Brown-Eyed Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

the road amid the stock pens, this was the longest postcard he’d ever sent.
    That night, Delice put on her felt-lined Sorel boots and her down-filled jacket and walked into the clear, frozen world. It was twenty below. The door handle on her truck was so brittle it broke off when she pulled it. She left Jerry Jeff with Mary, went into the men’s bathroom at the Wrangler. She bought a pack of condoms from the dispensing machine, stopped to warm up with a cup of coffee and a shot of peppermint schnapps. Then she went out and got shit-faced at the Cowboy Bar, danced with a trucker to “Faded Love,” and had a cramped, half-clad, freezing but relatively satisfying revenge fuck in the sleeping cab of his idling rig. She’d gone home, dialed California, and poured the whole story out to Sally before passing out and leaving her phone off the hook. The telephone bill was even worse than the hangover.
    All this flashed through Sally’s mind as she made the turn onto Eleventh Street and slowed to a walk coming up on the Dunwoodie place. The front yard was a testament to Meg’s green thumb, rampant with every kind of flower. A big cottonwood tree presided over a small, lush grass lawn.
    Sally hadn’t bothered to lock the door. Undoubtedly that was stupid, given what Dickie had told her about attempted break-ins, but she’d never locked a door living in Laramie, and she really didn’t want to start now. It was one of the things that was supposed to make it worth coming back. She reflected on her own attempt to keep the pledge with Delice. Since she’d never had kids, she’d been forced to settle for naming a dog George Jones. When she first moved to LA, she rationalized getting a puppy, not because she was suffering from loneliness so severe it verged on disabling, but because she lived alone and getting a dog was a security thing. Jones was a typical black lab, dumb and rambunctious but sweet and loyal, and about as much use against home-invading strangers as a Welcome Wagon full of Jaycees. He’d been hit by a car on Hilgard Avenue. Sally hadn’t had so much as a tropical fish since.
    Thirsty. Water. She threw open the screen, powered down the hall and into the kitchen, and ran straight into the formidable person of Maude Stark.
    Margaret Dunwoodie had been tall, almost six feet. Even in advancing age she had been big enough to command notice, and respect. Maybe she had required a housekeeper who could look her in the eye. If so, Maude Stark filled the bill. She towered over Sally, who claimed to be five-foot-six (claimed), staring down at her mildly through eyes so pale they were almost transparent. Her steely hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was a fit sixty-something woman wearing faded Levi’s, worn Nikes, and a red T-shirt with a picture of Susan B. Anthony on it and the slogan failure is impossible.
    Sally had once owned the same T-shirt, along with a purple one with the slogan sisterhood is powerful. There had been moments among feminists, over the years, when she had thought they could use T-shirts that said sisterhood is impossible. Still, you kept on.
    â€œYou must be Sally,” Maude said in a voice that was amazingly soft and friendly. “I saw you take off running just as I pulled up.” Sally now recalled the new silver Chevy Suburban parked out at the end of Meg’s front walk. “I took the liberty of making some of the coffee you brought—how about a cup? There’s cream and sugar if you want it.”
    Sally looked skeptical. She had never in her life had a good cup of coffee in Wyoming; that was why she’d brought beans from Peet’s and her own grinder. Even Dean Edna McCaffrey, the goddess of gourmet cooking, had had a Mr. Coffee that she filled with Folger’s. The best thing about that Mr. Coffee was how it moaned when you turned it on, like somebody having the best sex they’d ever had in their life, right