Mesopotamia Read Online Free PDF

minority Elvis.”
    “Yeah, you could be like a Clarence Thomas Elvis,” one joked.
    “I’m not really much of a singer.”
    “Go ahhhh —” He sang a note that sounded like a D-flat. I did likewise.
    “See there, just as I thought, you have the same natural register that the King had. I know that cause I worked for the man himself.”
    “No one ever said I could sing.”
    “Well, there’s a big cash prize.”
    “The grand prize is ten thousand dollars,” said Snake, “and there are smaller prizes also.”
    “When exactly is this again?”
    “Next week is the deadline for registration and the following week is the actual contest.”
    “I’ll think about it. And about the body out back …”
    “You buying beer for the boys, are you?” Snake asked, implying cooperation.
    “Course.”
    “How about Bushmill chasers?” someone suggested as the bartender came over. I nodded yes, and smudged shot glasses were deposited in front of each of them.
    “Make it a double for me,” I said, “I have woes of my own.”
    “What kind?”
    “I just got into a fight with my mother. That’s why I’m out here now.”
    “You have mommy problems, do you?” another old man said and belched.
    “Don’t ask.”
    “Hey, we all got mothers, don’t we?”
    “Elvis adored Gladys,” said one. “She was his mammy.”
    “A mother can be a boy’s best friend,” a third hypothesized.
    “In my case she’s my worst enemy.” I took a deep sip of my beer. “It might just be a cultural problem.”
    “What? Is she white and you’re Chinese?” asked a man with chipped teeth.
    “Wow! How’d you know that?” Chinese and Korean, white and Jewish were all the same in these parts. Before chipped teeth could answer, another barfly flew into a racially insensitive joke ending with the punchline: “Two Wongs don’t make a white.” All guffawed and more beer was brought over.
    With each added pitcher, I faded slowly into the brownish wallpaper. As I listened to them yak about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other news items, I waited for some comments about the dead Elvis out back. Although they did refer to him a few times, there was no real story there. A dead B&E perp didn’t merit the tabloids, even if he was an Elvis impersonator. And the fact is, he looked more like Kenny Rogers. At some point I finally started asking if anyone knew anything about Missy or her relatives.
    “Who’s missing?” one misheard me.
    “Missy Scrubbs, the missing bride from Memphis, she’s from around these parts, isn’t she?”
    “She hung out here years ago,” Snake spoke up. “Diddled one of the younger fellas and was shooed off. No one’s seen her since.”
    “She must’ve been in her midteens,” I pointed out.
    “Yeah,” Snake replied. “That’s why we eighty-sixed her.”
    “Any idea where she lived?”
    “Yeah, with her family down the road. They all up and moved to Memphis when she did and the shotgun shack they lived in burnt down.”
    So much for any new leads on Missy Scrubbs. The highlight of the day was when the old station wagon from the county morgue eventually arrived. All the men grabbed their mugs and moseyed over to the window to watch as the two skinny guys bagged the body, hauled him down the hill, and loaded him into the back of the meat wagon.
    The rest of the evening flaked away like a smoldering cigarette. I had no one waiting for me and the prospect of being homeless in New York kept me rooted to my stool. Still, the drinks kept coming and floated me into the land of drunken burnouts. After the last call, some of the burly beer-soaked men half-walked, half-carried me out into the cold night air where I was deposited into my car and I duly passed out.

CHAPTER FOUR
    W hen my car door popped open, I awoke, still drunk. My hands fumbled through my purse. But they weren’t my hands. They had to belong to someone else. At some point I realized it wasn’t my purse they were fumbling through—it