Free Big Bad Love by Larry Brown

almost did a double-flip hotswoon.
    â€œCome on, baby,” she said. “Take a little ride wit me.”
    I followed her out the door, the back door, where black guys were muttering in the dark and I couldn’t tell if they were shucking oysters or not. She had it parked behind the Dumpster, where the lights didn’t shine. When we walked up to that machine, it did. Brand new Henweigh, red, magnesiums on all four sides; she had the Alpine Stereo System. I was almost scared to get in the car with her. But I did.
    â€œI got some cold cognac if you’d like some, baby,” she said, when she had the little jewel purring like a kitten at its mama’s titty. She sort of ran her hands up her legs and pulled the dress back.
    â€œHold on,” she said, and I turned the cognac straight up. Brought it down immediately, wheezing and gasping and coughing, damn near choking to death. She rammed it out of the parking lot and hit second and squealed viciously on thecorners until she hit a straightaway and we must have been doing seventy by then and she downshifted and braked sharply and whipped it around a curve and out onto the street, and then two streets over she pulled in behind a bread truck, and four big black guys jumped out with knives and guns and robbed my terrified ass while she hung out the window on her elbow laughing herself silly, the pee running down her leg, maybe, I guess, saying, Hoo boy, you white boys something else.
    Well, it scared the shit out of me, naturally. I felt weak all over for about twelve minutes. But then I got to thinking about it and said to myself, Well, it’s gone now, wasn’t anything you could do, you still got your hotel room, you can charge some beer on your MasterCard and haul ass in the morning before they check. That and plus I had five one hundred dollar bills folded into a minute thing in the heel of my right sock. I’d just tell my groovy employers that they’d stripped me naked, even looked up my ass. Real killers. So I started walking back up the beach. I’d sobered up a little, what with the robbery and all. I didn’t know how I’d get back into North Mississippi and my beloved pine trees. They’d specifically stated that they wanted headless shrimp. Like Captain Mike McDonald and his crew were going to sit back and shuck the fuckers. But that was just the kind of rich ignorance I was dealing with. I wanted to go out on the boat with them. I wanted to pull the nets. I wanted to see what came up from the ocean depths, what unspeakable stuff spilled out when they hoisted it up onto the deck.
    But the Cold Nugget beckoned. I could see it from the beach, from the dark water, from the sucking tide sucking further south with each suck. I had to sit down to get out my money. It was good money.
    A whole new shift had come one. I settled at a table, my hands trembling just a little. I knew the sister was going to come back a little later, and I didn’t know what to do about it. My ass was in a crack. I tried to figure out how much they had taken off me. It was somewhere around three hundred dollars. I had two hundred dollars’ worth of coolers in my pickup.
    The women were still dancing, except that the junior high shift had come on. I was really starting to feel like a degenerate, and sick with what it all finally came down to. Getting robbed is kind of like getting your ass whipped, in that somebody else has beaten you. It doesn’t matter that he’s got a gun or a knife, you could have had a gun or a knife too and fought for your money. I decided to go armed from then on, just as soon as I could afford a gun or a knife.
    I was wobbling at my table a little. I knew people could probably see it. I hated that, sort of, didn’t want to be drunk in public, but didn’t know what to do about it right then. There wasn’t anything would fix it but another drink. I summoned somebody and somebody brought one. I was getting