Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale Page B

all-purpose deluxe tight-as-sin polyester screw-me-to-death outfit and no panties. I wear that, when I walk it looks like my thangamajig is shellin’ a walnut.”
    All I could respond with was, “I’m sure that would have been very nice too.”
    “Well, this will have to do. I didn’t want you to spring a leak on our first date.”
    “It’s fine,” I said. “Looks great.”
    “I hope so,” she said. “Actually, it’s kind of painful. I got on one of those bras hikes your titties up. They aren’t as formfitting as the goddamn box says they are. I feel like I got a truck jack under each one of ’em.”
    We made romantic small talk like that on the way over, and once inside and seated at our table, a guy dressed in a white dinner jacket stood up at an organ and played and sang in a manner so awful I thought for a moment he was a comedian. When I realized he wasn’t, I said, “I’m sorry. I could have taken you to Burger King and we could have listened to Fats Domino on the jukebox. This clown wasn’t here last time I came.”
    “That must have been Christmas Eve 1984, because I been here a lot and he’s been here since I’ve been coming, and he’s never been able to carry a note in a sealed Tupperware container. He can do a damn good ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ though, and come Christmas he has a medley that ends with ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ that’ll break your goddamn heart.”
    I smiled at her. “You are definitely different, Brett.”
    “Not really,” she said. “I just put up a bold front. I’m really a chicken shit. This dating business is confusing to me. I don’t know if I want a real relationship anymore or a quick fuck. What about you?”
    “I’d really hate to choose.”
    “I’ll tell you a secret too. I don’t come on to every man like I did you.”
    “You keep telling me that.”
    “Do I?”
    “Yep.”
    “Well, I really do like you. If you had money I’d like you even more.”
    “I like you too, but I don’t have money.”
    “I didn’t think you did. You don’t look like you got more than a couple dimes to rub together.”
    “Don’t worry. I can pay for the meal.”
    She smiled again. Damn, I liked that smile.
    “I don’t mind you don’t have money,” she said, and she reached out and placed her hand on top of mine. “I just said it would be convenient you had it. As for you liking me too, that’s good, but men like women right off if they look a certain way. And there’s some men, they go long enough and it’s late enough and they’re drunk enough, and some of them don’t even need the drink. . . . Well, they’d fuck a three-hundred-pound cross-eyed sow in a John Deere cap.”
    “You got to be proud of those old boys,” I said. “To think appearance doesn’t matter. That’s very modern, don’t you think?”
    “What I think is I may not be a
Playboy
model, but I been around enough to know I look better than a tie rack. Figure that won’t last much longer at my age, so I better use it while I got it.”
    “I may let my biology bark now and then,” I said, “but I make my final judgments with my heart, not my eyes. And just for the record, on the visual part, you’re a long way off from having ties hung on you. But that’s not the long and the short of it for me. How you look, I mean. I grew up in the sixties. I’m for equal rights and I’m for women. I even think of myself as a supporter of feminism as long as it doesn’t come across as stupid and strident as extreme machoism. . . . Is that a word?”
    “Who cares? I get your drift.”
    “All right. Whatever, strident on either side wears me out. Like I said, my biology barks now and then, but when it comes down to it, I like to think I’m not the sort of guy can be pulled around by the ying-yang. I like to believe I’m made of sterner stuff than that.”
    “I grew up in the sixties too,” Brett said, “but I hope there’s at least a drop of male chauvinist pig in you, or