Free Sarah Court by Craig Davidson Page B

beer and order the next with a bourbon
chaser. I’ll get so stinking pissed you could douse
me in kerosene and strike a match: I’ll burn in bliss.
Some forensics team will be amazed to discover a
resin of boiled bourbon has epoxied my spinal knobs
together.
    I’m three sheets to the wind—erstwhile goal:
nine sheets or full-body paralysis—when one of
the girls swans in. Vision of pulchritude! Minx!
Wood nymph! Pixie! That green goo has stained her
tongue the colour of a freeze-dried frog. She’s so
perfect she belongs in a music box. You forget skin
possesses marvellous tension when teenage-fresh.
My own feels moored on strips of ancient velcro and
if a few more hooks come free my face will slide right
off, bunching up in my neck like an un-elasticized
tubesock to present my rye-stained skull.
    “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” I tell
her solemnly. She brands me a “freak.” So, I’ve
been reduced to weathering insults from this hip
sophisticate who likely believes pink bubble gum
to be the ideal pairing for a bottle of six-dollar
Chardonnay.
    “You can’t come in here with that,” says the
bartender.
    That : a pitbull. Off-white with a bridled coat
tufting at the rolls of its neck. Heeled beside the man
who is presumably its owner. Trousers torn up his
calves showcase the baguettes of his legs. A friendly
face but his teeth jut on tangents like a handful of
dice rolled into his gums: Come on, lucky seh vaans ! One eye’s so discoloured it looks like a plum kicked
into his socket.
    “She won’t whiz on the floor.”
    Bartender says: “Health code violation.”
    “No offence, but this whole place is some kind of
violation.”
    “Takes a dump, you clean it up.”
    “Bottle of Jamieson’s and a pint glass.”
    The bartender obeys. The guy presses the icechilled pint to his battered eye and faces me.
    “Well, how bad is it?”
    “The first I’ve seen you. No basis for comparison.”
    He sets a bowl of cocktail peanuts on the floor.
The sound of tiny bones snapping as the pitbull
chows down.
    “He looks tough.”
    “He’s a she. Matilda. Matty. I’m James. Owner.”
“Fletcher. She bite?”
    “A little.”
    Matilda sniffs my topsiders. I pet her anvil-heavy
head—like petting an Indian rubber ball. No water
in the tendons beneath that stretching of hide. Each
defined muscle a ball of copper wire. Ears bitten off.
She licks my fingers. Tongue hard as strop leather.
    “You’ve fought her.”
    “Birds fly. Rabbits fuck. Pitties fight.”
    “And you—fighting?”
    “Mighta been.”
    “You win?”
    “Basest human nature. Who ever wins?”
    James pinches a stray peanut between his fingers.
Eases open his swollen eyelid. It rests cradled in the
pocket of purple flesh.
    “My wife’s hubby decked me.”
    “She’s got a couple of you on the go?”
    “Ex-wife, okay. The new hubby socked me. Busted
his hand. Ha! Ha! A surgeon. Dumb bastard makes a
living with his hands.”
    “What provoked that?”
    “When we split I said keep the dogs.” The peanut
pops free. Matilda eats it. “I didn’t have the bottle for
a pissing match. But I love that bitch”—indicating
the pitbull—“and let her be taken away. I knew they
had a cottage somewhere-hereabouts. Practically
a mansion, on a lake. I pitched my tent off in the
bushes.”
    “You robbed them?”
    “My property.” Meaning Matilda. “How’s that
robbery?”
    “The stipulations of my divorce are pretty
ironclad.”
    “Are we talking laws? Jurisprudence? No—
karmic fairness. That dog and me are wedded above
any law. Anyway, when they showed up, my ex
leashed Matilda in the yard. Went to do whatever
she does with Doc Hotlips. Screw on a bearskin rug.
I grabbed Matilda. She’s barking her head off. Next
it’s Hotlips steamrolling at me. I took a swing. He
painted me. All she wrote.”
    “The whole fight?”
    “When I come to he’s apologizing. My eyes were
really