Page 39 - Leather Blues

Leather Blues 27

three stools away, lifted his root beer, and spoke again. “I eat
a lot myself.”
“Yeah,” Den said.
“What do you know?” The guy turned toward Den on
his stool.
“About what?”
“What do you say?”
Acneface showed up with the dogs and the root beer.
$1.90,” he said. He looked at the lean mounds of Denny’s
chest and watched the muscles of his arms stretch as he
reached into his jeans for the change.
“Take it out of this,” the suited man said.
“Forget it!” Denny tossed his own bills on the counter.
Acneface looked puzzled. He took Denny’s money and
rang up the sale.
“Everybody else on your crew go to lunch?” The business
suit said to the counter boy.
“None of ’em eats here anymore than he has to,” he said.
“You think it’s great when you start, but after two days you
can’t stand the sight of a hot dog.”
“Never work around food, I always say. Nothing spoils
your appetite worse.”
Denny bit into his second dog.
“When I was in college, I worked around food,” the man
said. “I played a little ball too in my time.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Denny watched him rub-
bing his crotch.
Then he looked straight at Denny. “But I never lost my
taste for meat. The tougher the better.”
“That right?” Acneface said. “I like to eat pussy myself.”
He said it so dumb and looked so stupid, Denny knew, when
the kid’s zits cleared up, he’d end up being one of those hot
Appalachian men who drag their fat wives down the aisles
of discount super-marts searching for Blue-Light sales on
carbohydrates. Those guys never had it dawn on them how

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