“She only got worse,” the girl said.
The orchestra came to the end of the music that some day would usher Izzy into her
new life. The musicians turned the pages.
“After I flunked sophomore chemistry this spring, she told me to get the fuck out of
her house. Her exact words.”
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Not only did I get the fuck out of her house, I got out of her house fucking.”
Izzy rolled up her right sleeve. “Let me show you. Better than any Reno-Front-Street-
tattoo.”
She shifted around on the stool and held out her arm so that the light illuminating the
Pleasure Menu shone upon it. Below the shoulder, her arm concaved in, a third of the
deltoid muscle carved away, the skin wrinkled and discolored to a deep purple, like an
eggplant someone had set in the oven to bake and forgotten.
Eddie started to reach out to touch her shoulder, but stopped. He emptied his beer.
When the barman brought him another, Eddie asked for a shooter of Old Granddad.
“I ain’t even gonna ask how you managed that one.”
The barman brought the shooter. Eddie downed it before the barman could leave and
handed back the glass and asked him to bring another.
“I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a sketch of Aunt Iris for art class. Mom
was at the stove, frying cod and drinking wine. Too much wine. Maybe her third or
fourth glass. Like always, mad as hell about something, muttering goddamnit this and
fuck that.”
Izzy raised her glass as if to drink, but set it back on the bar. “Mom lifted the skillet,
like she was going to drain the grease in the sink, holding it on her side between us.
As she passed, I twisted my drawing around to show her, but she was already staring
at it, her hand holding the skillet handle quivering, the grease in the pan swishing
around the rim.
“She tipped the skillet, and the grease splattered over my shoulder. Cooked it like one
more piece of cod. When she ripped off my sweater, she took with it every stitch of
skin right down to the elbow. I must have passed out because the next thing I
remember is waking up in intensive care.”
The barman brought his shooter. Eddied took the drink and downed it, nodding as he
handed back the glass.
“After the social worker allowed me to go home, I had to bathe my arm three and four
times a day because of the puzzy seepage. The odor reminded me of dead fish with
their plucked out eyes that wash up on the beach that I could smell before I saw
them. That was me. You could smell me before you saw me. Know exactly what room
I was in before you came in. Or didn’t come in.
“In the summer, a quack surgeon Mom found in Columbus did the skin grafts. I read
in the paper a while ago he lost his license for over-billing insurance companies and
kicking back half to the patients.”
Izzy fingered the stubble on her shoulder, the hair as thick and fine as that on a
shaved cat. “He took the grafts from my lower abdomen. I hadn’t yet reached
puberty, and in a year or so when I did, not only did I have an ugly scar, but surprise!
I had an ugly scar that grew pussy hair. One I get to shave once a week just like I do
my legs.”
She pulled down her sleeve and smoothed out the material. “She missed my face only
because she was drunk. If she hadn’t, I’d be a star attraction with Barnum & Bailey
rather than in a whorehouse. Come see the girl who grows cunt hair on her face.
“When she told me to get out, I went to Iris. She bought me ‘Hector,’ that yellow
Plymouth parked in back. The next week I headed for California. Got as far as Battle
Mountain before my money ran out.”
She twisted around on the stool, her eyes sweeping over the bar. “I couldn’t have
ended up in a nicer place. I like the guys that come in. Got some regulars going now.”
Eddie emptied the shot glass the barman had set before him. He washed it down with
a good portion of the fishbowl. “Guess you’re glad to be clear of her.”
The girl shook her head. “There’s a dream I started having not long after I got here. I’
ll be driving Hector car west on I-80. My back seat stacked high and my trunk filled full
with everything I own. The sun is shining and a cloudless sky gleams turquoise blue.
The wind is blowing through the rolled-down window and whips my hair so that it
flows out like the tail of a mare at full gallop, and when me and Hector cross the state
line into Indiana, I let go with my best, cheerleader-touchdown whoop.
