Inner Tube: A Novel by Hob Broun Read Free Book Online Page B

whippet body. Her face is a battlefield—long nose, prominent teeth, and the acne scars that shame her, that she tries to disguise with Max Factor foundation, which cakes up like silt in the pits. There is ambivalence in her, but no confusion. Families are the affliction of her life. The family she came from, the one she helped to start. Heidi needs to be alone. I want to help her.
    She was fourteen in Zanesville, Ohio, when her mother died like this: Working part-time at a luncheonette, she was badly burned by the deep-fat fryer. A friend volunteered to drive her to a hospital but the manager said for insurance purposes she should go in an ambulance. The ambulance hit a patch of ice, flew into a lake, and all aboard were drowned. Heidi answered the phone and it was a state trooper calling.
    A couple of months later she moved west with her sisters and her father, the mine inspector. She went to high school in five different states and married the first man who thought to ask her.
    I had been at the Golconda less than two weeks. It was a Saturday morning and a girl let herself into my room with a key. I was naked in bed, smoking and watching the set: cartoons with no sound. Like a lush-worker on New Year’s Eve, wasting no time, she started right in on me.
    “You got any complaints about the room, mister, I’d like to hear them.”
    The best I could do was “No,” and spread out the sheet a little.
    “Okay then. Maybe you’re from Canada or somewhere, but we got a deal out here where you leave a little something for the girl who does up your room. I been waiting on you, figure maybe you’re one of those end-of-the-week, hide-it-under-the-pillow types. But nothing. Not gratuity one do I see from you. Maybe you think I don’t mind bending over to wipe scum off the toilet rim or pick toenails off the carpet. But it’s some shabby work moving through strangers’ crap every day. They pay me like an Indian and never once…”
    She waved it all away, turned to one side. “Oh God,” pressing fingertips against her hairline, “you must think I’m a total idiot acting like this.”
    “No. You’re right. It’s me. I have a way of missing out on obvious details. My jacket. It’s rolled up behind that chair. Go ahead in the pocket and take whatever you think’s fair.”
    “You’re serious?”
    “So they tell me.”
    She drew a bill from my pocket with two fingers, then looked over at me plucking hairs above my sternum. She had a laugh like a tropical bird, a trill I could watch moving up her throat.
    Lifting her eyes to the ceiling, “Mama, this ain’t how it looks.”
    “Not at all. I had a lovely time. What’s your name, anyhow?”
    “Linda,” she said, leaving no doubt it was a lie.
    “Linda. That’s Spanish, isn’t it?”
    She went out the door, then curled her head back around. “Something else you could do for me is quit throwing your dental floss in the sink.”
    Monday morning I was ready for her. I’d called in to the facility, reported car trouble, and when she showed around ten I had candles burning and a bottle of Solano County champagne iced down in the sink. Leaning up against her utility cart with bangs awry, she had a sullen white-trash look of too many years’ macaroni and soup beans.
    “What the hell are you up to?” she said.
    And I wondered myself. But once I’d coaxed her inside I sensed as before her scrawny heat, and desire rose in me like nausea. I popped the cork.
    She looked suspiciously into her glass. “If this is about the other day…Listen, I was under some pressure, driving all around for a place to let it out, and you got elected, that’s all.”
    “ Salud, ” I said.
    “What I mean is don’t take me at face value, okay?” Then she grimaced, tossed her head in a way that told me she had realized a possible reference to her homely features.
    “Sit back and relax,” I suggested.
    She turned from me to look out the window at the cars.
    “Linda,” I said,