Beautiful, Naked & Dead (Moses McGuire) Read Online Free PDF Page B

was of suicide. Again. Who would care or even notice? Closing my eyes I wondered if I even had enough drive to get up and look for my pistol. Something wet and rough dragged across my cheek. A big sloppy puppy face looked down at me with anticipation.
    “What the fuck do you want?” I asked, Angel stared at me, her tail starting to wag.
    “What?” Nothing, just big empty eyes. “Thanks a lot Kelly, what the fuck am I going to do with a dog?” I asked the ceiling.
    Pulling myself out of bed, I fried up some eggs, smoked ham, six cloves of garlic, a yellow onion and strips of stale tortillas into a hash. I split the steaming tasty mush with Angel. She wolfed the grub down in three big gulps filling her face wrinkles with egg. Grabbing a dish rag I scrubbed her face clean, “I don’t know what you are, but you sure ain’t no lady.”
    I rode out with her smiling face peeking out of my jacket, ears flapping in the wind. It was ungodly early, another strong point against me as pet owner. The only time I got up before noon was when I was in the Marines or the joint, and both places it sure as hell wasn’t willingly. But I had a plan, a way to duck my new best friend, so we hit the dog park. To enter we had to clear a small chain-link sally port. I closed the first gate behind me before opening the gate into the park. Chino Prison had one just like it, only this one had no razor wire or guards with high powered rifles sighted down on me. Across the dying lawn, a group of dog owners sat and stood around a cement picnic table drinking from travel mugs and laughing at some joke I couldn’t hear. They were all young, good-looking squares. Some had tats and piercings, the kind they got to impress the world with how edgy they were. All looked up when I cleared the second gate, smiles faded as if I had farted in church. A cute little blonde gal with spiked hair and army boots looked down, afraid that meeting my eyes might be an invitation for trouble. I was used to this reaction from the straight world. Their style came from ghettos and jails, but God forbid they actually had to meet one of us face to face. Maybe it was fear, maybe I called their street cred into question, or maybe I was an ugly motherfucker who nobody wants around unless they need him. Fuck them and the bitch they rode in on.
    I set Angel down, and she immediately ran past a pile of dogs fighting over a stick and over to a huge Rottweiler. Leaping up, she latched her needle teeth onto his upper lip. The big dog tried to shake her off, but she would tumble in the mud, get up and charge again. She made up for her lack of poundage with pure guts and tenacity.
    “Bruiser!” A large lady in a faded denim jumpsuit called out to the Rottweiler. “Play nice, or when she gets her size, you’ll wish you had.”
    I turned and started to walk away. Angel was cute enough, one of these dog lovers would take her in and I could get on with whatever the fuck I was going to do.
    “Are you friends with Kelly?” The big woman called out to me, “Well, I mean you must be, you’re walking her dog.”
    “You know Kelly?” I asked, startled to hear her name spoken here.
    “Yeah, I know that beautiful girl.” She was smiling openly as she came over to me. “Angel loves my Bruiser. She attacks him like this every morning. Luckily he’s so not alpha.” She talked to me in a comfortable way I wasn’t used to. Like Angel was my ticket into her secret society. “Every morning for the last month Kelly’s brought Angel down to play with my Bruiser. Sometimes we go get a cup of coffee at an outdoor café down the street. Tell you the truth when I first met Kelly I was hot for her. She told me she didn’t swing that way but I though I might convert her. Men can be such pricks… I mean not you, well maybe you I mean the jury is still out on that one, but you know what I mean.” She was speaking a mile a minute, like a speed freak on the end of an all night jag. But, it turned