Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) Read Online Free PDF Page A

computer, while he checked in another flight.
    “Mmm-hmm,” he grunted with a knowing smile.
That motherfucker got that woman on his mind again. And she’s messing up his money now. He better talk to me about it soon,
he determined.
    On cue, Clarence eyed Maurice smiling from behind the computer station, and he could imagine what he was thinking about.
    Looks like I’ve done it now,
Clarence told himself.
I’ve gotten myself involved in a situation that I have to find my way back out of.
    But he still was not willing to talk to anyone about it. For what? Why incriminate himself so early in the game when he hadn’t even touched the girl yet? He figured he most likely never would. But in the meantime, he was surely thinking about her, and that made it bad enough.
    After work, Clarence was itching to call her.
    She told me to call her up sometime,
he reflected.
But maybe this is a little too early yet. It’s only been two days.
    Then again, a phone call was just a phone call. Why should he feel guilty about calling a girl he loaned more than six hundred dollars to? So he went ahead and pulled the trigger on his cell phone.
    “Hello,” she answered more pleasantly than the last time.
    “Hey, Brenda, this is Clarence. I’m calling you up to see how you been doing. You told me to call sometimes and check up on you,” he told her quickly. He was still unsure about the call and was talking fast like a salesman.
    Brenda responded, “Oh, hi, Clarence. Yeah, I’m good, but I’m at work right now, so I’ll call you back when I get off. Okay?”
    “Ahh…okay,” he answered.
    Just like that she was off the line with him.
    Clarence shrugged and commented, “Well, she’s at work. She’ll call me back when she can.”
    By eleven o’clock that night, while he watched the latest NFL football news on ESPN, Brenda still had not called him back. He looked at his watch, and it read: 11:16 PM.
    “I should have asked her what time she gets off,” he commented.
But that may have sounded too pressed,
he countered. Everything was a second guess.
    He finally shook it off and stated, “This is crazy. I should be able to call this damn girl whenever the hell I want. I gave her six hundred dollars.”
    So he dialed her cell phone number after eleven o’clock.
She’s a college girl; she ain’t in bed yet,
he rationalized. But there was no answer. And when her message machine came on, he hung up.
    No sense in leaving her a message if she said she was gonna call me. She knows what she said she was gonna do,
he told himself.
    But Brenda never bothered to call him back. She didn’t even call him the next day. So Clarence grew nervous about it.
    Is she trying to dodge me now?
he contemplated.
Nonsense! It’s only been three days. It hasn’t even been a week yet. What the hell is wrong with me?
    So he forced himself to leave it all be for awhile and focus on other things. He took his mind off of her, he even called up a woman he had dated on and off, who was closer to his age. He wanted to see if she would go out and grab a bite to eat with him, just for the hell of it.
    “And we can take my younger kids with us?” she asked him.
    Clarence had forgotten all about it. That’s why he had stopped calling the woman. Everything was a package deal with her. And her kids were cumbersome.
    Shit! She can never just go out on the fly? What the hell I even call her for like this?
he snapped. He remembered that he was forced to plan a week in advance to go out with her. Either that or bring her younger kids along with them. But Clarence was not interested in starting the hell over with a family again; he simply had some manly needs to deal with. He wanted some pussy.
    In fact, sometimes he wished that he had never gotten divorced. The dating game for an older man was not as simple as he thought it would be. Everything involved some form of sacrifice or complication. And if the woman didn’t have kids to negotiate around, then she wanted to