Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to quit calling her Her.”
    “You think?” I said. “It could be like that H. Rider Haggard novel She. That woman knew who she was. She was all the name she needed. Our dog could be Her.”
    “I don’t think our She, or Her, is that confident,” Brett said. “And besides, She actually had a name. Ayesha, I think.”
    “You got a point there.”
    “But she is starting to feel better, and she’s getting fat, like you,” Brett said.
    “I lost five pounds.”
    “You need to lose twenty-five, dear boy.”
    “Yeah, at least.”
    “What have you been feeding her?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Liar,” Brett said.
    “All right, now and then we go through the drive-through at Dairy Queen and I buy her an ice cream cone, plain, no chocolate. Chocolate is bad for dogs.”
    “I used to share chocolate candy bars with my dogs when I was a kid,” Brett said. “None of them died.”
    “So they’re all still alive?”
    “Of course not,” she said.
    “See? Chocolate got them. It just took a lifetime.”
    “Ha,” she said. “I think we should call her Spot.”
    “She doesn’t have any spots,” I said.
    “That’s the joke.”
    “We will not joke about our dog. I say we name her Ace.”
    “That’s a boy dog’s name.”
    “I always wanted to name a dog that because Batman’s dog was named Ace.”
    “No. Not Ace. How about Buffy?”
    “Like the vampire-slayer girl?” I asked.
    “Yep. I like that name. More for dogs than for girls.”
    “That fits,” I said.
    “Let’s call her Buffy the Biscuit Slayer. She does like dog biscuits.”
    I studied on that a moment, said, “Buffy the Biscuit Slayer is for formal occasions, when she has to wear an evening gown or be at a queen’s coronation, but for at home and rides to the Dairy Queen, it’s Buffy.”
    Our new dog was christened.
    As this christening was going on, I was looking at Brett’s legs. She was leaning up against the desk. She was wearing shorts and her legs were shiny and I was wondering if maybe we might try the couch bed again with the new mattress. That thought was destroyed when I heard someone on the stairs. It was a heavy sound, like a elephant loaded down with a raja and his escorts, and there was a clicking with it, like maybe the elephant had a large cricket for a friend or perhaps was wearing a tap shoe on one foot.
    That’s when the door opened and a lady came in who was older than dirt but cleaner. She had a cane, which explained the cricket, but the elephant walk was a little more confusing, as she wasn’t much bigger than a minute. She had more dyed red hair than she had the head for. That hair seemed to be an entity unto itself, mounded and teased and red as blood. You could have shaved her like a sheep and knitted a sweater with all that hair, maybe have enough left over for at least one sock or, if not that, a change purse.
    Her face was dry-looking. She had a lot of makeup on it, as if she were trying to fill a ditch, or several. Her clothes were a little too young for her age, which was somewhere near to that of a mastodon that had survived major climate change but was wounded by it. She had on bright red tight jeans and a sleeveless blue shirt that showed hanging flesh like water wings under her arms. Her breasts were too big, or maybe they were too exposed; the tops of them stuck out of her push-up bra. They looked like aging melons with rot spots, which I supposed were moles or early cancer.
    She eyed Brett and me, said, “You two weren’t about to do the dog, were you?”
    “I don’t think so,” said Brett. “Our dog is a lady.”
    The lady eyed the recently christened Buffy on her bed in the corner. Buffy had lifted her head to check things out, but she quickly lowered her head again and lay still. I think all that hair bothered her. She probably thought it was a vicious animal ready to pounce.
    “I mean screwing,” said the woman.
    Like Brett, I knew what she had been referring to, but still, she wasn’t what I