Skull City and Other Lost Stories by Lucius Shepard

Author:Lucius Shepard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

Every song a memory, and like most, this one bad. The foggy night they'd played a party in the country, set up beneath a tent in a weedy field, watched farmboys dancing with long-haired women in the fan of yellow glare, their kids mocking them with loose-limbed, flailing dances of their own. He'd told the band to do some tunes without him and had taken a drunk girl down to the van. Hazy light filtering through the window, music warped to nonsense by a gusting wind. ("We … ays … in' … Rock!") He'd worked the girl's T-shirt up, exposing a beautiful white breast, its weight like a full wineskin. When he'd tongued the nipple, she'd made a blurred noise. Then a dull opiated voice outside the van saying, "Hey, kid!" He'd cleared a circle in the condensation on the glass and seen one of the roadies crawling after a little boy, pulling him down into the weeds, fumbling with his groin, giggling, letting him go, over and over …

"Hi, there!" said a girl's voice beside him.

He blinked up at her. Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four. Wearing jeans and a cowboy shirt barely tented by her breasts. So tall and skinny, his first impression was that she'd been stretched. But then he saw how pretty she was. Country-girl pretty, with dark hair bobbed at her shoulders.

"I can't figure why I'm so took with you," she said. "I mean you're for sure good-lookin', but I've had plenty of good-lookin', and that ain't it. Anyway"—she grinned—"I couldn't stand not to investigate. Mind if I sit?"

"Sure," he said, liking her.

She folded all that length down onto a stool, managing it with a model's grace. "Where you headed? Tulsa?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "I got one of those passes lets you travel all over for thirty days. Mexico, maybe."

"We carry Mex jewelry in the souvenir shop." She nodded toward a door that led to the dun-colored building. "Whenever I sell a piece, I think 'bout makin' a buyin' trip down there. But so far I never done it … I'm stuck in this ol' town, I guess."

"You work here, huh?"

"I sorta own the concession. It's really my daddy's, but he's been livin' in Costa Rica since my mama died, and he don't get home much." A waitress asked if she wanted to order, and she said she'd already eaten. "What kinda work you do?"

"Nothin' just now … but I used to play rock 'n' roll."

""Yeah? Bet you'd like to see my music machines."

"What're they?"

"I forget what'cha call 'em, but they're antiques. My daddy collected 'em awhile ago. Wanna take a look? They're in the shop."

"Okay," said Hayes.

She stood, and the waitress asked, "You openin' up, Ainsley?"

"Naw, just goin' in back a minute." She glanced at Hayes as they walked. "You gonna tell me your name, now?"

"Hayes," he said without thinking, and kicked himself.

She had to bend to unlock the door to the shop, and he noticed she had a nice ass. A little out of proportion with the rest of her, a little full … but nice.

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