The Desert Rose Read Online Free Page B

morning was a form of happiness, plus having a sweet guy around for a while was another form, a major form actually, major even if usually sort of brief in her experience.
    She and Jessie agreed that one reason Gary was so pessimistic at times was that his own sex life seemed to be kind of a blank, though certainly he had a million friends. Even Jessie had somebody , if only Monroe, no great lover Jessie was frank to say but at least he was not mean and he did own his own business, Monroe’s Muffler Shop, out on the north edge of town. In the course of time he had put three mufflers on the Buick, since Myrtle would kind of drive at breakneck speed whether it was a terrible road or not if she was trying to beat the crowd to a garage sale she was always knocking holes in her mufflers and had gotten if anything more reckless since she knew Monroe would give her a good price on a new one.
    But listening to Gary’s end of the world spiel had contributed to making her late so she started cooking breakfast without stopping to take her makeup off, which caused Pepper to make a face when she came dawdling in.
    “Pepper, why did you make that face, I’m just trying to hurry,” Harmony said, not particularly offended, it just always seemed Pepper made a face if she caught her with her makeup on.
    Pepper yawned and sat down at the table. She had the blank look of a child who was still sleepy, and was wearing a T-shirt Harmony had been given one time when she wasin a bicycle race just for showgirls down at the Sands. She had come in about ninetieth, she was a little afraid of bicycles and just tried to keep on the outside and not wobble into the path of one of the French girls, all of whom were sort of like demons once they got in a bicycle race, not that they were always totally polite even in the dressing room but there was no doubt that they became very competitive if you stuck them on a bicycle.
    Pepper was just so totally beautiful, Harmony stopped to look at her for a second and almost burned the toast, she had a face that made every photographer want to take a picture of her. Even Denny had taken quite a few pictures of her—a number of them were stuck on the wall over the table, Pepper practicing dance steps mostly. It hurt Harmony that there had never been the slightest bit of love lost between Pepper and Denny, but how could you make two people like one another if they just didn’t?
    Denny was quite a good photographer, much too good for the job he had, which was just taking pictures of houses that were for sale, for a real estate company. That seemed a waste, considering the wonderful pictures he took of Pepper despite saying constantly she was such a little bitch.
    Every time he said it Harmony said okay, move out, she wasn’t going to live with a man who would say such things about her child, although to be fair Pepper said even worse things about him, maybe because Gary had not been all that discreet and had informed Pepper about the trouble Denny had gotten into when he was a lifeguard at Caesars Palace, it was a tragedy Denny would have to live with all his life, because a child had drowned while he was screwing a woman in the towel room.
    Pepper hadn’t needed to know that but Gary had told her. Sometimes Harmony suspected that Gary wasn’t totally and absolutely gay, at least there were times when he did things that made it seem like maybe he was just a littlebit jealous in some way. There were times, thinking about Gary and Denny and Pepper and how complicated life could get when Harmony would feel a sinking, she would start getting low and then it was like something was falling, like she couldn’t keep a high heart anymore no matter how much she tried, and she would end up out under the umbrella, usually in the heart of the day, pitching little handfuls of corn to the peacocks and not even being able to see them because of her tears.
    At times even before he totaled the car she almost wished Denny would go