“As we cross the country, oceans of corn surround us, and I’m the intrepid voyager,
an Ishmael of the Mid-west, finally set free on my life’s journey. I sing along to every
song that plays on the radio, even the country western tunes when I have trouble
picking up rock stations west of the Mississippi, and I sing these all the louder
because Mom hated them so much, and for the first time in a long while I am happy.
“When we climb into the Rockies, Hector struggles up the steep grades. I keep
watching his engine temperature, and as the needle gets close to the red “H” I drop
our speed, sometimes down to 20 miles an hour. Steam smokes out of the radiator. I
hold my breath and ask God to please see us through to California. Please. If He will, I
would never ask for anything more. Oh, please, please, please.
“I pray and pray and pray until a sign tells me that we have crested the Continental
Divide. As Hector and me start our decent to the Pacific, the temperature gauge
drops. I begin to sing California Here We Come, repeating the verses over and over
until in the mirror I see my mother in the back seat, holding up a bottle of Drano, my
possessions strewn across the Interstate behind us.
“She scolds me not to be a nitwit. To watch the road. I do. In the mirror I am
watching her too. As she twists off the bottle cap, my fingers feel glued to the
steering wheel, and I want with all my heart to let go. Bottle in hand, she reaches
over the seat, smiling, her gleaming white teeth pointed, sharp as a she wolf’s, and
pours the Drano over my head, like a priest blessing me into a new life might
administer a baptismal, burning into my scalp, eating away my skin, blinding my eyes.
I finally let go the steering wheel and reach up and my hair comes out in handfuls.
Hector careens off the road and crashes through the guardrail. As we’re falling, my
mother leans over the seat and whispers in my ear, asking me if I really believed
escaping her would be all that easy. Asking me why I was so silly to believe it even
possible.”
Izzy emptied her glass. She raised it to the barman, but his back was to her, pouring
a drink for the fat man who had left the tarot cards and now stood at the far end of
the counter. When he saw the girl, he puckered his thick lips at her. She shrugged.
She lowered her glass to the bar and turned to Eddie, who sat staring into his cupped
hands. Izzy reached over and took his left into both of hers. She rubbed a thumb
over his ring finger. “You’re not married, sweetie?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
“Divorced?”
When he still did not answer, Izzy reached up and jostled his shoulder. “Hey, anybody
home?”
Eddie shook his head.
“I hope you’re not queer. One wonders in every now and again. Why I don’t know.”
She squinted at him with one eye. “You don’t look like a pillow biter.”
Eddie lifted his fishbowl. “No. Not yet, leastwise.”
She ran her fingertips through his hair above his ear. “Good looking guy like you
never been married?”
“Yeah. I was.”
“Long ago?”
“Long enough.”
Izzy raised her glass to the barman again who this time saw her. They sat. When the
orchestra began an adagio, Izzy asked if he cared to slow dance, and Eddie told her
about his gimpy leg.
“You sure you just don’t know how? I can teach you.”
Eddie lifted his boot and rested its heel on his knee. He loosened the laces and pulled
his foot part way out and rolled down his sock. She bent forward and ran her finger
from the outside ball of his anklebone to the inside ball along the jagged scar that
sliced his Achilles tendon.
“Nice,” she said.
“Not as nice as yours.”
“At least I can dance. Girl who can’t dance doesn’t stand a chance in her life.”
“Her life,” Eddie repeated.
“What about it?”
He looked at the girl’s neck. Her breasts. Her eyes. “You know what a Y-scar is?”
“It’s what you get when you’ve been autopsied.”
Eddie pulled his sock up. As he re-laced his boot, a kid came in, his black Stetson
cocked back a little, grinning crookedly as though to the punch line of a randy joke he
didn’t quite get. When he spotted the two women who had been eyeing Eddie, he
walked over to their table and said something. He waved to the barman and made a
circling motion around the table with his finger, and told the barman to bring him a
Coors.
The bar had been filling, and a girl who didn’t look old enough to drive was waiting the
tables. After the barman poured the drinks the kid had ordered, he placed them on a
tray and pushed it toward the girl, who carried the tray over to the table. As she bent
to serve the drinks, the girl knocked over the kid’s beer. The kid grinned all the more
and said something. The women laughed, and the girl hurried back to the bar.
