“That’s one hunderd percent goddam right. My mama’s comin up from Mozelle tomorrow in the truck.”
“Don’t you have a car? Or did it break down?”
“Car’s runnin okay for a junker, but Harry ain’t goan be ridin in it. Or drivin it ever again. He was workin one of those goddam Manpower jobs last month. Fell in a ditch and a gravel truck run over him while it was backin up. Broke his spine.”
I closed my eyes and saw the smashed remains of Vince’s truck being hauled down Main Street behind the wrecker from Gogie’s Sunoco. Blood all over the inside of the cracked windshield. “I’m sorry to hear that, Miz Templeton.”
“He goan live but he ain’t never goan walk again. He goan sit in a wheelchair and pee in a bag, that’s what
She started to cry.
“I’m runnin out on two months’ back rent, but that don’t confront me none. You know what
There was a long, watery snork in my ear.
“You know what? The mailman been givin me the glad eye, and I think for twenty dollars I’d roll him a fuck on the goddam livin room floor. If the goddam neighbors across the street couldn’t watch us while we ’us goin at it. Can’t very well take him in the bedroom, can I? That’s where my brokeback husband is.” She rasped out a laugh. “Tell you what, why don’t you come on over in your fancy convertible? Take me to a motel sommers. Spend a little extra, get one with a settin-room. Rosette can watch TV and I’ll roll
I said nothing. I’d just had an idea that was as bright as a flashbulb.
There was a man
“You there, Mr. Puddentane? No? If not, fuck you and goodb—”
“Don’t hang up, Miz Templeton. Suppose I were to pay your back rent and throw in a hundred bucks on top of that?” It was far more than I needed to pay for what I wanted, but I had it and she needed it.
“Mister, right now I’d do you with my
“You don’t have to do me at all, Miz Templeton. All you have to do is meet me in that parking lot at the end of the street. And bring me something.”
It was dark by the time I got to the parking lot of the Montgomery Ward warehouse, and the rain had started to thicken a little, the way it does when it’s trying to be sleet. That doesn’t happen often in the hill country south of Dallas, but sometimes isn’t never. I hoped I could make it back to Jodie without sliding off the road.
Ivy was sitting behind the wheel of a sad old sedan with rusty rocker panels and a cracked rear window. She got into my Ford and immediately leaned toward the heater vent, which was going full blast. She was wearing two flannel shirts instead of a coat, and shivering.
“Feels good. That Chev’s colder’n a witch’s tit. Heater’s bust. You bring the money, Mr. Puddentane?”
I gave her an envelope. She opened it and riffled through some of the twenties that had been sitting on the top shelf of my closet ever since I’d collected on my World Series bet at Faith Financial over a year before. She lifted her substantial bottom off the seat, shoved the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans, then fumbled in the breast pocket of the shirt closer to her body. She brought out a key and slapped it into my hand.
“That do you?”
It did me very well. “It’s a dupe, right?”
“Just like you told me. I had it made at the hardware store on McLaren Street. Why you want a key to that glorified shithouse? For two hundred, you could rent it for four months.”
“I’ve got my reasons. Tell me about the neighbors across the street. The ones that could watch you and the mailman doing it on the living room floor.”
She shifted uneasily and pulled her shirts a little closer across her equally substantial bosom. “I was just jokin about that.”
“I know.” I didn’t, and I didn’t care. “I just want to know if the neighbors can really see into your living room.”
“Course they can, and I could see into theirs, if they didn’t have curtains. Which I woulda bought for our place, could I afford em. When it comes to privacy, we all might as well be livin outside. I s’pose I coulda put up burlap, scavenged it from right over there”—she pointed to the trash bins lined up against the east side of the warehouse—“but it looks so slutty.”
