Read Online Blue Eyes by Jerome Charyn - Free Book Online

carried prophylactics in his rosin bag, Charles who could unhook a bra with the end of his bow, Charles who grabbed a wife away from Coen.
    â€œMore carrots,” he grunted. “More peas. Manfred, do you ever use the pistol range at Rodman’s Neck?”
    â€œNo. I play ping-pong instead.”
    Judith bit her ice cream spoon. “What’s ping-pong, Daddy Charles?”
    â€œAsk your Daddy Fred.”
    Stephanie brought the coffee mugs and volunteered to tell Judith.
    â€œIt’s for mutts,” Coen said. “For people who hate the sun. We hit little balls on a green table with rubber sandwiches.”
    Coen went down the elevator with an apple in his hand. He saw some red hair in the bushes across the street. He ran into the park. “Chino,” he hollered. “Come on. Show your face.” Nothing came out of the bushes. “You keep shadowing me, I’ll kill you, Reyes.” Wagging his pistol Coen blustered deeper into the park. His apple got lost. He was behaving like a glom, chasing wigs in a bush. He put his pistol away.
    The Dwarf’s senior bouncer, a former handwrestling queen at the Women’s House of Detention called Janice, made herself Odile’s churchwarden and benefactress. She cut in soon as Dorotea placed a hand near Odile’s crotch. She wouldn’t allow hickeys or dry humps that close to the bar. None of the regulars, short or tall, could dance with a face in Odile’s chest. Sweeney, a slighter girl, and the bouncer’s partner and cousin, tried to soften Janice’s stand. “Sister, aren’t you coming down a little too heavy? Pick on somebody else. How come Lenore can kiss in the front room, and Dorotea can’t?”
    â€œLenore isn’t dancing with Odile, that’s how come. Odile draws the sisters like flies in a sugar pot. I won’t tolerate it when I’m on call.”
    â€œYou’re jealous, that’s the truth. You want Odile sitting down where you can watch her all the time.”
    â€œSister, you shut up.”
    And Sweeney had to concede; her cousin owned the biggest pair of brass knuckles in New York. She could afford to back off from Janice without compromising her position at The Dwarf. Anyway she had news for Odile.
    â€œThere’s a man outside looking for you, baby. A pimp with a funny shoe. I’d swear he’s that Chinaman who pesters the girls, only there’s something different about him today.”
    â€œShit,” Odile said. “Shit.” She might have used stronger talk in describing the Chinaman if Janice hadn’t forbidden swearwords in the front room. Still, she broke from Dorotea to catch the Chinaman through a slice of window between the curtain and the curtainrod. She had to control her laugh or deal with Janice’s sour disposition. The Chinaman was wearing an enormous shoe on his left foot, a crooked coffee-colored shoe, a shoe with a hump in the back and the thickest sole she had ever seen; it had wrinkles on both sides along the leather, ugly tan laces with plastic nibs half eaten away, and it climbed to the middle of the Chinaman’s calf, where it bit into the trousers and ruined the line of his cuff. He also had some ratty hair in his eyes. He swayed on his hip, pivoting off his plainer, lower shoe. Odile moved over to the door, near enough to Sweeney at least, and spit warnings in the Chinaman’s direction.
    â€œChinaman, you ever rip me off again, you come through my window once more, you toy with my garter belts and my movie clothes, you touch my sandwiches, and you’ll need a special shoe for your other foot.”
    The Chinaman lost his sway; he had hoped to charm Odile, show her the intricate turns he could accomplish with Arnold’s boot for a rudder.
    â€œOdette, I thought you’d like it. I stole it on account of you. It belongs to a Puerto Rican stoolpigeon.”
    Odile was affected by the Chinaman’s droop, by