“What is it, Sylvia?” the bartender said.
The girl’s eyes were wet. “He said my tits were too big.”
“He said what?”
“That hick sonofabitch said the reason I knocked over his stupid beer was on account
of my tits being too big.”
The barman tried not to smile. He walked to the end of the bar. He seemed to be
studying the tall jar holding the rattlesnake. When he came back, the barman told
Sylvia to see if any of the girls needed help getting dressed. “I can handle the tables
for a while until you collect yourself.”
“All right.”
“Don’t be too long.”
After the girl left, Izzy said that Sylvia had just gotten into town. “Hitchhiked in from
Montana. Sheep ranch twenty miles outside of Billings. Been here not quite a week.
Hasn’t got used to the guys having their fun. Teasing her and such.”
“Who’s the cowboy?”
Izzy looked over at the table. “Oh, that’s Hanky.”
“Hanky?”
“My Sunday sweetie.”
Eddie grinned. “You got one for every day of the week?”
“Not yet. He’s one of my regulars, though. Comes in to see me after his wife’s gone
off to prayer meeting.”
“Kindly taking his life into his own hands, ain’t he?”
Izzy shook her head. “Closest Baptist church holding Sunday evening services is the
one way over in Reno. Be close to midnight before she’s home. Later, if she stops to
play the slots. It’s early, and he’s a bit quick on the draw so he’ll be home and tucked
in long before she’s back.”
“I thought maybe he was interested in one of them two at the table,” Eddie said.
“No, he’s just flirting with Delores and Sweet Sally, trying to get me jealous, see if I’ll
give him a Sunday special. He’ll be over directly.”
The orchestra began again.
“Bach,” Izzy said, and smiled. Joy.
They listened. When the barman came by, he picked up her empty glass, leaving
behind on the wood a circle of damp breath. She watched as it waned inward from the
edges until it disappeared altogether. “You know, sweetie, you’re not going to find
her in here.”
Eddie fingered the threads fraying from a sleeve of the shirt she had bought for him
on his last birthday, his and her interlinked initials sewn into the cuffs.
“You don’t seem like the type to even try to.”
“Didn’t know where I was until I came in.”
Izzy grinned. “I’ll bet you stopped at the Shell station.”
“How’d you know?”
“Sanderson’s brats are always sending some unsuspecting soul this way. They must
have got wind about Debbie’s thing for preachers because a month back they sent
one over, him wearing a white collar. He and his wife and a half dozen, snot-nosed-
bastard brats. The oldest even pinched my butt while Debbie was trying to talk his
parents into a threesome.”
The musicians played. As the bar filled with men, women came in by the back door.
Some wore little more than fancy underwear beneath see-throughs. Others could
have been Cinderella stopping by on her way to the ball. One woman wore a black
satin blouse and a tight, blue leather skirt with a whip looped around her belt and
boots that reached halfway up her thighs. There was no formality about them, and
they and the men seemed as well acquainted as Elks at a lodge meeting.
The bartender came up to Izzy. “I hate to ask you this, darlin’, but you being the
newbie and all.”
“That’s ok.”
“We’ve gotten too busy for me both to be waiting tables and working the bar.”
Izzy got down from the stool.
“It’ll just be for another minute ‘til Sylvia collects herself.” He looked at Eddie. “Let me
get you another on the house until she comes back on.”
Eddie raised his hand.
Izzy smiled. “I think my friend might be finished for the night.”
Eddie nodded. He reached for his wallet and lay a ten-dollar bill on top of the change
pile and twisted his stool around toward the door. As he started to rise, Izzy placed
two fingers on the inside of his wrist. “Thank you for not asking me why I became a
whore.” Her eyes swept the room. “For some men, my loving isn’t enough. They have
to have my soul too.”
He took her fingers from his wrist, and holding both her hands in his looked into the
girl’s eyes where he saw his reflected self dropping down a well with no bottom to it.
