The Black Marble Read Online Free PDF Page A

find some action when you’re out on the road showing dogs. Lots a fag handlers.”
    â€œUh-huh,” the girl said, sucking on a broken fingernail.
    â€œOh, you’ll be a popular handler someday with the real men on the show tours. There’s one woman handler, named Wilma. A punch-board. What the hell, she’s a little dumpy, but when you been looking at dogs all day …”
    â€œUh-huh,” the girl said, the joke wasted. “You sure got the touch, Mr. Skinner!”
    â€œWanna strip the ears?” He took her arm gently, nudging her in front of him at the grooming table.
    â€œOkay, Mr. Skinner,” she said, a bit edgy, wondering if tonight was the night. The other girls said he made his big move after you’d worked there about a month. She’d been working for Skinner Kennels three weeks.
    Philo Skinner was standing behind the girl now, admiring how her bottom stretched the exotic orchid patches on the jeans. None of these young girls wore underpants anymore, he thought. Not a goddamn one of them! And they didn’t bathe any too often either. This one had dust and lint in her scruffy brown hair and her dirty fingernails were bitten to the quick. But damn, she had tits like mangoes!
    â€œStrip exactly one inch from the top to exactly one inch from the bottom. Understand?”
    â€œYes, sir,” she said uneasily, feeling him press in behind her as he pretended to guide her hand to the tassel of the terrier’s ear.
    â€œThe ears can’t be clipped,” he said and she smelled his tobacco-sour breath on her face. “It doesn’t look natural. It has to be stripped to be natural.”
    He moved in very close, leaning on her leg. Oh, gross! The old fart had a hard-on!
    â€œThat’s it, Pattie Mae,” he whispered, rubbing it against her. “Strip all the hair away. Strip, Pattie Mae. Strip! ”
    The door opened and Philo Skinner leaped back, turning his body away from a squinting smock-clad woman dragging a reluctant Airedale through the door.
    â€œPattie Mae, why the hell’re you still here?” she demanded, looking at Philo Skinner suspiciously. He adjusted his own white smock to hide the telltale bulge, and began fiddling with the cage dryer.
    â€œGotta be a goddamn electrician to keep things working around here,” Philo Skinner grumbled. “Mavis, who the hell used this thing last, anyway?”
    â€œI dunno,” she said, still squinting from Philo to his new apprentice. “Pattie Mae, why you working so late?”
    â€œWell, uh, Mr. Skinner said he needed …”
    â€œMavis, you know goddamn well we gotta get this Dandie ready. Christ, Pilkington’s our best client these days. I gotta be free to devote the next couple days to the Beverly Hills Show, don’t I? Christ, it’s pouring outside!”
    Philo Skinner was eminently thankful for the Thursday night rain, his excuse to turn to the window and let the tumescence subside. “Goddamn cold rainy night,” he said gratefully.
    â€œWell, since I don’t really think Mr. Skinner intends paying you time-and-a-half, I think you should go home now.”
    â€œYes, Mrs. Skinner. I’ll just put the Dandie to bed,” the girl said, slipping the smock down over her breasts, braless under a jersey which said: “I love puppies and cuddly things.”
    Goddamn, Philo Skinner thought. Cuddly things. Goddamn. Then he looked at Mavis, fifty-one years old going on sixty. Skin like sizzling pancake batter. Two eye jobs already. Hair dyed the color of puppy shit, with enough spray to do a whole platoon of goddamn terriers. I love puppies and cuddly things. Oh, God! And then it swept him away: an overwhelming emptiness and yearning.
    After the girl scurried out the door with the Dandie Dinmont, Mavis Skinner said, “Well, Philo, I hope this one stays a little longer than most. Think you can keep from running her off like all the