All I Have in This World Read Online Free Page A

anyway?”
    She was pulling off the T-shirt she always wore under her uniform. It, too, reeked. She threw it across the room at him. He batted it away lest it land on his head and cover his mouth.
    â€œYou know what it is. Tartar sauce!”
    â€œNo, I mean what’s it made out of ?” said Brantley.
    â€œMayonnaise mostly. I have no idea what those green specks are that are in it.”
    â€œNor do you want to know.”
    â€œExactly,” she said. She had unhooked her bra and thrown it in the corner and was pulling on her Pretenders T-shirt. They’d seen them last year in Saint Louis and Chrissie Hynde talked shit about Ohio where she was from and on the ride home Carmen was all, like, in a British accent, “I live in London, England, and I have escaped the exasperating Midwest never to return except to play my songs for you poor unfortunates,” even though Carmen hated Wentzville more than Brantley did even, she was always talking about moving to Arizona because she’d flown over it once on the way to her cousin’s wedding in California and everybody on the street had a swimming pool in their backyard.
    Brantley knew better than to raise himself up off the bed, where he was propped on pillows to rest his back, which hurt after his shift from all the bending over (even though this week all he had been doing was standing along the line and signaling Arthur, who was running the crane that lowered the chassis onto the body, to move a few inches left or right), and reach around and cup her breasts before she had had a chance to pull her T-shirt on. That was a good way to get slapped. Carmen had to be in the mood. After work for at least an hour was not a good time. She hadn’t even showered yet. He’d rather wait until she got the smell out of her hair at least, but he was a boy, what could he do, even her bare back stirred him.
    â€œI bet they’re like chopped-up olives,” he said.
    â€œI said I didn’t want to know.”
    â€œMayonnaise is disgusting.”
    â€œYou like it on hamburgers.”
    â€œNo, I don’t,” said Brantley.
    â€œYou never tell them to hold it.”
    â€œI hate telling people stuff like that. People working for a living and you’re going in there all picky about what they put on some slab of beef you’re paying a buck fifty for. Special orders on a Big Mac?”
    â€œYeah, well, you’re not like most people. Most people will stand there for five minutes telling you how to fry their chicken strips. Like the girl taking their order is going to go fry up chicken strips right then and there.”
    â€œLike that chicken has not
been
fried.”
    â€œSeriously. But I can’t say a word because fucking Dorset is all about counting the ‘Ring the bell if we did well’ bell. If he doesn’t hear the bell for five minutes, he’ll flip out.”
    Brantley heard this every night. Complaints about Dorset, the manager. “ ‘Ring the bell if we did well’ bell” was as common a phrase out of her mouth as “I love you.” Way more common, in fact. She never asked him about his job, which kind of bothered him even though he didn’t want to talk about it. She could at least ask. Maybe if she did, he’d want to marry her. But he wasn’t going to marry Carmen. He knew he wasn’t. She was the first girl he’d ever slept with and he wanted to sleep with more girls and she was sort of mean. Still, they talked about getting married and moving to Saint Louis, and she was going to get her associate in arts degree and go to work as an administrative assistant for a law firm like her girlfriend Melissa did. One time Brantley said, “So wait, you want to get your AA so you can become an AA,” and she got seriously pissed and said, “Better than getting stuck in Wentzville.” To which he had to agree. A kid by the time they were twenty. Go to work on