Free Kiss of Noir by Clara Nipper Page A

fuck.”
    “You’ve got more wrong with you than I suspected if you can’t find a hot twat.”
    “I find all I need between the legs of women who are in shape.”
    “Just because a woman has curves doesn’t mean she’s not fit,” I snapped.
    “Listen, I’m not going to argue with you. You like what you like and I like what I like and we won’t change each other. Between us, we can split all the women.”
    “So to speak.”
    Payne laughed. I watched her try to catch the dark-haired woman’s eye. Payne tossed her hair, stared, made a big show of cigarette posturing. Finally the woman looked around, smiled, and looked away.
    “Looks like I’m gonna go dance.”
    “Go jump those bones.” I watched Payne sidle to the woman. She bought her a drink and leaned over her, forcing the woman to look up to see Payne’s face. She moved her slim hips slightly toward the woman and smiled her knockout smile as she spoke to her. The woman nodded and stood up. Payne held her close and swayed, rolling her pelvis gently into the woman. Payne looked over the woman’s shoulder and winked at me, and I held up my glass. When the song was finished, Payne spoke to the woman, who shook her head and walked back to her bar stool. Payne shrugged and returned to the table.
    “She’s very hot. I’ll take that filly home tonight or I’m not Payne Phillips. See a wide load with your name on her yet?”
    “Nope.”
    “Oh,” Payne mocked sympathy, “I guess that means you won’t be scoring tonight. Share how that makes you feel inside.”
    “Bite me, pedophile,” I retorted. I was feeling better and better.
    “What did you call me?”
    I faced her. I could feel how fine I looked. I could discern my bald head gleaming, my face sitting exactly right on my chiseled bones, my T-shirt clinging in all the bulging muscular places, even my beer at the perfect level. And damn, I knew how to hold a cigarette and a woman. I knew it all showed tonight. It had been a long time since I felt all of it together. So I inhaled deeply off the pure tobacco that Cleo had showed me how to roll into an obedient cylinder and repeated, “Pedophile.”
    “What the fuck?” Payne was irritated, but distracted by her beer that she was drinking too fast, her cigarette that she couldn’t keep lit, and the woman who kept staring at us.
    “What else do you call someone who wants their sex to come in a tiny, curveless, weightless, odorless, hairless package? An entire industry of pedophiles.”
    “Oh, that again.” Payne leaned back and sighed, unconcerned with my taunting. “What can I say? I don’t like hair in my food.”
    I sipped my beer. Payne finished hers and refilled both our glasses. She drank half her own right away. “Listen, you think I’m so predictable?” Payne said. “You think I’m nothing but vanilla?” Her eyes sparkled with a secret.
    “Go on,” I said.
    “Sometimes.” Payne looked around the bar then leaned in close. “Sometimes I get all femmed up in drag. You know, makeup, hair, dress, shoes, purse, jewelry, the whole nine, and I go out. I find some really hot butch and I let her take me home. Then, the next night I come out as my regular self, you know, like this and I find that butch and I watch the shock spread all over her face. Then I say to her, ‘yep, last night you fucked a faggot.’” Payne laughed and laughed.
    I swallowed some beer and topped off both glasses. I motioned to the waitress, who nodded. “Looks like your filly is ready for another dry hump,” I said to distract Payne from needing any response from that revelation. Payne dropped her cold cigarette and stood, walking with purpose to the woman.
    They danced and I lost them in the crowd. I watched the people, idly wondering what their stories were. What was each of them on the misery scale? I spotted a sulky blonde at the bar reading a book. Oh, this I had to see. I drained my glass and the dancing crowd parted as I walked.
    I reached the woman.