The Adventures of Slim & Howdy Read Online Free Page B

sideways glance. “That’s a little broke back, don’t you think?”
    “What’d you have in mind, the Four Seasons in Houston?”
    “Doesn’t matter what I had in mind . . . before,” Howdy said. “What I have in mind now is finding out what kind of sheets Crystal’s got and how she takes her coffee in the morning.”
    Slim lowered his voice and said, “Yeah, well, if I was with Crystal I might be thinking the same thing, but—”
    It was almost too late when Howdy saw the girls approaching fast. He shoved Slim in the chest and said, “Awww, man, don’t say that.” Real loud, keeping Slim from putting his boot in his mouth.
    Tammy came up and hooked a thumb into one of Slim’s belt loops. She said, “Don’t say what?”
    Howdy acted like he hadn’t seen them coming. “Oh, Slim was saying he thought we might oughta hit the road if we’re gonna make it to where we’re going.”
    “Hit the road?” Crystal sounded genuinely disappointed about this.
    “Yeah,” Howdy said. “We got . . . uh . . . we got auditions.”
    “Auditions? Where at?”
    Slim said “Nashville” at the same time Howdy said “Austin.” They glared at one another before fumbling through some sort of story about how one of them had told the other that the Nashville audition got put off until next week and they had the thing in Austin first.
    Not that anybody was buying it.
    Tammy smiled and slipped her hand back into Slim’s pocket. She pulled out the truck keys and said, “Well, either way you go, it’s too late to be making a long drive like that. Why don’t y’all just come on over to our place and stay the night?”
    7
    WHEN THEY HIT THE PARKING LOT, HOWDY WAS GRINNING like he’d just been crowned homecoming king. Crystal had given him the keys to her car, a Twentieth Anniversary Trans Am, the one with the turbo installed on a 3.8-liter V6 with ported heads and a Champion intake. A very bad boy delivering in the neighborhood of 280 horses.
    Howdy pulled up next to the truck, leaned across Crystal’s welcoming lap, revved the engine a couple of times, and shouted to Slim, “Try to keep up!”
    Slim said, “All right, just gimme a second.”
    But it was too late. Crystal popped in a cassette of Chris LeDoux and let out a Rebel yell as Howdy fishtailed out of the rocky parking lot onto old Highway 90, spraying the truck with gravel as Slim and Tammy ducked into the cab to avoid being peppered. Howdy pulled a quarter mile in what he told himself was just over fifteen seconds but was probably closer to twenty, men having a tendency to misjudge such things in their favor.
    Half a mile later they slowed down, waiting for Slim to catch up. After a few minutes, they passed the Beaumont city limits and soon after that they were far enough out of town that the sky wasn’t washed yellow-pink from the high-pressure sodium street lights.
    The bucket seats and the console between them seemed to be the only things keeping Crystal from actually crawling into Howdy’s lap as they drove down the dark country road at sixty miles an hour. Figuring they’d have a lot more fun if they got home alive, Howdy made sure she kept her seat belt buckled while he talked up the virtues of patience and delayed gratification. She started to argue but stopped all the sudden, pointed across Howdy’s chest, and said, “Oh, take this left!”
    “Hang on!” Howdy managed to keep it out of the ditch as he made the turn, though he almost hit the big entrance monument for Lake Creek Estates, a new subdivision where none of the houses were on wheels or blocks, a fact that lifted it several demographic notches above where either Slim or Howdy had imagined they were going.
    A few minutes later they were parked in the driveway of a stately four-bedroom, three-bath Georgian Colonial-style home. Howdy found himself wondering if one of the girls had taken possession in a nasty divorce settlement or maybe they were just renting in a depressed real estate