Work Done for Hire by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online

bite and tried to smile and chew at the same time.
    â€œIf you don’t talk to me about it, who are you going to talk to?” I shrugged, or cringed. “You stopped going to the VA shrink.”
    â€œShe just gave me pills.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t like the pills, I understand. I didn’t like what they did to you. But you do have to talk to someone.”
    â€œOkay. I will.”
    â€œPromise?”
    â€œYeah. I’ll open up. Let it all out.”
    Into the book.
    __________
    Twenty-six miles turned out to be more in practice than it had seemed in theory. The idea of Iowa being flat was also a theoretical premise not borne out by fact. At the nineteen-mile mark there was a forlorn-looking motel, the Tidy Inn, and we turned into it after a two-word discussion.
    The owner was a fat woman with sparse yellow hair, in a faded floral print dress at least a size too small. I had to pay her in cash, and if we’d wanted a phone, that would’ve been another $50 cash deposit. I wondered when she’d last had a customer who didn’t bring his own.
    The room was too large for its small bed and desk and chair. It had a stale smell and was dark as night. Kit kept me from turning on the lights when we unlocked the door. She’d unclamped the strong headlight from her handlebars. She crept over to the bed and pulled the covers over as she snapped it on. No bugs went scurrying for shelter. That should have comforted me, but instead I worried that she might not have been fast enough. Armies of bedbugs waiting to carry us off into the night.
    One welcome surprise was an old-fashioned bathtub sitting on claw feet. It was big enough for two, a little crowded. She filled it up with steaming water, only a little rust-colored, while I did a quick maintenance routine on the bikes and brought them inside.
    She was already undressed, standing in the water, and lowered herself down with an expression of bliss. “Oh, my aching butt.”
    I peeled off my Lycra bicycle togs and slipped in facing her, interlacing legs. The hot water was a relief, technically for the perineum rather than the butt proper, but she knew that. “Oh, my pulsating perineum” might be misconstrued.
    I tickled her with my toe. “What do you want to do tonight?”
    â€œSomething besides that. Maybe trim your toenails.” I jerked back. “Kidding.” She put my foot back in place, gently, and then leaned forward while she reached behind her back to run some more hot water into the tub.
    â€œBesides the obvious, we might try to find something to eat.” We’d packed an emergency dinner of beans and franks, but there might be a roadside café or, more likely, a fast-food joint.
    â€œShould’ve asked Dragon Lady,” I said. “Wonder how close we are to the Amanas.” The Amana Colonies were a cluster of pseudo-Amish towns that featured home-cooking restaurants.
    â€œAsk her when we’re cleaned up.” She took the little bar of soap and started to work on me. After a couple of minutes we dried off hastily and moved to the squeaky bed.
    Afterwards, she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, her breath tickling my neck. Her body still glowing from the tub and sex.
    As often happens, I was miles from sleep, no matter how tired I was from the neck down. Should think about the book. Hard to put myself into the head of an inhuman flesh-eating monster with this cute flesh doll cuddled up alongside me. My deflated dick shrank even more at the thought.
    I looked down at her body and had a terrible instant of transport. In front of a mosque, a civilian body carelessly ground under tank treads, bare legs unaffected, relaxed. Don’t go there. Don’t go back there.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Stephen Spenser wasn’t impressed by money, having grown up surrounded by rich people he didn’t like. But there was a comfortable talismanic feel to the tight roll of C-notes, held with a