The Devil Raises His Own by Scott Phillips

Author:Scott Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press

28

“Henry, why don’t you take my granddaughter out to a Vaudeville this afternoon.” He took two silver dollars out of his pocket and gestured.

“Thanks, Bill. Don’t you want some help with your portrait session this afternoon?”

“No, this is something for my own use. A lady friend wishes to be immortalized à poil.”

“What?”

“In the altogether.” Henry’s expression was still baffled. “Naked.”

“I’ve taken pictures of whores with you before.”

“This is a distinguished widow woman from Pasadena who wishes me to have a remembrance of our time together. It’s Mrs. Chen’s day off, now I just need you and Flavey out of the house.”

“The lady I met?”

“Another one.”

Henry shook his head in something like admiration.

THEY WENT TO a picture show instead of a vaudeville. First on was a comedy about a shoe salesman getting the hell beaten out of him by one customer after another, and the both of them were laughing hard by the end of it. The feature was a William S. Hart and Henry enjoyed it more than Flavia did. After the show they went walking and he bought her an ice cream cone.

“You think it’s all right to go home yet?” she asked.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean you think he’s finished with his lady friend?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I know my Gramps well enough to guess that when he makes an effort to get everyone out of the house then he’s entertaining a lady.”

“Oh. Well, he’s taking dirty pictures of this one.”

“I don’t know that there’s a woman he ever set his sights on that he didn’t manage to take dirty pictures of.”

“Huh. His wives even?”

“Oh, I’m quite sure there are compromising photographs of my grandmother somewhere.”

“How can you say such a thing about your dear old grandma?”

She laughed. “She’d probably tell you herself if she were here. She’s a pretty candid sort. And as far as his second wife, Maggie, I’ll bet it was her own idea. Well, if he was taking pictures of this widow first, they probably didn’t get into bed until two or three.”

She offered Henry a lick of her ice cream. It was pistachio, a kind he’d never tried before and he hesitated because he didn’t think ice cream ought to be green. But he didn’t want to look any more like a rube than he already did, so he licked it right where she had and found that he liked it very much.

“For a fellow his age your granddaddy sure has a way with the ladies.”

“Always has. Never knew him not to have something going on with a widow or three.”

He couldn’t get over how she’d started talking to him about sex once they’d gone to bed; from the start he’d thought of her as a Wichita schoolmarm, prim and innocent, and now she was speculating on the sex lives of a couple of elderly people.

“How would you like to take some pictures of me?” she asked. He had no reply. His life had taken a turn he couldn’t have imagined back in West Virginia.

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