Free Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem by Jonathan Woods Page A

heart.”
    She looks wistfully at the traffic pounding up and down Greenville Avenue.
    “Then you got your trust fund and moved to Dallas.”
    “I wish that were true, Earl. But Daddy’s wells dried up a long while ago. I came to Dallas ’cause I couldn’t bear watchin’ him make a fool of himself any more.”
    “You’re doin’ graduate work at SMU?”
    She laughs and starts a fresh beer, the deep green surface of the bottle heavy with moisture like meadow grass in early morning.
    “Honey, I never finished high school. I was just killin’ time in the library. Lookin’ at magazines.”
    A giant question mark hangs behind Thigpen’s eyes. What’s up with this kitty?
    Before Thigpen can come to grips with his cautionary intimations, the cheeseburgers and sides arrive. A flurry of activity descends around their table. Condiments and extra napkins are delivered. And, of course, more beers.
    Thigpen and Dandelion dig in like there’s no tomorrow.
    When the last fried pickle is chomped, when the last onion ring is crunched, masticated and swallowed, Dandelion sits back and works a toothpick through her teeth with ladylike aplomb. When she’s done, she flicks it off the deck into the parking lot.
    Thigpen lights a cigarette he cadges off the maitre d’ . Thigpen doesn’t usually smoke but they’ve had six beers apiece and despite the grease and grilled steer he’s feeling a little lightheaded.
    “What if I told you I made all that up?” Dandelion asks.
    “All what up?”
    “You know. About Daddy and his oil wells and Mom goin’ into the loony bin. Even about reading magazines at the library.”
    “Well …” Thigpen ponders the burning end of his cigarette, the defaced wood surface of the picnic table. The phrase Jimmy loves L.D . pops out at him. Then: shit for brains.
    “I guess I’d think you were a little bit dangerous. Like a moccasin hidin’ in a clump of water hyacinths.”
    “Well, it’s all true,” she says. “Everything I’ve told you. As true as God’s word.”
    Dandelion stands up, brushing crumbs from the front of her skirt.
    “I need to pee.”
    As Thigpen watches her buxom long-legged departure, lust flares from his anterior hypothalamus, down his spine and into the tip of his dick.
    When he takes a sip of beer, it’s warm. He makes a face. Then realizes he desperately needs to take an elephant-sized whiz himself.
    At the bathroom doors Thigpen waivers; then pushes through the one marked as belonging to the opposite sex. Dandelion and another woman with chapped lips and rosy cheeks are just finishing up a quartet of crystalline lines of coke.
    Intimidated by Thigpen’s abrupt arrival, the other woman grabs her purse and leaves. Dandelion offers Thigpen the tightly rolled greenback. Shaking his head, he pushes past her into one of the stalls, where he pisses vehemently.
    Behind him Dandelion vacuums up the final line. When her hands circumscribe Thigpen’s cock, he lurches sideways against the wall of the stall, scrawled as it is with femme -focused graffiti. His tumescence soars. She raises one leg like an egret, places the raised foot sheathed in a Minolo Blahnik pump firmly on the rim of the toilet bowl and mounts him. After a dozen or so erratic but energetic thrusts, he finishes, gasping for breath.
    “Better than key lime pie?” she asks, adjusting her undies.
    “Damn, sweetheart. I’d take that over key lime pie any day.”
    Thigpen looks in the mirror and sees a disaster. He slams on the water full blast and slashes his face, combs his wet fingers through his disheveled hair.
    A waitress sticks her head in the door and raises her eyebrows.
    “What’s goin’ on in here?”
    “We were just leaving,” Thigpen says.
    At the cash register, he uses a credit card. Dandelion is already outside, retrieving her Audi. She checks the odometer, giving the attendant a look that could kill.
    Hot damn! Thigpen thinks, as he saunters through the door and down the steps, hefting up