Page 18 - Leather Blues

6 Jack Fritscher

under the sheet. On the floor next to his dad’s bed lay a
Western novel and two half-hidden, well-thumbed porno
pocket books. His mother’s single bed was already made up.
“You clomp through here every morning half an hour before
I have to get up.”
Denny ignored him.
“Your mother’s as bad. Been up twenty minutes fixing
your breakfast. Dishes rattling. Radio blatting.”
“Same time. Same station,” Denny said. “Same tired shit
every morning.”
“Bastard!” his father muttered.
“Don’t I wish.” Denny walked into the bathroom, strad-
dled the john, and pissed as loud and hard and long as he
could.
“That does it,” his father shouted. “On my vacation we’re
knocking a door through the bathroom into the hall.”
“You say that every year.”
“When I can afford it, I’ll do it.” The Old Man sat up
in bed. He saw his son’s naked chest, shoulders, and arms.
“Christ you’re getting big. Eating us out of house and home.”
Denny passed through the bedroom not giving his father
a glance.
“Put on a shirt,” his father said.
Back in his room, Denny rifled the old wardrobe for
a clean T-shirt. He found one at the bottom. Under it lay
two physique photo magazines he didn’t want his mother
to find when she brought up his clean laundry. He cursed
himself for getting careless and shoved the books into the
false bottom drawer he had learned to make years before in
Boy Scouts.
“Denny!” she called up the stairs. “Dennis, breakfast is
on.”
He pulled the T-shirt on. Its neck was tight and chafed
his forehead. The white cotton clung to his torso like second
skin. On each pec the tiniest peak of nipple hardened against

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