The Crack in the Lens by Steve Hockensmith Read Free Book Online

floor—which would be soon, at the rate I was pouring whiskey into him—I’d slip away and rejoin my brother. Assuming I could find him.
    “Wha’ culuh wuh deh?” Wishbone asked as my yarn neared its climax.
    “Her bloomers? White, of course.”
    The cowboy shook his head wistfully. “White bloomuhz,” he sighed. “White bloomuhz…”
    “Erf!” I said. Which is not something I say often, but then again, it’s not often someone smacks me on the ass.
    I peeked over my shoulder to find a woman behind me so broad of beam I had to turn all the way around just to take in her entirety. She was a vista, a whole horizon unto herself. Stonewallina, they could’ve called her. Leviathette. Goliathene. Her sweat-stained chemise might have served as a whaler’s sail, while her round face sported so many chins I hadn’t the time to count them all.
    And it wasn’t just her body that was big. Her personality was oversized, too.
    “If you ain’t Big Red,” she blared at me like a foghorn, “then I just slapped the wrong fanny!”
    “No, you got the right fanny,” I said, rubbing my still-tingling cheek. “Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but would you mind tellin’ me why I’ve been so honored?”
    “Cuz I’ve been sent to fetch you, that’s why! Your little friend’s waitin’ for us upstairs in the Bridal Suite. He’s sprung for a twofer with Big Bess, you lucky dog!”
    The woman grabbed me by the arm and tugged with all her considerable might.
    “Go on!” she boomed as I was swung, stumbling, away from the bar. “Get a move on, boy—I got work to do! What do I look like? A damned drover? I gotta herd you? Alright, then— git !”
    She got her point across with another couple swats to my keister.
    “Yes’m! Yes’m!” I said, and as I scurried up the stairs the room erupted with rafter-shaking howls. I didn’t have a chance to say so long to Wishbone, and it actually makes me feel kind of bad as I think back on the man: It only occurred to me this instant that he never got to hear what happened to Mary Jane.
    Once I was at the top of the steps, I waited for Big Bess to catch up, as it took her considerably longer than me to lumber up to the second floor.
    “That way, sugar,” she wheezed, waving a flabby hand at the end of the hallway. “Last room on the left. You go on ahead.”
    As I set off, I could hear Big Bess’s colleagues hard at work behind the doors lining the hall. Of course, there were no such sounds coming from the room Big Bess directed me to. Though that was only to be expected, something about the silence there froze me in place before I could reach for the doorknob.
    “So,” I said, “by my ‘little friend,’ I assume you mean who I think you mean.”
    Big Bess came waddling down the hall toward me, her bulk filling the narrow corridor so fully I couldn’t have squeezed past her had I tried.
    “Christ, you’re a cagey one,” she said. Her voice was quiet now, weary, with none of the forced merriment of a minute before. “What…you think this is some kind of trick?”
    I shrugged.
    I didn’t think it, exactly, but I was thinking it had been quite a while since I’d laid eyes on Old Red.
    “Me…coaxin’ a man into a trap.” Big Bess shook her head as she stepped up close, walling off any escape as efficiently as brick and mortar. “Now, I ask you—what kinda bait would a fat-ass like me make?”
    “Very temptin’, ma’am.”
    “Ha,” she said. Not laughed. Said . The sound was just as flat and fleeting and joyless as it looks on paper: ha. “They only keep me around for comedy and novelty, and I know it. Another year or so and they’ll finally decide I’m too—”
    “Ma’am…you haven’t answered my question.”
    Then she didn’t have to. The door swung open, and there was my “little friend” looking like he wanted to cuff me upside the head.
    “For chrissakes, get in here,” my brother hiss-whispered at me. “You think we got all night for