged to Mr. And Mrs. William Graham, Las Orilla’s closest cousin to power brokers.
    Judy Graham, mother of the bride, clicked with Hannah moments after first setting her Manolos inside Hannah’s small shop a year before. Hannah had a front fridge stuffed with blown open Leonidas roses; big and brown, in many shades of exploding copper, but about to die. Judy oohed and aahed as Hannah handed her the bundle, wrapped in brown paper with a drop of blood, fresh from a small cut on Hannah’s pinkie.
    Judy spent $1,200 in candles and orchid plants to say thank you.
    While there were a half dozen flower carts dotting the coast for 10 minutes in either direction, cheap chain grocery stores and at least six other quality shops within driving distance, with far more experience and staff, all who could have conceivably done the wedding as well as Hannah, and most of them probably better, Judy insisted that she do the job.
    And so here she was, battling traffic and rain to recover lost time from her morning disaster. Hannah was either too stupid or too inexperienced to know about the effect that ripening fruit had on flowers. She had never filled her cooler to spilling before and had to ask Mr. Fanaroff from the Taco Beach next door if she could use his fridge. Of course, Mr. Fanaroff would do anything for Hannah, including allowing use of his cooler, filled with avocados and tomatoes and everything else that makes Mexican food delicious.
    Thank the Good Lord above, Hannah had only loaded the bridal party’s flowers into Fanaroff’s fridge, wanting to keep them separate after packing everything else into her cooler. By morning, the fruit in the fridge had turned her flowers translucent. Hanna had been smart, or at least scared enough to over-order, so she had plenty of flowers, though not enough time to arrange them all. She raced through the morning, and rushed to finish the same bouquets she’d spent half the previous day making in less than an hour.
    It wasn’t Hannah’s fault, exactly , but she wasn’t being paid to deliver