“Didn’t see the need.”
He gave her hands a squeeze. “You take care, sweetie.”
“You too.”
Eddie started for the door. He stopped and turned back. “I hope you get what you’re
after. Whatever it is.”
Izzy looked over to the table where the kid still stood. She looked at Eddie. “When
you get back, go see my mom. Let her know where I ended up. Maybe then I’ll be
ready to move on.” She gave him a wink. “And you never know who it might be with.”
Eddie smiled. “Couldn’t get that lucky.”
“You better sleep off the beers and shots in your truck before you head out. I’d let
you use my trailer out back, but you know . . . .”
“Gotta take care of business.”
“Girl’s got to pay the rent.”
Eddie raised his hand and turned and limped out into the night. Izzy went to where
the bartender had a tray waiting. “Got away from you, did he?” the bartender said.
“Had me confused with somebody else.”
* * *
When Eddie woke in the early morning dark, he pushed himself up from the truck seat
and looked out his windshield. Dust clouds boiling off the desert rolled across the
parking lot, distorting the air so that the world looked as though he were seeing it
through the bottom of a beer glass. A black-clothed woman may have gone out the
back door and into a trailer. He lay back down. When Eddie woke again, he was
shivering from the cold and his mouth tasted of barf. He slowly sat up and looked at
his watch.
“Ought to be a place opening up soon where I can get some breakfast.”
He started up the truck and followed the drive out to the road and stopped. From the
glove box he took a roadmap. He reached up and switched on the dome light and
unfolded the map and studied it. “Maybe I should stick to the back roads and stay out
of the fast lane.”
Eddie put his truck in gear and turned the other way from the Interstate. He drove
for about an hour until he pulled off the road and limped out into the desert.
When he came back to his truck, he walked up to the fender by the front tire. He
listened. No coming traffic. Nothing, not even a bird cackle. He unzipped, and when he
finished urinating he wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans and climbed back into
the truck and continued on up U.S. 95.
The orchestra came to the end of the music that some day would usher Izzy into her
new life. The musicians turned the pages.
“After I flunked sophomore chemistry this spring, she told me to get the fuck out of
her house. Her exact words.”
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Not only did I get the fuck out of her house, I got out of her house fucking.”
Izzy rolled up her right sleeve. “Let me show you. Better than any Reno-Front-Street-
tattoo.”
She shifted around on the stool and held out her arm so that the light illuminating the
Pleasure Menu shone upon it. Below the shoulder, her arm concaved in, a third of the
deltoid muscle carved away, the skin wrinkled and discolored to a deep purple, like an
eggplant someone had set in the oven to bake and forgotten.
Eddie started to reach out to touch her shoulder, but stopped. He emptied his beer.
When the barman brought him another, Eddie asked for a shooter of Old Granddad.
“I ain’t even gonna ask how you managed that one.”
The barman brought the shooter. Eddie downed it before the barman could leave and
handed back the glass and asked him to bring another.
“I was sitting at the kitchen table, working on a sketch of Aunt Iris for art class. Mom
was at the stove, frying cod and drinking wine. Too much wine. Maybe her third or
fourth glass. Like always, mad as hell about something, muttering goddamnit this and
fuck that.”
Izzy raised her glass as if to drink, but set it back on the bar. “Mom lifted the skillet,
like she was going to drain the grease in the sink, holding it on her side between us.
As she passed, I twisted my drawing around to show her, but she was already staring
at it, her hand holding the skillet handle quivering, the grease in the pan swishing
around the rim.
“She tipped the skillet, and the grease splattered over my shoulder. Cooked it like one
more piece of cod. When she ripped off my sweater, she took with it every stitch of
skin right down to the elbow. I must have passed out because the next thing I
remember is waking up in intensive care.”
The barman brought his shooter. Eddied took the drink and downed it, nodding as he
handed back the glass.
“After the social worker allowed me to go home, I had to bathe my arm three and four
times a day because of the puzzy seepage. The odor reminded me of dead fish with
their plucked out eyes that wash up on the beach that I could smell before I saw
them. That was me. You could smell me before you saw me. Know exactly what room
I was in before you came in. Or didn’t come in.
