King of the Perverts by Steve Lowe Page B

of creeping me the fuck out.”
    “OK.” Jack faces the bar and sips his drink. It looks like a glass of Coke. I have a feeling there’s nothing other than that in the glass. He says, “I’ll leave you alone now, but I actually came over here to point out the lady at the far end of the bar.”
    I look, searching the far end and I spot her right away. Forty-ish looking cougar with bad hair, worse skin, and a scowl pointed in my direction. She’s sipping her drinks through a black straw, drawing hard enough that her cheeks collapse. She looks like she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose and find such a thing enjoyable. She releases her straw and licks her upper lip, all the while boring a hole right through me with her stare.
    “Oh, yeah. I see her.”
    Jack says, “She’s probably your best bet at this point. I even dropped your name to her. That’s probably why she’s watching you and doing odd things with her straw that she evidently thinks are attractive to the opposite sex. She’s been married four times, had three abortions and a miscarriage, been to jail, and suffers from an acute addiction to methamphetamines in its gaseous form.”
    “Damn, you learned all that about her already?”
    “Yes. It’s not hard to get desperate women talking, as long as it’s about themselves. It’s part of their self-destructive nature to try to transfer their problems onto those around them.”
    “OK, understood, Jack. I don’t need the psych lesson here.”
    “Ten-four. Like I said, she has your name, likes your appearance, and would make a very viable candidate for receiving the donkey punch . There’s even a decent chance she might enjoy such rough handling. But I would strongly suggest using a very reliable form of protection from sexually transmitted diseases, because there is a high probability that her vagina is teeming with them.”
    I turn away from the walking spirochete at the end of the bar to look at Jack. Once you get past the pedophile spectacles and the unsettling cadence of his voice, he’s really not a bad guy. I extend my hand and say, “Good thinking. Thanks Jack, it was a pleasure meeting you and I appreciate the assist.”
    Jack turns away from my hand. He says, “Sorry, but I don’t do well with physical contact. And you’re welcome. Go get her, Your Highness.”
     

 
     
     
    The Donkey Punch
     
    “Hi sugar, I’m Pauline.”
    I didn’t even have to move. She came to me. I had just drained my glass and was working myself up for a trip to the pisser before stumbling over to her spot at the bar, but I guess as soon as Jack left, she zeroed in.
    I stick out a hand and say, “Hi Pauline, name’s Dennis.” Then I sit there and wonder why the fuck I’m talking like Roy Rogers all of a sudden.
    She grabs my hand and I immediately regret having offered it. She sits next to me in a grand display of clanging, over-sized jewelry, and I resist the urge to wipe her hepatitis handshake on my pants. Pauline smells of cheap drugstore perfume, a lot of it, and she doesn’t look too healthy up close. From the other end of the bar she didn’t exactly appear to be fit as a fiddle, but sitting right next to me, my skin is crawling. Poor girl has clearly seen some rough times over the years, as evidenced by the half-moon shaped scar under her right eye.
    “So, I heard a rumor about you.”
    Uh-oh.
    “Oh yeah? What kind of rumor.”
    Pauline leans closer and says in a cigarette-and-gin infused fog, “Word is you’re a TV star.”
    I laugh and look around for Jack Mehoff, but he seems to have disappeared. “Well, I’m not sure what people have been saying, but that’s not entirely accurate.”
    Pauline sidles right up next to me and places her lips against my left ear. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “I won’t say nothing about the show. I know it will get you disqualified.”
    I pull back and look at her. She’s got a wild, excited look in her eyes. I don’t know what all Jack