Little Easter Read Online Free

preempted, waving her right palm at me like a poor man’s Diana Ross. Kate Barnum was a veteran drinker. The straight, stumble-free line she made out of the bar proved as much. She didn’t have to tell me I’d be seeing her again. I knew I would. Parts of me looked forward to it. Still others smelled trouble in the wake of her perfume. I finally locked the Scupper’s front doors. Some of me wanted to collapse into sleep, but that was for books and movies and my three wishes. I tended to wear insomnia like a second skin. I shut the bar lights, settled down with the stuffed fishes and let the new TV babble once again.
    Jacob Marley, wrapped in chains and moaning—sort of like my brother Josh getting his cavities drilled by Great Uncle “Who Needs Novacaine” Ziggy, in Brighton Beach in 1963—was busily laying guilt at the feet of old Scrooge. Ebenezer wasn’t having any, yet. He had three ghosts to go. I dangled the orphaned heart in the TV glare and wondered how many ghosts might be waiting to visit the likes of one John Francis MacClough.

Diary of Wasted Days
    My right arm was warmly numb underneath her. The smooth inside of my left forearm could feel the soft ridges of branching blue veins buried just beneath the cloudy white skin of her breasts. Curling my left wrist with eager pain, I captured a bullet-hard nipple between the tips of my thumb and forefinger. I pinched the pink bullet and she shook. Suddenly, something else stiffened, something resting between the pillow of her buttocks and the moist opening of her soul.
    She released her nipple from my grip and guided my fingers south along her abdomen, over the lightly downed skin below her waist and into a wet tangle of hair and hunger. My fintertip chased and caught an elusive button hidden under the coarse weave and slippery skin. I dipped my finger fully into her and brought the moisture to my mouth.
    God, she was different. My finger smelled of patchouli and she tasted like bourbon and cigarettes on my tongue. I could feel my thighs tighten as a drop of me rolled onto her somewhere. She grabbed my hand and licked it, too.
    “You don’t fool me, Klein,” her throaty whisper faded into the black.
    I rolled her over to kiss her, to cut my tongue on her teeth. My hands cupped her cheeks and I pressed down on her. I never reached her lips.
    Feathers and brittle claws!
    We lay together on the train platform. Her eyes still vacantly searching the arc-lighted sky. There was blood, again, on the end of my finger, on my lips and rolling onto the snow from the tip of my penis.
    I tried running, but my naked feet were tractionless against the frozen concrete and ice. I slid every second step, peeling my skin away in sheets. There was no pain nor much blood.
    At the edge of the station, a dark form pulled me up. It was bound and shackled and wore a diamond heart at the end of a stethoscope.
    “Your hands.” It grabbed them. “I want your hands. They want me to get them.”
    The shadow man squeezed my hands. I could feel that more clearly, now, and the sweat consuming what was left of my unpeeled skin.
    “Hey, Klein!” he shook my shoulders. “Klein!” a rough hand slapped my cheeks. “For chrissakes!”
    My shoulders were free. A chair crashed. So did I.
    “I thought a fall on that flat Jewish ass might wake you up.” Johnny MacClough stood over me shaking his head in mock disgust. “Must’ve been a helluva dream.”
    “That,” I yawned, cracking my stiff neck, “was no dream.”
    The cloud-filtered morning light seemed to bend around MacClough on its journey to my crusty eyes. I rubbed them to no good end and began scratching at the ever-increasing gray of my beard. Why was it, I wondered, that gray hair looked so distinguished on everyone else. On me it looked like a diary of wasted days. On me it was a constant reminder of knees that stayed sore too long and breath that just grew shorter. It’s funny what you wonder about.
    Johnny MacClough had no