flashquake's Second Place for Fiction goes to: My Daily Bread |
||
Plainville was a bust, my father said. I hate the dogs. Why do I go? I don’t know, I said. Don’t let me bet dogs anymore. Please. They’re too unstable. Okay, I said. I mean it. I’m all done betting dogs. Dogs and soccer. Forget ‘em. I’m strictly horses and football. Tell me about Nicki, I said. He tilted the bottle to his lips and arched his back until the bottle was almost straight up. I watched him drink. He didn’t have a job, didn’t work, but his sports jacket reeked of sweat. I watched his throat move like mice were running down it. You wouldn’t have known her, my father said. Looks twice her age. Years ago when the Lawrences broke apart, Nicki had run. Her mom stayed on a month, then moved to a safe house across the river. For years I had held to a dream that Nicki would come back looking for her mom and she’d find me waiting. I’d sometimes gaze out my window across the way at the lot where their building had been. I’d smoke a cigarette and stare and practice waiting. My father belched. Half the beer in the bottle was gone. And she’s on something, he said. Nothing left to her. Still pretty, though. All boobs and bones. But her face has a classic structure. She really grew up to be a pretty little whore. What’s she look like? White hair and raw eyes. Two gypsy rings pierced above her eyebrow, which I didn’t like. But she knew me. She called me Pete. She remembered me at a glance. Came right over and leaned in. Big bubble gum pink lips smirking and grinning. Pete, Pete, Pete, she said. How you doing, Pete, she said. She always had such nice even teeth. Oh yummy, who’s this now who knows me, I thought to myself. She leaned her head in and shook my hand like we were meeting at church. She asked about you, and had we heard from your sister, and how we were managing, just us two, and wasn’t it a shame about families. She slid into the front seat and we talked and I mentioned your mother, whose death she’d heard about, and she started to cry, just a little, maybe a tear or two, and that touched me so I gave her twenty-dollars and took her around the corner and bounced her on my lap for half an hour then dropped her off. Where? In an alley, parked between two dumpsters. I fucked her slow with the air conditioning on high. She tried to hurry me by wiggling her ass and kissing my ear, but I got my money’s worth. Remember what a cock tease that bitch used to be. I watched him drink. Where did you drop her off? Across from Saint Mary’s church. She ran into a hole in a fence around a condemned building. Said she could make a wholesale buy from a discount dealer. She asked me to wait and I promised her I would and bring her back to the east side, but after about five minutes of idling gasoline I wasn’t going to sit between a church and a condemned building waiting for some whore. I know what you’re thinking. Go on. Take a ride. You might find her walking. You got money? I shook my head no. Take a twenty, my father said. She’ll go again. He presented a crisp bill. Go on. My treat. Go ahead. Do her once for yourself. I said, Okay. And took the twenty. Now, hey. Don’t waste that money, my father said. That’s part of your next birthday present. I didn’t say anything. My birthday wasn’t for another five months. I’d be gone by then. And tell her who you are, my father said. Look her right in the eyes. Then fuck her silly. Fuck her like you mean it. I’ll try, I said. Remember how you worshipped her when she would babysit your ass. Remember how snide she could be with your mother. Like her family was better than ours. Remember how she tickled your belly until you pissed all over your Easter outfit. I remember, I said. Good. Don’t forget any of that. It’s all important. I started down the stairs. Don’t stay out too late. Don’t worry about me, Dad, I said. Hell, that’s all I worry about. That’s all of it. That’s everything, my father said. |
||
© 2001 by Bob Thurber | ||
