Free Kansas City Noir by Steve Paul

body.
    Thunderbirds again. His name was Roger, a married man with kids; he sold Thunderbirds, spent his days surrounded by a glory of them, in all colors and a few vintages, and she liked him for his Thunderbirds, and he liked the sudden, scorching sex. He grew fond of her hot habit of bouncing with all her sizzle squeezing on his dick till it felt like it might melt soft and be smeared away with the very next bounce. But he miscalculated his fuck-buddy horribly, kept his naked time with her brief, too brief, their meetings were limited, too limited, the wife, blame the wife, the kids and that goddamn wife, always some sort of shadow looming between Sharon and that big shiny feeling she chased everywhere.
    I wanted to mail her a key to our front door, with directions to our house and a promise to die in the basement rumpus room however she wanted, make it special, astonish me, garnish your altar with my remains, but couldn’t find an address of any sort. Love asks so much of us when we are young and everything when we are old.
    Roger’s wife answered her knocks and Sharon must have felt a sinking sensation; the wife was gorgeous. No wonder he was so slippery.
    The gorgeous wife said, “Yes?”
    “I have the saddest news, Mrs. G—my sister is cheating with a married man, and he’s your husband.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “They’re parked in a field a couple of miles from here. I feel so awful, that it’s my sister doing this, and they do it all the time, I’m ashamed to say, but she just won’t listen to me. I’ll take you to them so you can see for yourself and stop things from getting worse—you have a family to defend.”
    The prosecutor waited several months to file charges because they couldn’t find the murder weapon; they finally went to trial without it. Many pictures of her in the Star , looking unconcerned and stylish, making me state aloud my sacred vows to that dangerous tilted chin and flameless eyes, until the headline appeared: MISTRIAL!
    She became a criminal celebrity with qualities they admired on 12th Street. The broken-nosed guys and whorish gals took her under their wings. She posted bond for the retrial, then posted bond again when charged with hubby’s murder. She could be found stalking under the neon lights that gave 12th Street and her life the dramatic tinge she sought and adored— smoking, laughing, swinging on the arms of starstruck gangsters and smitten cops, eating the finest beef in Kansas City while sitting at Harry Truman’s favorite table, hitting mom-and-pop pasta joints in Northeast or rib joints on Brooklyn and Armour, Sanderson’s Lunch at three a.m. for a greaseburger to soak up the scotch, waking wherever she fell, pulling on yesterday’s salty dress before wobbling to the sidewalk and crooking her finger at the next Bub she saw.
    I, too, wandered beneath those lights of many colors, in continental slacks, Beatle boots, and a paisley shirt, stood on the corner waiting and knew this: it would do no good to be polite to her on 12th Street, gentlemanly. She would snicker at polite. Polite or gentlemanly behavior would make her snicker, and then she’d yank your wallet from your pocket and take all the folding money, throw down a couple of your own dollars before you, and say, “Have a bottle of pop on me, candy ass, then beat it.” You wouldn’t want her to snicker and rob you in public like that, it makes you feel so very small, and too alert to your own smallness, so you’d best come on to her a little bit rough, or a lot rough, show her some edges, smile wide and rich and snarly. Then, she’d be more fun than you’ve ever had. If Sharon just once took you into her embrace for a night, or most of a night, you’d leave rearranged and poor but made fresh again by the natural world and what it can do when it likes you and feels like fucking.
    Who wouldn’t love her?
    She made the courts and law and juries look like suckers at her command. Mistrial,