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side.
“Twice!” the Kid barks back.
The light turns green and they both watch her click-clack
down the crosswalk. I watch her too.
“Say Skip, don’t you have a wife” I say and try hard to
remember Grace.
“Yessir, twenty years,” he says, nosing back in the paper.
“Good woman. Good mother too.”
“That’s right,” the Kid perks up. “Soon as I get married, I’ll
get me a nice pretty goomara on the side too. A little blondie just
like that one.” He winks at me. “Cause one good piece’ah cavaccia
aint’never enough. Not for this skinny ginny.”
“Easy now, Alphalpha,” I tell him and point back to the
step. “You’re up.”
“Buff, you’re such a square,” he lowers his head and shakes
it, walking off. “All that muscle and no sack.”
I’m about to smack the Kid upside the head with one of
my gloves, but I hear Skip laughing.
“You know, you two aint nothin’ but a pair of peanuts,” he
snorts, shaking the paper with his heavy breath. “What do you
say Think that fancy little treat is gonna run off with me” He
lets out a wheezing cough-laugh.
“What do you mean, Skipper” the Kid says, and he and I
glance back and forth.
Skip’s face is big, round, and stubby, like old bulldog’s,
and his eyeballs are slightly yellow from all those years on the job.
He shuts the newspaper, puts it down beside him, and we know
serious wisdom is on its way. The truck idles and we wait for it by
the cabin doors.
“What I mean is I can’t have that young pretty thing.
Not no more. But I can still feel good looking at her struttin’ by,
letting my eyes feast on all that fineness.”
“And why can’t you have her” the Kid demands.
“Cause I am black, fat, and smell like ass!” Skip coughlaughs
again. “That’s why.”
20 Writing Tomorrow Magazine