The Desert Rose Read Online Free Page A

say hello until she’dchecked the sales. Maude was nibbling the bottom of the card table and when Harmony made her stop she gave an annoyed little bleat and ran back in the garage to sulk.
    “Oh, Maude, don’t be mad, it’s such a pretty day,” Harmony said.
    The want ads were a cruel disappointment, all the garage sales being continuations of ones Myrtle had already been to at least once if not several times. She tossed the paper aside and began trying to get resigned to sitting and waiting.
    “If that goat was to have to wait for a cloudy day to get her feelings hurt she’d be out of luck,” Myrtle said. “I hope you didn’t forget the vodka, this one’s gonna be a long one.”
    “I didn’t forget it, I just left it in the back seat,” Harmony said. On her days at home Myrtle had a tendency to get looped, after which, if a customer irritated her by trying to bargain, she might capriciously double the price of everything in the sale. Myrtle had worked as a checker at the Safeway for twenty-five years, during which time she had often had the desire to double the prices when a snotty customer came along.
    “So where’s the car, I hope you didn’t knock the oil pan off again,” she said.
    “It just konked out between here and the highway,” Harmony said. “I was driving real slow when it happened.”
    “Well, there ain’t no interesting sales I could have gone to anyway,” Myrtle said. “Only Pepper’s gonna be pissed, if I know her.”
    That was for sure—if there was one thing Pepper hated it was being told she had to hitch to school.
    “If Wendell comes with the tow truck maybe she can hitch a ride with him,” Harmony suggested. Since her Pontiac hadn’t been exactly reliable even before Danny totaled it Wendell was frequently required to come out and tow in one car or the other before he went to work at the Grand.
    “Maude didn’t eat her Cheerios,” she added. Maude had wandered down the driveway and was staring at a weed.
    “She’s holding out for Captain Crunch. Likes the sugar,” Myrtle said. “You call Wendell. I’m going down and get that vodka before some alcoholic comes along and happens to look in the back seat.
    3.
    H ARMONY WAS a little late, mainly from having to walk the last part of the way but also partly because Gary had been explaining his views on the end of the world, which always got him sort of keyed up and meant that she hadn’t left the Stardust as early as she usually did. A lot of people in Las Vegas seemed to think the end of the world was probably going to come in about a year or two, Jessie certainly had the feeling there wasn’t all that much time left but Gary said all those views were nonsense. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God, he just felt there was no reason to suppose the end of the world was at hand particularly, which Harmony agreed with, it seemed to her why should it be?, maybe the people who thought otherwise were not reading the Bible right or something.
    Gary’s main point about the end of the world was that most of the people who felt that way were dancers who were so sick of the show they happened to be in that they would welcome any change, even one that was real drastic. Since Gary knew the whole life story of every dancer or showgirl working in Las Vegas once he got to explaining it could take a while, but also it was interesting, kind of amazing really when you stopped to think of all the things Gary knew. The one point she couldn’t agree with him on was that there was very little happiness, he mainly got offon that when he was drunk but it was a viewpoint Harmony couldn’t bear to listen to, she just would usually leave when Gary became pessimistic, it made her worry too much that Pepper’s life would turn out wrong or something.
    For herself she didn’t worry too much, she still loved being in the show, plus there was a lot to like about life if you could make a little effort and look on the bright side. Even a nice