Cul-de-Sac Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was Eddie heard him give up a little grunt like the kind you hear at ringside when a body punch lands solid.

7
    She said, “If I have to tell you my name this time, I will by god knock you on your ass.”
    From behind the bar Eddie laughed.
    Camel said, “Annie Locken.”
    “Well you’re half right.”
    He said nothing more, he just kept looking at her. She’d changed of course. When Camel last saw her she was a twenty-one-year-old college student, now she was a woman of thirty-five, but she still had freckles, blue green eyes, dark red hair, and, most important of all, the animations of her face were exactly the same. It had always seemed to him that Annie’s face generated light.
    “The lug ain’t going to introduce us, I’m Ed Neffering.”
    She reached across the bar to shake his hand. “Annie Milton, nice to meet you.” Her face was flush as if she’d run all the way in from the parking garage.
    Eddie said, “How come since he got your name wrong you ain’t going to knock him on his ass like you said?”
    “Aw he didn’t know I got married.”
    Camel wondered if she was going to tell Neffering how old shewas when they first met. Not much embarrassed him anymore but that would.
    When Eddie offered to buy Annie a beer she popped up on the barstool … they both looked at Camel but he was accustomed to people waiting in vain for him to say something.
    Eddie brought a bottle and a glass, Annie telling him, “Great mustache.”
    “Tickles the girls.”
    “I bet it does.”
    Unlike some women she didn’t cover her mouth when she laughed, Annie had teeth to be proud of … they were white and straight and when she laughed you could see those perfect teeth against clean gums and you could see her pink tongue too. Most people, you don’t want to look too closely into their mouths but Annie could make you think maybe dentistry wasn’t all that bad to take up as a profession.
    Camel kept rejecting stupid things to say … you’re a sight for sore eyes, what brings you to my neck of the woods …
    A ream of office workers at the other end of the bar clamored for Eddie’s attention, before he left he suggested that Camel take Annie over to a booth where they could have some privacy. Camel picked up the two bottles, Eddie telling him, “Take her glass, schmuck.”
    As soon as they got to the booth Annie found the lamp switch and turned it off. When Camel started to pour the beer she said she’d drink it out of the bottle.
    “Eddie says you pour it in a glass first you get the aroma and that enhances the taste.”
    She laughed and kept drinking from the bottle.
    In the low light her hair could’ve passed for black, the dimness taking none of the shine from her eyes as she asked him if he was surprised to see her.
    “Fourteen years,” Camel said.
    “Fourteen years and you never returned a call, never answered a letter.” She tipped up the bottle for a deep drink, Camel watching her long freckled throat. After putting the bottle back on thetable she looked at him and said, “Not that I expected you would.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    “I was a sweet little piece of ass, wasn’t I?”
    Camel kept quiet.
    “That’s what you told me.”
    He remembered.
    “When I wanted to marry you, that’s what you told me … instead of saying yes, okay, Annie, I’ll marry you, you said I was a sweet little piece of ass.”
    “What kind of trouble you in?”
    She looked surprised then focused her attention on tearing the label from the beer bottle. “Do you remember something else you told me … you said if I was in hell and you could find your way there, you’d come get me.”
    He remembered.
    “It’s my husband.”
    “He hurt you?”
    “
No
. But he’s … I think Paul’s having a mental breakdown and I think the reason is, he’s involved in something illegal.”
    Camel waited for her to tell him about it.
    She did … the building they bought in this area, her surprise visit up from