Free Pretty Ugly: A Novel by Kirker Butler Page B

than he was willing to sacrifice, so he forgot about his phone and turned his attention to Marvin’s shoe boxes of pills.
    “Trouble with the wife?”
    Ray jumped. “Jesus Christ. You scared the hell out of me.”
    Standing in the doorway was Marvin’s seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Courtney.
    “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to eavesdrop? How long have you been there?” he asked.
    She shrugged.
    “Well … what’s going on with my wife is not any of your business.”
    “Sorry. I was just trying to make conversation. How’s Granddaddy?” she asked, smiling sadly toward Marvin. His shallow breathing rattled like a peach pit in a garbage disposal.
    “About the same. Sleeping mostly. Sometimes I think he’ll outlive us all.”
    “I wish he would.” Courtney stared at her grandfather for a long time. “He looks so noble. Don’t you think he looks noble?”
    “Noble” was not the word Ray would have used to describe the shrunken husk of a man in the bed next to him. “Rotting human jerky” was closer. Marvin’s dark, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks made his skin cling to his face like a gray ribbed condom had been pulled over his skull. Clumps of white, wispy hair turned sickly yellow at the roots sprouted from his head, chin, and ears. And his toothless mouth hung open as if in the middle of a painful, silent scream. Marvin was the closest thing to a real-life zombie Ray had ever seen.
    “Sure. Noble,” Ray said unconvincingly. “I can see that.”
    “Is he awake?”
    “No. He’s been unconscious since I got here.”
    Ray pretended not to be bothered by the long silence that followed. Finally, he looked back to Courtney and noticed for the first time that she was wearing a raincoat. “What’s with the coat? Is it raining out?”
    “No,” she said, opening the raincoat, revealing her naked body. “But I am pretty wet.”
    The coat slid from her shoulders and fell into a pile at her feet just like she’d practiced in the mirror upstairs. Posing against the doorframe, the teenager stared into Ray’s eyes with a self-assuredness that terrified him and turned him on in equal measure. He melted into his chair and took in every inch of her body. A bit of baby fat stubbornly clung to her face and belly, which was soft and smooth like a memory foam pillow. But her breasts … those things were flawless—the perfect size, the perfect shape, symmetrical, proportional, breathtaking. In California she would’ve been considered overweight, but in Kentucky she was perfect. Tiptoeing across the room, Courtney placed her hands on the arms of Ray’s chair and leaned over him, letting her long blond hair cover his face.
    “I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
    “I, um”—he cleared his throat—“I’ve missed you, too,” he said. “How was that back-to-school dance? Did you go?”
    She shrugged. “Yeah. It was fine, I guess. The DJ only played dance music so I left early and got wasted with some friends, so … it was whatever.”
    Without realizing it, Ray’s hands had found their way to her hips. He searched his soul for the strength to stop, but his soul was distracted by the perfect teenage breasts in his face. When their lips met, a quivering numbness swept through his body. His breathing stopped and he felt weightless yet helplessly earthbound, a week-old party balloon blown a few inches into the air by an opening door, then settling again with a gentle, almost imperceptible bounce. Why wasn’t there a pill like this?
    Okay. This is your last chance, Ray thought. Stop now before something—uhp, well here we go.
    Courtney slid Ray’s pants down below his knees and straddled the married male nurse charged with helping her last living relative die with dignity. It was not an ideal chair for lovemaking—the ancient upholstery chafed Ray’s bare ass, and Courtney’s long legs barely squeezed through the armrests—but once they got into position, she rocked his world.
    It