“In the summer, a quack surgeon Mom found in Columbus did the skin grafts. I read
in the paper a while ago he lost his license for over-billing insurance companies and
kicking back half to the patients.”
Izzy fingered the stubble on her shoulder, the hair as thick and fine as that on a
shaved cat. “He took the grafts from my lower abdomen. I hadn’t yet reached
puberty, and in a year or so when I did, not only did I have an ugly scar, but surprise!
I had an ugly scar that grew pussy hair. One I get to shave once a week just like I do
my legs.”
She pulled down her sleeve and smoothed out the material. “She missed my face only
because she was drunk. If she hadn’t, I’d be a star attraction with Barnum & Bailey
rather than in a whorehouse. Come see the girl who grows cunt hair on her face.
“When she told me to get out, I went to Iris. She bought me ‘Hector,’ that yellow
Plymouth parked in back. The next week I headed for California. Got as far as Battle
Mountain before my money ran out.”
She twisted around on the stool, her eyes sweeping over the bar. “I couldn’t have
ended up in a nicer place. I like the guys that come in. Got some regulars going now.”
Eddie emptied the shot glass the barman had set before him. He washed it down with
a good portion of the fishbowl. “Guess you’re glad to be clear of her.”
The girl shook her head. “There’s a dream I started having not long after I got here. I’
ll be driving Hector car west on I-80. My back seat stacked high and my trunk filled full
with everything I own. The sun is shining and a cloudless sky gleams turquoise blue.
The wind is blowing through the rolled-down window and whips my hair so that it
flows out like the tail of a mare at full gallop, and when me and Hector cross the state
line into Indiana, I let go with my best, cheerleader-touchdown whoop.
“As we cross the country, oceans of corn surround us, and I’m the intrepid voyager,
an Ishmael of the Mid-west, finally set free on my life’s journey. I sing along to every
song that plays on the radio, even the country western tunes when I have trouble
picking up rock stations west of the Mississippi, and I sing these all the louder
because Mom hated them so much, and for the first time in a long while I am happy.
“When we climb into the Rockies, Hector struggles up the steep grades. I keep
watching his engine temperature, and as the needle gets close to the red “H” I drop
our speed, sometimes down to 20 miles an hour. Steam smokes out of the radiator. I
hold my breath and ask God to please see us through to California. Please. If He will, I
would never ask for anything more. Oh, please, please, please.
“I pray and pray and pray until a sign tells me that we have crested the Continental
Divide. As Hector and me start our decent to the Pacific, the temperature gauge
drops. I begin to sing California Here We Come, repeating the verses over and over
until in the mirror I see my mother in the back seat, holding up a bottle of Drano, my
possessions strewn across the Interstate behind us.
“She scolds me not to be a nitwit. To watch the road. I do. In the mirror I am
watching her too. As she twists off the bottle cap, my fingers feel glued to the
steering wheel, and I want with all my heart to let go. Bottle in hand, she reaches
over the seat, smiling, her gleaming white teeth pointed, sharp as a she wolf’s, and
pours the Drano over my head, like a priest blessing me into a new life might
administer a baptismal, burning into my scalp, eating away my skin, blinding my eyes.
I finally let go the steering wheel and reach up and my hair comes out in handfuls.
Hector careens off the road and crashes through the guardrail. As we’re falling, my
mother leans over the seat and whispers in my ear, asking me if I really believed
escaping her would be all that easy. Asking me why I was so silly to believe it even
possible.”
Izzy emptied her glass. She raised it to the barman, but his back was to her, pouring
a drink for the fat man who had left the tarot cards and now stood at the far end of
the counter. When he saw the girl, he puckered his thick lips at her. She shrugged.
She lowered her glass to the bar and turned to Eddie, who sat staring into his cupped
hands. Izzy reached over and took his left into both of hers. She rubbed a thumb
over his ring finger. “You’re not married, sweetie?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
“Divorced?”
