A Piece of My Heart Read Online Free Page B

to see the white luff of fabric between her blouse and her shoulder showing the curve of her breast, and it made him feel a little shabby and a little bad and he disliked himself.
    The woman let her breath out slowly. “I had a friend that had that Buick, just sitting in his garage.” She kept looking at the desert. “I told him if he’d let me pay it off a little bit every month, I’d buy it. I always wanted a Buick, and it never seemed like I’d get one. It’s queer to have to get down before all your dreams start coming true.” She looked at him and her nostrils got wide. “Anyway, I quit the LDS right there,” she said, “and got the hell out of that Salt Lake City. Let me just tell you, don’t be fooled by them. They’re cheap-ass, I swear to God.”
    He looked at her blouse again to see in the little space, but she had swiveled sideways of him and the space was gone, and he let his eyes wander on back to the road.
    She tapped the can against her teeth. “I think I’m better now,” she said. “Less quick to judge. It ain’t easy to have a window on yourself.” She slid back in the seat with her arms folded across her stomach as if she felt better. “Where you going?”
    â€œArkansas,” he said.
    â€œWhere’s your wife at? Did you leave her home to take care of your babies?”
    â€œI didn’t say I was married,” he said, feeling itchy.
    â€œI know it.” She sighed. “You ain’t hid
nothin
, have you?You’re right up on top with everything.” She smiled.
    â€œI guess not,” he said.
    â€œI ain’t getting after you,” she said.
    â€œAin’t nothing to get after,” he said. “How come you to get married again so quick?”
    â€œBad luck,” she said, and laughed and made her shoulders jerk. “Why don’t you drink a beer? I’d feel better if you drank one.”
    He took a look in the mirror and saw nothing but the markers flashing back. “I’m fine,” he said.
    She pushed a ring top out the ventilator. “Let me slide over—don’t nobody know me at Curvo anyway.”
    She shoved across the seat and socked her head against his shoulder and put her heels on the dashboard. She let the can of beer, a soft tuft of foam pushing up through the tap, rest on her stomach, and arced her fingers around his thigh. And all he could think was that he wasn’t going to do anything to stop it.
    She held the half-warm beer can up to his face and rolled it back and forth. “Larry likes that,” she said, smiling. “It makes him relax.”
    He looked at her hiding up under his shoulder, her green eyes with the tiny black centers peeping at him, and reached around her so that her face was drawn up against his chest.
    â€œDo I look thirty-two?” she said, her eyes mounting with tears.
    â€œGod, no,” he said. “You think I look thirty-four?”
    â€œYou’re married,” she said.
    â€œSo are you.”
    â€œThat’s right,” she said. “Let’s don’t talk about that now.” One of the tears broke and wobbled onto her lip.
    â€œI want to know how you got married again,” he said, holding the truck to the road.
    She hugged him so the tear got wiped off, and got her arms around his stomach. “Oh, I went to Albuquerque with my car and moved out to Alameda. You know where that is?”
    â€œI ain’t been there but twice,” he said, feeling warm inside.
    â€œIt ain’t far,” she said. “I took a little house by myself and drove to work every night at Howard’s. I call it Howard’s.” She drew one fingernail up his leg and made the back of his neck cold. “SoI was driving my car one night along this road where there wasn’t any light, drinking Ezra Brooks. And got off the pavement somehow and hit this guy straight on and killed him,