yip.
I heard a kid behind us say, “Mommy, what are the puppies doing?”
And Mommy, not missing a beat, said, “They’re doing a trick, dear.”
Children were screaming. Waldo began kicking at the remaining dogs indiscriminately, and they darted for cover. Members of the circus rushed Waldo the Great. There were disappointed and injured dogs hunching and yipping all over the place. Waldo went back to the horny male and tried once more to discourage him. He really put the boot to him, but the ole boy really hung in there. I was kind of proud of him. One of the other dogs, innocent, except for confusion, and a gyrating ass and a dick like a rolled-back lipstick tube, made an error in geography and humped air past Waldo and got a kick in the ass for it.
He sailed way up and into the bleachers, went so high his fleas should have served cocktails and dinner on him. Came down like a bomb, hit between a crack in the bleachers with a yip. I didn’t see him come out from under there. He didn’t yip again.
The little boy behind me, said, “Is that a trick too?”
“Yes,” Mommy said. “It doesn’t hurt him. He knows how to land.”
I certainly hoped so.
Not everyone took it as casually as Mommy. Some dog lovers came out of the bleachers and there was a fight. Couple of cowboys started trying to do to Waldo what he had done to the poodles.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, the two amorous mutts were still at it, the male laying pipe like there was no tomorrow.
Yes sir, a pleasant afternoon trip to the circus with my daughter. Another debacle. It was merely typical of the luck I had been experiencing. Even a free ticket to the circus could turn to shit.
Jasmine and I left while a cowboy down from the bleachers was using Waldo the Great as a punching bag. One of the ungrateful poodles was biting the cowboy on the boot.
Me and Jasmine didn’t have hot dogs. We ended up at a Mexican place, and Jasmine paid for it. Halfway through the meal Jasmine looked up at me and frowned.
“Daddy, I can always count on you for a good time.”
“Hey,” I said, “what were you expecting for free tickets? Goddamn Ringling Brothers?”
“Really, Daddy. I enjoyed it. Weirdness follows you around. At Mom’s there isn’t anything to do but watch television, and Mom and Gerald always go to bed about nine o’clock, so they’re no fun.”
“I guess not,” I said, thinking nine o’clock was awful early to be sleepy. I hoped the sonofabitch gave her the clap.
After dinner, Jasmine dropped me off and next morning I went down to Martha’s and she grunted at me and showed me the Harlequins and where they needed to go, in alphabetical order, so I started in placing them. After about an hour of that, it got hot and I had to stop and talk Martha into letting me go over to the drugstore and buy a Coke.
When I came back with it, there was a guy in there with a box of Harlequin Romances. He was tall and lean and not bad-looking, except that he had one of those little pencil-line mustaches that looked as if he’d missed a spot shaving or had a stain line from sipping chocolate milk. Except for a black eye, his face was oddly unlined, as if little that happened to him in life found representation there. I thought he looked familiar. A moment later, it came to me. He was the guy at the circus with the performing dogs. I hadn’t recognized him without his gold lame tights. I could picture him clearly now, his foot up in the air, a poodle being launched from it. Waldo the Great.
He had a box of books on the desk in front of Martha. All Harlequin Romances. He reached out and ran his fingers over the spines. “I really hate to get rid of these,” he was saying to Martha, and his voice was as sweet as a cooing turtle dove. “Really hate it, but see, I’m currently unemployed and extra finances, even of a small nature, are needed, and considering all the books I read, well, they’re outgrowing my trailer. I tell you, it hurts me to dispense with these. Just seeing them on my shelves cheers me… Oh, I take these books so to heart. If life could be like these, oh what a life that would be. But somebody always messes it up.” He touched the books. “True love. Romance. Happy endings. Oh, it should be that way, you know. We live such a miserable existence. We —”
“Hey,” Martha said. “Actually, I don’t give a shit why you want to get rid of them. And if life was like a Harlequin Romance, I’d put a gun in my mouth. You want to sell this crap, or not?”
Martha always tries to endear herself to her customers. I reckon she’s got a trust fund somewhere and her mission on earth is to make as many people miserable as possible. Still, that seemed blunt even for her.
“Well, now,” Waldo said. “I was merely expressing a heartfelt opinion. Nothing more. I could take my trade elsewhere.”
“No skin off my rosy red ass,” Martha said. “You want, that man over there will help you carry this shit back out to the car.”
He looked at me. I blushed, nodded, drank more of my Coke.
He looked back at Martha. “Very well. I’ll sell them to you, but only because I’m pressed to rid myself of them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t take twice what you want to give for them.”
“For you, Mister Asshole,” Martha said, “just for you, I’ll give you half of what I normally offer. Take it or leave it.”
Waldo, Mr. Asshole, paused for a moment, studying Martha. I could see the side of his face, and just below his blackened eye there was a twitch, just once, then his face was smooth again.
“All right, let’s conduct our business and get it over with,” he said.
Martha counted the books, opened the cash register and gave Waldo a handful of bills. “Against my better judgment, there’s the whole price.”
“What in the world did I ever do to you?” Waldo the Great, alias, Mr. Asshole, said. He almost looked really hurt. It was hard to tell. I’d never seen a face like that. So smooth. So expressionless. It was disconcerting.
“You breathe,” Martha said, “that’s enough of an offense.” With that, Waldo, Mr. Asshole, went out of the store, head up, back straight.
“Friend of yours?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Martha said. “Me and him are fuckin’.”
“I thought the two of you were pretty warm.”
“I don’t know. I really can’t believe it happened like that.”
“You weren’t as sweet as usual.”
“Can’t explain it. One of those things. Ever had that happen? Meet someone right off, and you just don’t like them, and you don’t know why.”
“I always just shoot them. Saves a lot of breath.”
She ignored me. “Like it’s chemistry or something. That guy came in here, it was like someone drove by and tossed a rattlesnake through the door. I didn’t like him on sight. Sometimes I think that there’s certain people that are predators, and the rest of us, we pick up on it, even if it isn’t obvious through their actions, and we react to it. And maybe I’m an asshole.”
“That’s a possibility,” I said. “You being an asshole, I mean. But I got to tell you, I don’t like him much either. Kind of makes my skin crawl, that unlined face and all.”
I told her about the circus and the dogs.
“That doesn’t surprise me any,” Martha said. “I mean, anyone can lose their cool. I’ve kicked a dog in my time —”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“— but I tell you, that guy hasn’t got all the corn on his cob. I can sense it. Here, put these up. Earn your goddamn circus tickets.”
I finished off the Coke, got the box of Harlequins Waldo had brought in, took them over to the romance section and put them on the floor.
I pulled one out to look at the author’s name, and something fell out of the book. It was a folded piece of paper. I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a magazine fold-out of a naked woman, sort you see in the cheaper tits and ass magazines. She had breasts just a little smaller than watermelons and she was grabbing her ankles, holding her legs in a spread eagle position, as if waiting for some unsuspecting traveler to fall in. There were thick black paint lines slashed at the neck, torso, elbows, wrist, waist, knees and ankles. The eyes had been blackened with the marker so that they looked like nothing more than enormous skull sockets. A circle had been drawn around her vagina and there was a big black dot dead center of it, like a bull’s-eye. I turned it over. On the back over the
