A Piece of My Heart Read Online Free

bad for your features, know that?” the woman said indifferently, removing her hand so he could see her small face.
    â€œWhat’d you do to it?” He motioned at the car.
    â€œHe says the pump’s busted, but I don’t know nothin about it. I know it stopped.” She pinched up a piece of her blouse and pulled it away from the skin.
    â€œSo where’s he gone?” he said.
    â€œVariadero, building a hamburger palace.” She shaded her eyes again and studied him as if she had heard something she hadn’t liked. He slid in and waggled the key.
    â€œIt wouldn’t do
me
no good to go turning nothin.” She stepped up into the shade of the car and plumped at her hair.
    He tried the key. The motor turned over nicely, but quit short of starting. He held the accelerator down and twiddled the key back and forth trying to spark it, but it wouldn’t fire, and he finallystopped and squinted at her standing outside in the heat. She looked a lot like a lot of women he’d passed up, little blue-star ear studs, hot skin that made her look older than she was. It made him just want to slide away.
    She stiffened her mouth. “Half them’s Larry’s,” she said, flicking her eyes away, “He drinks his breakfast on the way to work, I drink mine on the way home.” She laughed. “I don’t pick up no hitchikers, though.”
    â€œNobody said you did,” he said, staring at the big chrome dashboard trying to figure if one of the gauges was measuring what was wrong with the engine.
    â€œI don’t, either,” she said.
    â€œThat’s good,” he said, and climbed out. “Look here, I can’t get your boat fired up.” He flicked the sweat off his chin.
    â€œWhat the hell am I supposed to do?” she said, glaring out at him.
    â€œI’ll take you down the road,” he said.
    â€œCurvo,” she said, raveling her mouth into a smirk.
    â€œHow far is it?”
    â€œWhat difference does it make if you’re going that direction?” she said.
    â€œNone,” he said, and started back toward the truck.
    She reached inside, yanked up a split package of beer, and came behind him. “I got my valuables out,” she said, and laughed.
    â€œYou going to leave it blinking?” he said, looking unhappily at the beer.
    â€œHell with it,” she said, and climbed in the truck.
    She sat high up on the seat, her hand flounced out the window letting the breeze flit between her fingers. She was different the first moment she got in the truck, a little more fragile a framework, he thought, than she had been standing outside beside the car. She had a small round bruise underneath her ear which she worried with her fingers, and every time the wind stripped her hair back against her temples, he got another look at it.
    â€œAir temp makes a difference,” she said, watching the hot air through her fingers. “They put ’em in trucks.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    She looked at him, then turned her face into the breeze.
    â€œWhat is it your husband does?” he said.
    She cranked the window up and gave him a stern look. “Hod carrier. He’s eight years younger than I am.” She reached forward, ripped the package of beer a little more and set a can on the glove box door. “California’s the other way, ain’t it?” she said, pulling the top.
    â€œIs that right?”
    â€œYou done stole something, ain’t you?” she said, letting her head roll against the window frame.
    â€œOff.”
    â€œYou ain’t stole
nothin
, then. I steal
off
every day, but it don’t get me anyplace.” She laughed. “You think I look old?”
    He looked at her short neck, and he tried to make out he was estimating. “How old are you?” he said.
    â€œThat ain’t the point,” she said, having another drink of the beer and setting the can on the armrest.