Read Online Big Bad Love by Larry Brown - Free Book Online

just one, a small one, to sit and pet and listen to it purr. I knew they could be cruel and vicious, but I knew they needed love also just like everyone else. I thought about Mildred in that other man’s arms, and how fine she looked in a bathing suit. Right about then I started missing her, and the loneliness I have been speaking of really started to set in.

Gold Nuggets
    It was a bar somewhere between Orange Grove and Pascagoula, one of those places where they charge you nothing to get in and then five dollars for a ten-ounce Schlitz. It was dark. Everybody had on sunglasses but me. My friend had gone off and I didn’t know what had happened to him. I knew what I was, though, and I was trying to learn to live with it. I thought if I could just make it through the night, that everything would be sort of okay when the sun came up.
    This place sold nude dancing. Just Ts, no As. I said, Well, bring on the dancing girls. I knew I was suffering from alcohol poisoning, and that it had settled in my brain. I could drink one beer and I’d start thinking differently, about everything. This little girl who had not even graduated from high school pranced out on the stage waving a scarf around herhead and stumbling in her high heels. Her poor little titties were about a 32A.
    And then like sharks two women glided in on each side of me. The one on the left had dark hair in her armpits. Tremendous titties. I checked them out and drank half of my ten ounces, then eyed the right flank. Blonde, maybe pregnant. Already stroking the inside of my thigh.
    Oooooooh. Ooo and 000 and 000. She scratched the head of it like a mosquito bite. She turned her head and yawned and came back beaming. They had nude paintings on the walls, sort of a celebration of sex, which I certainly had nothing against if I could just celebrate a little of it myself.
    The little chickadee up on the stage was bent over in my face, revealing all her secrets, but I figured this kid already had two kids of her own at home and a babysitter waiting for her to show up. It made me feel slightly perverted.
    â€œWhy don’t you buy me a drank?” the one on the left said. “I’d love to have a drank.”
    I fumbled around for my money. She helped me peel off three ones and raised her hand. They hadn’t even set it on the table when the other one leaned over and said she wanted one, too. So I bought her one. And told her to bring me another beer. I didn’t care. I wanted to wake up broke and sober. I figured if I couldn’t buy a drink, I couldn’t get a drink. We jawed some old shit, it didn’t matter what we said. We all knew the score. Their job was to rob me, my job was to pay for the robbery. All night long if possible.
    I picked up the blonde’s drink and tasted it when she wasn’t looking. Grape Kool-Aid. Well, I thought, I don’t have to putup with this shit. She got up and took her drink with her and, I don’t know, poured it out or something, then came back all friendly wanting another one.
    I’d gotten surly and terse. I was feeling mean. I’d had about all their shit I wanted to take. I figured there were some big dark mean motherfuckers waiting back in the shadows to break my head and roll me when I went to the bathroom. The little beaverette up on the stage had gotten down on her hands, legs spread, pumping that thing up and down. And I just shook my head.
    Blonde, she leaned over, sort of stroked my neck.
    â€œYou gonna buy me another drank?” she said.
    â€œBuy your own damn drink.”
    She looked offended. “Well, honey, if you don’t buy me another one I’ll have to get up and go.”
    I told her not to let the door hit her in the ass. Of course she got all huffy and left. Then I turned on the other one.
    â€œAnd you,” I said. “You can just get your ass up and go, too. Fucking grape Kool-Aid. You want me to tell you what you can do with your grape