Scratch Fever by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online

with her finger.
    “We look like twins,” she said.
    “Not quite,” Jon said. “Hiya Darlene.”
    An image of that shaggy brunette hair buried in his lap flashed through his mind; the van back behind the Ramp. Oh yes.
    “I’m sorry you guys are splitting up,” she said. “You got a good band.”
    “We had a good band. It’s over now.”
    “I’m sad.”
    “No big deal.”
    “I need a shoulder to cry on.”
    Your makeup’ll run , he thought, annoyed with her and with himself, because she was making his jeans tight.
    “You still got your van?”
    “Sure, but right now I gotta help tear down, Darlene.”
    “This won’t take long.”
    She had a whory mouth, but in a nice way, and though her teeth were faintly yellow, from smoking no doubt, they were nice teeth, and her tongue peeking out between the parted teeth was nice, too.
    “How about another time?” Jon said. Polite smile.
    “No time like the present.” She had hold of his arm, hugging it, tugging at him.
    He glanced back at Toni, in her booth; she was smiling at him, amused. But then she mouthed something at him. He couldn’t make it out and squinted and Toni tried again: What about the dyke? she was silently saying.
    Jon turned back to Darlene, said, “What about your friend?”
    She was still tugging him along, toward the door. “You’re my friend, Jon boy.”
    “Please don’t call me Jon boy. This is not ‘The Waltons.’ This is definitely not ‘The Waltons. ’ ”
    She laughed, as if she understood him. “Come on. I got a present for you.”
    Jon didn’t smoke. Jon didn’t drink. Jon didn’t do dope. But Jon did have a weakness. And Darlene was definitely part of that weakness.
    He went outside with her.
    “I said, what about that girlfriend of yours?” he said, pulling loose from her, getting an arm’s length between them.
    “She’s not here.”
    “Well she was here,” he said. “I saw her.” He hadn’t, really, but Toni had.
    “So she was here,” she said, “so what? She’s gone now.”
    “Well, isn’t she your . . .”
    “She’s just another guy to me.”
    “So I gathered.”
    “Come on, I got something for you,” she said, tugging him toward the van, which was parked way down at the end of the tin shed that was the club portion of the Barn. The Nodes logo on their T-shirts was also on the side of the van, painted there, frosted over at the moment. Hugging his arm, she pushed herself against him, snuggled against him. As they walked, their footsteps sounded hollow on the wooden sidewalk. When they spoke, their cold breath hung briefly in the air, as though the words themselves were hanging there.
    “What’s her name, anyway?” Jon said.
    “Who?”
    “Your girlfriend?”
    “Who cares?”
    They were at the van. Jon unlocked the side door and they got in. There were some blankets on the cold metal floor of the van, which were used as padding between the amplifiers and such when the van was loaded for travel, and were also used for occasions like this, with Jon and Darlene falling on top of each other in the back of the van.
    “It’s a little cold,” Jon said, reaching over and locking the door they’d just come in. “Maybe I should turn on the heater.”
    “It won’t be cold long,” Darlene said, pulling her T-shirt off. Her nipples were two red bumps in pink circles riding small, high breasts above a bony ribcage; Jon put his hands on the breasts, kissed the breasts, but his heart wasn’t in it. His hard-on wasn’t, either. It was, in fact, gone.
    Because all he could think of what that dyke, whose name he couldn’t remember, not that it mattered. He wasn’t even thinking about Julie and that Hulk of hers, really, it was that goddamn dyke. . . .
    Then she was at his fly, and her head was in his lap again, and he was suddenly getting back into it when the side door of the van opened and Jon, angry, confused— I locked that! —said, “Shut that fucking thing!” and then saw who it was who