When he still did not answer, Izzy reached up and jostled his shoulder. “Hey, anybody
home?”
Eddie shook his head.
“I hope you’re not queer. One wonders in every now and again. Why I don’t know.”
She squinted at him with one eye. “You don’t look like a pillow biter.”
Eddie lifted his fishbowl. “No. Not yet, leastwise.”
She ran her fingertips through his hair above his ear. “Good looking guy like you
never been married?”
“Yeah. I was.”
“Long ago?”
“Long enough.”
Izzy raised her glass to the barman again who this time saw her. They sat. When the
orchestra began an adagio, Izzy asked if he cared to slow dance, and Eddie told her
about his gimpy leg.
“You sure you just don’t know how? I can teach you.”
Eddie lifted his boot and rested its heel on his knee. He loosened the laces and pulled
his foot part way out and rolled down his sock. She bent forward and ran her finger
from the outside ball of his anklebone to the inside ball along the jagged scar that
sliced his Achilles tendon.
“Nice,” she said.
“Not as nice as yours.”
“At least I can dance. Girl who can’t dance doesn’t stand a chance in her life.”
“Her life,” Eddie repeated.
“What about it?”
He looked at the girl’s neck. Her breasts. Her eyes. “You know what a Y-scar is?”
“It’s what you get when you’ve been autopsied.”
Eddie pulled his sock up. As he re-laced his boot, a kid came in, his black Stetson
cocked back a little, grinning crookedly as though to the punch line of a randy joke he
didn’t quite get. When he spotted the two women who had been eyeing Eddie, he
walked over to their table and said something. He waved to the barman and made a
circling motion around the table with his finger, and told the barman to bring him a
Coors.
The bar had been filling, and a girl who didn’t look old enough to drive was waiting the
tables. After the barman poured the drinks the kid had ordered, he placed them on a
tray and pushed it toward the girl, who carried the tray over to the table. As she bent
to serve the drinks, the girl knocked over the kid’s beer. The kid grinned all the more
and said something. The women laughed, and the girl hurried back to the bar.
“What is it, Sylvia?” the bartender said.
The girl’s eyes were wet. “He said my tits were too big.”
“He said what?”
“That hick sonofabitch said the reason I knocked over his stupid beer was on account
of my tits being too big.”
The barman tried not to smile. He walked to the end of the bar. He seemed to be
studying the tall jar holding the rattlesnake. When he came back, the barman told
Sylvia to see if any of the girls needed help getting dressed. “I can handle the tables
for a while until you collect yourself.”
“All right.”
“Don’t be too long.”
After the girl left, Izzy said that Sylvia had just gotten into town. “Hitchhiked in from
Montana. Sheep ranch twenty miles outside of Billings. Been here not quite a week.
Hasn’t got used to the guys having their fun. Teasing her and such.”
“Who’s the cowboy?”
Izzy looked over at the table. “Oh, that’s Hanky.”
“Hanky?”
“My Sunday sweetie.”
Eddie grinned. “You got one for every day of the week?”
“Not yet. He’s one of my regulars, though. Comes in to see me after his wife’s gone
off to prayer meeting.”
“Kindly taking his life into his own hands, ain’t he?”
Izzy shook her head. “Closest Baptist church holding Sunday evening services is the
one way over in Reno. Be close to midnight before she’s home. Later, if she stops to
play the slots. It’s early, and he’s a bit quick on the draw so he’ll be home and tucked
in long before she’s back.”
“I thought maybe he was interested in one of them two at the table,” Eddie said.
“No, he’s just flirting with Delores and Sweet Sally, trying to get me jealous, see if I’ll
give him a Sunday special. He’ll be over directly.”
The orchestra began again.
“Bach,” Izzy said, and smiled. Joy.
They listened. When the barman came by, he picked up her empty glass, leaving
behind on the wood a circle of damp breath. She watched as it waned inward from the
edges until it disappeared altogether. “You know, sweetie, you’re not going to find
her in here.”
