The Ming and I Read Online Free

bloody thing unless…
    “Mama, where are you getting this tattoo?”
    “Tiny Tim’s Tattoo Palace. It’s that new place on Cherry Road I was trying to tell you about.”
    “Not where in Rock Hill,” I practically screamed. “Where on your body?”
    She looked away and mumbled something.
    “What?”
    She turned reluctantly to face me. “Okay, if you must know, I was thinking of getting it where the sun doesn’t shine. After all, I still swim when we go to Pawleys Island. It has to be someplace it doesn’t show.”
    I stared at her, seeing a stranger. “What if the tattoo artist is a man?”
    She sighed. “That’s why I really need you to go with me, Abby.”
    “Let me get this straight, Mama. You want me to go with you to some sleazy tattoo shop to safeguard your virtue?”
    Mercifully the phone rang.
    Mama answered it in the kitchen and was back a minute later to get me. “It’s Greg, for you,” she said. “Just think about it, dear.”
     
    The double homicide in Myers Park had not taken as long as expected to deal with. It turned out that the berserk banker was bogus—there were bodies all right, but they belonged to two store mannequinsthat someone had dumped in the front yard of a banker’s house. Probably just a teenage prank. Would it be okay with me if he dropped by my house for a nightcap when I got home?
    I said it was. Don’t get me wrong. I am not sex crazed like my mama. Greg and I have been dating less than a year, and we’re building on our relationship slowly. I am not about to just jump into bed with a man because I feel lonely now and again.
    Once was enough. I got married right out of college to a snake named Buford Timberlake. I met him on the water slide of an area amusement park just days after I broke with my college sweetheart Delbert Dewimple. I suppose that I was your classic rebound case, whereas Buford no doubt was just horny. At any rate Buford had just finished his first year of law school, and he had the same glib tongue then that he has now. By that I mean he could talk a politician into telling the truth—even a Republican.
    I found myself walking down the aisle with Buford in less time than it took to go down the water slide. Unfortunately our sex life was like that, too. On the plus side, it did produce two lovely children: Susan, now twenty and in college, and eighteen-year-old Charlie, who is a senior in high school. Susan lives in a dorm; Charlie lives with Buford and his new wife, Tweetie.
    As for me, I live in a newly acquired house in south Charlotte, alone, except for the company of my yellow tomcat, Dmitri. All in all, I am very happy living alone. Of course I miss the children, and there are times it would be nice to have a man around, but I don’t need a man in my life, as I did on that water slide.
    Greg was waiting for me in the double carport. I pulled up beside him, got out, and we kissed hello. I was, of course, standing on my tiptoes. Greg is sixfeet tall, and I’m afraid that one of these days he’s going to wrench his back bending down so far.
    “You missed a great dinner,” I said.
    “I’m sure I did, so I brought this.” He held up a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Creme whiskey, my favorite after dinner drink. “To help me forget the taste of that burger I had. McDonald’s is trying to market a new flavor.”
    We went inside to the den—as we call our family rooms in these parts—and Greg poured us each a drink. We took off our shoes and settled onto my oversize Federal Period sofa, me with my legs across his lap. Incidentally the sofa isn’t nearly as comfortable as it is attractive, but since I wear high heels regularly, who am I to complain?
    “Tell me about your evening,” Greg said, just as comfortably as if we were happily married.
    Despite a fairly active sex life, Buford and I were never as intimate as that.
    “Well, Mama—no, you go first this time. Tell me all about the bogus bodies on the banker’s lawn.”
    Greg took a sip