Footprints in the Butter Read Online Free PDF Page B

decided she was worth it, too. After all, she was worth plenty. So every month she hopped a plane to L.A. and paid a visit to some exclusive beauty salon. From a distance, Alice looked like a platinum Q-tip.
    Up close, she looked mournful. “The wine’s all gone,” she whined, nodding toward the cooler. “And everybody hates the champagne.”
    “Everybody doesn’t hate it, Alice.”
    “Wylie hates it. I hate Wylie.”
    “No, you don’t.”
    “He looked nice tonight.”
    “Who? Wylie?”
    “Yes. He looked nice but sounded nasty.” She sucked in her lower lip. “What a bummer. Wylie was always a beatnik.”
    “Hippie, Alice.”
    “Remember his pad?”
    “Apartment, Alice.”
    “Would you do me a big favor, Ingrid? Pretty please with sugar on top? Cheer up Dwight and Junior? Dwight’s sulking and Junior’s fuming. Gosh-darn-it, I wanted everybody to feel groovy tonight.”
    It suddenly occurred to me that Alice’s marriage to Dwight Eisenhower Cooper was appropriate. Alice sounded as if she had just stepped out of a late 1950s movie. She never swore and she probably thought that sex was an abbreviation for sexton, the church employee who, among other things, digs the graves.
    “What about the cheerleader?” I asked sarcastically. “The one who told Wylie to die. Should I cheer her up, too?”
    “She’s already bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” Alice pointed toward the end of the basketball court, where the cheerleader, skirt held above her panties, was dancing to what sounded like the theme from Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven . “Dwight and Junior have always admired your spunk, Ingrid.”
    “I don’t give a rat’s spit if…” Pausing, I studied Alice’s red-blotched cheeks and brimming eyes. “Okay, what the heck. Where’s Dwight?”
    “Outside.”
    “And Junior?”
    “Over there, standing by the bandstand.”
    He’s not standing , I thought, he’s slumping . Junior Hartsel had once been a pretty decent football player. Unfortunately, he was short, barely five-nine. He had never grown into his bulk, nor his dreams, but he had used his athlete’s status to boff a goodly number of our graduation class.
    On my way to the stage I stopped to adjust one shoulder pad, and felt Ben’s voice tickle my ear. “You light up my life, babe,” he whispered, hugging me from behind. “Let’s go home.”
    “I wish,” I said as I felt his arousal. “But I promised Alice I would cheer up Dwight and Junior. Dwight’s outside, sulking. Or maybe he’s planning some murderous revenge scheme against our dear departed Wylie. Would you soothe the savage beast, Ben?”
    “Sure. Afterwards, I’ll soothe your savage breast.”
    I gazed longingly at Ben’s broad shoulders. Then I hastened toward Junior, who was now on top of the stage.
    The band was taking a break, and Junior was drunk. He slid onto the drummer’s stool and looked up at me with bleary, bloodshot, basset-hound eyes. “Wylie said I had a big butt,” he whined. “Do you think I have a big butt, Beaumont?”
    “You have a very nice butt, Junior.” It was a fib but why quibble? “Maybe you should put that nice butt inside a cab and head for home.”
    “ Your home?”
    “No. Your home.”
    Junior thumped the snare drum with the flat of his hand. “You have nice boobies,” he said with a wink that failed.
    “Thanks.” I had never seen a wink fail. I mean, you just shut one eye, right? Wrong. Junior’s upper lip crept toward his nose, which twitched like a rabbit’s. But his eye remained at half mast.
    “Let’s find the locker room,” he said. “You can show me your boobies and I can show you my weenie.”
    “No, thanks.” I shuddered, considered retreating, remembered my promise to Alice. “Maybe some other time, Junior.”
    “Wylie said I had a bony chicken chest.”
    “Junior, Wylie didn’t mean—”
    “And a bald forehead.”
    “Junior, I think you should lie down some place until you sober—”
    “Okay.”
    He