Eddie fingered the threads fraying from a sleeve of the shirt she had bought for him
on his last birthday, his and her interlinked initials sewn into the cuffs.
“You don’t seem like the type to even try to.”
“Didn’t know where I was until I came in.”
Izzy grinned. “I’ll bet you stopped at the Shell station.”
“How’d you know?”
“Sanderson’s brats are always sending some unsuspecting soul this way. They must
have got wind about Debbie’s thing for preachers because a month back they sent
one over, him wearing a white collar. He and his wife and a half dozen, snot-nosed-
bastard brats. The oldest even pinched my butt while Debbie was trying to talk his
parents into a threesome.”
The musicians played. As the bar filled with men, women came in by the back door.
Some wore little more than fancy underwear beneath see-throughs. Others could
have been Cinderella stopping by on her way to the ball. One woman wore a black
satin blouse and a tight, blue leather skirt with a whip looped around her belt and
boots that reached halfway up her thighs. There was no formality about them, and
they and the men seemed as well acquainted as Elks at a lodge meeting.
The bartender came up to Izzy. “I hate to ask you this, darlin’, but you being the
newbie and all.”
“That’s ok.”
“We’ve gotten too busy for me both to be waiting tables and working the bar.”
Izzy got down from the stool.
“It’ll just be for another minute ‘til Sylvia collects herself.” He looked at Eddie. “Let me
get you another on the house until she comes back on.”
Eddie raised his hand.
Izzy smiled. “I think my friend might be finished for the night.”
Eddie nodded. He reached for his wallet and lay a ten-dollar bill on top of the change
pile and twisted his stool around toward the door. As he started to rise, Izzy placed
two fingers on the inside of his wrist. “Thank you for not asking me why I became a
whore.” Her eyes swept the room. “For some men, my loving isn’t enough. They have
to have my soul too.”
He took her fingers from his wrist, and holding both her hands in his looked into the
girl’s eyes where he saw his reflected self dropping down a well with no bottom to it.
“Didn’t see the need.”
He gave her hands a squeeze. “You take care, sweetie.”
“You too.”
Eddie started for the door. He stopped and turned back. “I hope you get what you’re
after. Whatever it is.”
Izzy looked over to the table where the kid still stood. She looked at Eddie. “When
you get back, go see my mom. Let her know where I ended up. Maybe then I’ll be
ready to move on.” She gave him a wink. “And you never know who it might be with.”
Eddie smiled. “Couldn’t get that lucky.”
“You better sleep off the beers and shots in your truck before you head out. I’d let
you use my trailer out back, but you know . . . .”
“Gotta take care of business.”
“Girl’s got to pay the rent.”
Eddie raised his hand and turned and limped out into the night. Izzy went to where
the bartender had a tray waiting. “Got away from you, did he?” the bartender said.
“Had me confused with somebody else.”
* * *
When Eddie woke in the early morning dark, he pushed himself up from the truck seat
and looked out his windshield. Dust clouds boiling off the desert rolled across the
parking lot, distorting the air so that the world looked as though he were seeing it
through the bottom of a beer glass. A black-clothed woman may have gone out the
back door and into a trailer. He lay back down. When Eddie woke again, he was
shivering from the cold and his mouth tasted of barf. He slowly sat up and looked at
his watch.
“Ought to be a place opening up soon where I can get some breakfast.”
He started up the truck and followed the drive out to the road and stopped. From the
glove box he took a roadmap. He reached up and switched on the dome light and
unfolded the map and studied it. “Maybe I should stick to the back roads and stay out
of the fast lane.”
Eddie put his truck in gear and turned the other way from the Interstate. He drove
for about an hour until he pulled off the road and limped out into the desert.
When he came back to his truck, he walked up to the fender by the front tire. He
listened. No coming traffic. Nothing, not even a bird cackle. He unzipped, and when he
finished urinating he wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans and climbed back into
the truck and continued on up U.S. 95.
| r.kv.r.y. quarterly fall 2008 winter 2009 fiction debbie's ranch part ii by scott kauffman (read part i here) |