Read Online Pretty Ugly: A Novel by Kirker Butler - Free Book Online Page A

Maybe it was just Starr.
    Miranda wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Dammit,” she whispered. “Why can’t something good ever happen to me ?” She turned to Bailey, who’d been staring into space, thinking about food. “Take the bags inside, baby. I’ll be right there.”
    As Bailey pushed the luggage cart through the busy hotel lobby, Miranda stood outside ripping the Shooting Notice into hundreds of tiny pieces, imagining it was Theresa’s stupid face.

 
    chapter six
    In a dark living room that reeked of old man’s pajamas and impending death, Ray slumped in a tattered easy chair and fought to keep his eyes open. His hospice patient, Marvin Daye, lay unconscious in the rented hospital bed next to him, wheezing through what was left of his lung. Marvin had smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels a day for sixty-four years, and for the past sixty-four nights, Ray’s job was to sit and watch him die. It was a pretty sweet gig. Every few hours Ray would change the old man’s catheter and roll him to prevent bedsores. On the rare occasion Marvin was awake, Ray would read to him or try to persuade the old man to drink some broth, but mostly he just changed his IV and watched ESPN. Marvin’s prolonged death also allowed Ray to play grab bag with three shoe boxes overflowing with medications. Ray had been catatonic in the chair for two hours. He was pretty sure it was Dilaudid. Dilaudid was the shit.
    Faint music emanated from somewhere. Ray looked around for its source. The air felt like pudding. It was a good fifteen seconds before he recognized it as his ringtone: Here I am, on the road again. There I am, on the stage. Here I go, playing star again. There I go, turn the page …
    He unclipped the phone from his waistband and tried to speak. His tongue was pasty and thick. “This”—he cleared his throat—“this is Ray.”
    “They stole my show!” Miranda’s voice was so loud he almost didn’t need the phone to hear her. He slumped a little deeper in his chair.
    “What?”
    “They stole my show! They just up and stole it!”
    Every weekend, Ray got at least one call from Miranda complaining about some perceived slight. The week before she had him paged at the hospital.
    “Does Bailey walk like a softball player?”
    Ray had just spent an hour in the ER helping remove an arrow from a fourteen-year-old girl’s leg.
    “I don’t even know what that means,” he said.
    “Yes, you do. They walk with that stride, you know? Like they know how to fix a motorcycle.”
    “Are you drunk?”
    Miranda produced the sigh that had become their shorthand for moving on from dead-end conversations. A lot of these calls ended with that sigh.
    “Who—what show … what are you talking about?” He needed water.
    “My pageant show! About me and Bailey? Remember? The one I’ve been working on for five years? How could you forget about that? Someone stole my idea, and now they’re doing my show about someone else!”
    Oh. That show.
    “Well … I’m really sorry, babe. That really … you know, sucks. It sucks. It does. It sucks. Sorry.”
    There was a long silence before, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
    “Um. I…” He exhaled. “What—what do you want me to say?”
    “You could try to be a little more sympathetic. Dammit, Ray, why can’t you just support me for once?”
    Ray sat up a little straighter. The peaceful, easy feeling of the Dilaudid had vanished, leaving behind a growing haze of impatience and exhaustion—serenity with a hangover.
    “You’re right, Miranda. I don’t support you nearly enough. You know what, how about this … what if I quit one of my jobs and only work seventy hours a week so you and Bailey can stay home and we can sit around all weekend and support each other. How’s that sound?”
    Silence.
    “’Cause I’m happy to try having a family.” He breathed. “I’m already paying for one.”
    After another moment of silence, he heard his wife’s