“And I never did get that therapy.”
(30)
That night I showered and readied myself for bed, because I realized that the whole excitement of what we had done, some of it successful, some of it not, had cleared my head a little. I felt good about myself. Maybe Leonard was right. We were doing our best and we were doing it for good, and that was all you could ask.
If I thought too long I would start defining good, and then splitting hairs, and trying to make a chart in my mind, positive on one side, negative on the other, but tonight, I didn’t want to go there.
Brett had been in the bathroom a long time, and I had been reading a bit of Lewis Shiner’s novel, Black and White. I had just laid it aside when Brett said from the bathroom, “Turn out the light.”
I did.
The bathroom door opened and there was light in there, but it was a blue light, and then there was a click of machinery in there, followed by music, Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers singing “Itty Bitty Pretty One.”
I knew the song from the first moment it began.
That humming is magnificent.
Brett’s long, naked leg appeared, gently kicking the air, a red high heel on her foot, and when Frankie got to the lyrics, Brett shook out of the bathroom, dancing, wearing as little as one could wear without being naked, and somehow, it was sexier than if she were nude, a red bra, red panties, and high heels, a blue light behind her, and a shimmy vigorous enough to make the statue of David have an erection and cause California to slide into the Pacific.
When she turned, and worked her butt left and right, up and down, I can assure you any feelings of needing a therapist went South, and I knew I was back because I had reconciled things with myself, at least for now. I was for the moment off the trek around the world, across the concrete ocean, turning the earth with a crowd. I was free.
Brett moved toward me, and as she did, she worked her red bra loose and dropped it. She swung it over her head and all about, snapped it off and over the bed and out of sight. She stopped dancing as the song neared the end, brought her legs together, pushed at her panties, let them drop. There was a bright red nest in the fork of her tree, and I wanted to live there.
And then the song was over and she was in bed with me and I was holding her. She touched me in the right place and said, “I see Little Hap is back in the game.”
“He’s been on vacation.”
She took hold of me, “Welcome back, honey,” she said.
I rolled her over and kissed her and she kissed me back. She said, “Had that song had one more lyric, I would have fainted, and let me tell you, try doing that in high heels.”
“I’ll leave that to you,” I said.
She wrapped her legs around me and clicked those heels together behind my back, reached between us and pushed down my pajama bottoms.
“How about an expedition to the cave?” she said.
“Packed and ready,” I said, and indeed I was.
THE END
Joe R. Lansdale, Cold Cotton: A Hap and Leonard Novella (Hap and Leonard Series)
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