Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

“I ain’t attracted to you,” she told him. She put a hand through her hair, made it worse. “And plus I’m married.”

“Yeah?” Jamey said. “Then why you letting me in at all hours?”

“Something to do,” she said. She finished her beer in two big swallows, waggled the empty bottle at him. “Next,” she said. Jamey handed her his own beer. She took it from him with one hand, using her fingers to hold his hand still. She looked at him, her eyes glittery and drunken, her eyebrow raised. “Next?” she said, and Jamey knew she’d probably used this line before, when she was younger, getting the boys at the bar to buy her drink after drink, thrilling them with her touch.

“You tell me,” Jamey said.

She laughed, the same loud caw she’d let loose at the truck stop. Her skin gathered at her neck. Jamey wanted to tell her what she looked like to him, which was old. He craved the sharp lines of Perry’s chin and neck, no skin to gather at all. Even so, he hadn’t been touched by any female aside from his mother in a long while, and he could feel parts of himself starting to pay attention.

Myra let him go. “I’m a very sexual person,” she said, putting up her hand to catch a burp. “It just oozes out of me, I can’t help it. In case you got the wrong idea.”

“I understand,” Jamey said. “But I still think you’re a liar.” He knew women like this needed to be challenged. Corrected. Seen through.

This seemed to delight her. “A liar, huh? Maybe you got me. But I still don’t want nothing to do with you. I can flirt if I want to, no harm done there.”

“That’s okay, Miss Tipton,” he said. His hands suddenly felt empty, purposeless, without a beer to hold on to. He leaned over, took Myra’s foot in his hands, began rubbing her ankle the way his momma liked. Myra stiffened at first, but soon she melted back into the couch, closing her eyes, saying Mmm . Myra had bony ankles, creamy and smooth. Jamey wondered if Perry had the same ones. Jamey looked down the short hallway, toward the door he knew led to Perry’s room, wondered how much longer.

“You ever been arrested?” she asked him.

Jamey stopped what he was doing. “What? Why you asking me that?” He almost yelled it. He’d been lulled into thinking she’d been lulled. He’d been nearly enjoying rubbing the ankles of a woman that wasn’t his momma. Why wouldn’t she just drop off?

Myra sat up, planting her feet on the carpet, rolling her shoulders like she was trying to wake her body up. “My daughter got arrested today,” she said. “Oh, I told you that, right? When you just happened to stop by the truck stop. You see what I mean? You’re like a bee in my bonnet. You want something, I just know it. And to be honest with you I’m nearly too tired to fight you off.”

Now Jamey was the one who felt challenged, seen through. He put his hand on the knobby robe over her knee, pushed a little. If he said anything, tried to deny that he was always hanging around, lurking as she’d called it, he knew she’d have him, she’d know it was true. “I’m sorry to hear that about your daughter,” he said. “Your daughter a bad seed or something?”

“I raised her right,” Myra was saying. “She goes her own way, which is how I taught her. No one to blame but herself.” She tipped her head back, finished the beer he’d handed her. Jamey watched the delicate veins in her neck moving with each swallow. Again Jamey’s mind went to Perry’s room, the possibilities there. He was with Myra and he was thinking of Perry. It had been a long time. Such a long, long time since there had been anything touching him, or anything for him to touch.

Myra dropped the bottle at her feet. “Why don’t you do something, already?” she asked. She could barely get the words out. “What are you waiting for?”

It was like she was reading his mind, like she saw his need and was here to help. It repulsed him, it scared him, how much he wanted what she had to give. He stood, meaning to move away from her, pretend to go for another beer, anything to stop whatever it was that was happening, but she caught him, reached right up and held him steady by his belt buckle, her other hand a wild spider at his crotch.

“I can do this,” she said. “Let me.”

He pushed her hand but she held fast. “I know you’re lonely like I am,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

And it was true, she knew what she was doing, at least more than any girl he’d been with in the past. She unzipped him quickly, her hand plunging in, strong and sure, kneading him and petting him until Jamey wanted to lean in and fuck that hand, hard, show that he was a man after all.

But in the next second her hand was gone, was up to her mouth, was catching the amber spurts of vomit she was trying so hard to hold in. She ran for the bathroom, catching her knee on the jamb, and after the door slammed Jamey heard her heaving into the toilet.

“I’m so sorry,” she called to him. “I didn’t eat nothing for dinner.”

“It’s okay, Miss Tipton,” he called back, trying to stuff himself back behind the zipper. “I’ll just see you later.”

He opened and closed the front door loudly. Then he walked careful, quiet steps over to Perry’s door. When he had shut himself in the darkness of her room he realized two things that nearly paralyzed him: he didn’t have a plan for how to leave, and he still had his erection. First things first , he thought, and felt his way in the dark to her empty bed.

JIM CLOCKED OUT, drove home in the yellow morning. Walked through the front door like he was dragging chains. For a moment, even though he knew better, he saw Perry’s shut door and thought she might be just beyond it, lying in bed or fixing to go out her window. Then he remembered: he’d need to check the cereal box on top of the fridge for money, need to call down to the courthouse to see if bail had been set. His body felt pummeled, like he’d been worked over and only now, hours after the beating, could his muscles relax into their ache.

The night before, he’d gotten a call asking him to fill in. One of the newer guards up and quit, said he couldn’t come in no more. Jim hadn’t blamed him. If he ever found something better himself, he might make the very same call. And it had been a relief, having somewhere to go. Not having to watch Myra drink herself silly while Perry slept in a jail cell. Myra was already three beers in by the time he’d left for his shift. He’d put his hand on the top of her head, in the same gentle way he remembered his father doing to him. “We got to do something about her,” he’d said.

“She’ll be fine,” Myra had answered. Cheersed him. It used to be he could see through these spells Myra had, these bouts of harshness, see right through them to the pain she was feeling. Now he didn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t all that worried, and maybe he should quit worrying, too. Or pretending to worry. Doing his duty as a stepfather.

But she was drinking, right there in front of him. That counted for something. He’d kept his hand there on her head, leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “We’ll figure it out,” he’d told her.

It made him feel better, anyway, saying it out loud. “Okay,” she’d said.

The shift had gone by as they all did, some hours blurring into the next and some hours like listening to the second hand of a clock. Each time he’d looked in on Herman he’d tried to put on a friendly face, but the man never met his eye. Stayed hunched at his desk or curled facing the wall on his cot. It couldn’t be helped, Jim decided. And at least now the prisoner knew just how far he’d be allowed to take it.

He’d eaten a cold sandwich at about three in the morning. Washed it down with inky coffee. The rest of his shift, the mixture burbled in his throat, bloomed into his mouth in hot, wet blasts. The desk guard and the other walker had just shrugged when he asked after Tums. He’d driven home as the sun was rising, thinking how he could breathe fire, wasn’t that something.