Flings Read Online Free PDF Page B

I won’t rat you out.”
    Ten percent! Jesus, that’s decency. Downright chivalrous. I count her share out on the spot.
    But the sexy T-shirt thing is a problem, one I worry may prove intractable until I see Sungold’s solution. She lays her ladies’ XL out on a cutting board in the back. The sleeves go first, then the hem; the neck plunges; a diamond cutout pattern blossoms up the sides. She slips it on over her chambray and asks me to show her around.
    She comes to work every day like this, and while it doesn’t do her bearing (or her sweating) any favors, she never messes up an order or lets a plate sit in the kitchen, so between the occasional pity tip and what we’re stealing she more than makes up for what she loses not showing her tits off, for having tits no one wants to see.
    As predicted—as counted on—Ethan hates her. He says she compromises brand integrity, but I stand firm. It’s important, I tell him, to have at least one other person around who can lift a box of bread dough or the ten-gallon bucket of feta cheese. It’s not as if he’s going to carry these things himself. Sungold could wear the mushroom suit, too, I bet, though I never suggest it, and Ethan has the memory of an infant or a goldfish, which is why he’s such a shitty capitalist and such an amazing boss. The suit lies fermenting in the supply closet, forgotten until HQ calls with the address of the store we’re supposed to pass it on to, a newish franchise in another college town—Valdosta, Georgia, some hundred miles north of here, give or take. So here I am, wrangling its rancid, still-damp, mold-fluoresced corpse into the back of my truck.
    â€œTake this for gas, man,” says Ethan, little thicket of bills between two fingers like a stubbed-out cigar. “Get lunch or whatever. I appreciate you doing this. There’s a show at Side Bar tonight that I’d seriously die if I missed it. You ever heard of the Flower Rangers? Killer. You should check ’em out.” My God but he’s a sorry sight in daylight: crow’s-feet and gin blossoms, scabby eczemas at the hairline, neck tripled up on itself in blood-flushed rolls. He looks like he might die at the concert, or maybe on the way to the venue, or maybe right here while we’re talking if I don’t hurry up.
    I take his money, tell him he’s more than welcome, that it’s my pleasure. “Have fun tonight, Ethan. Get your dick sucked for me.”
    â€œSure thing,” he says, though we both know he won’t.
    Sungold’s in my shotgun seat, rolling us cigarettes. The second part of this favor is I have to bring her with me. Ethan was adamant. I pretended first to resist, then to relent.
    Sungold isn’t her original last name, obviously—I mean historically —though it is the name that she was born with. Her father picked it out not long after he came over as a strapping young bootstrapper in the early ’80s. He saw it printed on the side of a box of tomatoes in a grocery store and thought it sounded American, Floridian, full of hope: sun and gold. It wasn’t until he had a daughter that he got sentimental, nostalgic for the homeland and patronymics. Her three older brothers are named Franklin, Reagan, and Henry Ford.
    She’s telling me this while we’re driving through the void that Florida becomes outside of all city limits (and sometimes within them). I tell her she’s lucky he didn’t spot an Ovengold turkey in the deli case, or a roadside stand selling sunchokes or, worse yet, boiled peanuts. “Although boiled peanuts are pretty awesome. Holler if you see a sign. We’ll stop.”
    She gets the Cajun flavor and I get original recipe, the kind that taste like hot, slippery salt. Then the sky opens up with a thunderclap, unleashes white blinding curtains of rain that at first I think we should power through, try to get on the other side of, but