The truck made its way down the interstate with Kenny examining a business card. “Dani,” he said with a big smile. “Don’t know what it is about a woman with a man’s name, but it gets me going.”
Step drove with the heel of his hands on top of the steering wheel as he unwrapped a new pack of cigarettes with his spindly fingers. “She’s a woman cop with a man’s name. You get that, don’t you?”
“So?”
“So, a man in your line of work ain’t got no business calling on a cop for a date.”
Kenny’s smile disappeared. “Why not?”
Step extracted a cigarette from the pack and stuck it in his mouth. “Do I really have to explain it to you?”
“She’s fine as hell, Step. Goddamn. She even looked good in a police uniform, a real police uniform, not the kind they have in the porno movies. That badge of hers was pointing straight up to the sky. To the sky, Step. Takes a talented chest to pull something like that off.”
“I don’t care if she’s a nympho cop sporting a set of double-Ds, Kenny. There ain’t no way in hell you’re calling on her.” He turned away from the open window and quickly lit his cigarette.
“Holy shit! You reckon she’s got double-Ds?”
Step shook his head. “Are you even listening to me, dumb shit?”
“You throw a thing out there like she’s got a huge set on her, and then you tell me I can’t call on her. I ain’t got no idea what you’re trying to do to me.”
“Kenny!” Step said, pointing his cigarette pinched between two fingers at his passenger. “Get your mind off that cop’s lady parts so you can comprehend what the hell I’m saying to you. You are not to call on her no how, no way. Understand?”
Kenny donned a sorrowful expression. “I get it. A man who does closeouts for a living ought not get involved with the law on a social level.”
“It’s like putting a flame near a gas spill,” Step said.
“That is true. I’ll grant you that. But, I’ll be honest with you, sometimes a man just wants to get burned.”
Step held out his hand. “Give me the card.”
“But she give it to me.”
“Now, Kenny!”
“I swear I won’t call on her. I just want the card as a keepsake, you know. So I can call up her double-D’s in my mind whenever the hell I want or need to.”
Step rolled his eyes. “Get your mind off the double-D’s. She ain’t got near that. I was just trying to make a point by hitting your hot button. You want a gal with a set that big, Bones can fix you up with one of her dancer friends.”
Kenny looked at him, confused. “You ain’t never offered such a thing before.”
“I didn’t know how desperate you were,” Step said.
“Y’aughta’ve. I go on about ladies in a sexualized manner all the time,” Kenny said, placing the card in Step’s hand. “I ain’t ashamed to say that’s because I don’t get a lot of female attention. I’d calm down a good bit if I had me a regular release.”
Step put the cop’s card in his shirt pocket. “Hell, why don’t you just buy regular release? If it will get you off asking all kinds of dumbass questions about this and that, I’ll even pay for it.”
“Paying for it ain’t nothing but a physical release. I need me an emotional release.”
Step looked at him cockeyed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Human beings are what’s called pack animals, Step. Means we need others to bond with, helps us get along better, even adds years to our lives being with others. Ain’t nothing more important in a human pack than what they call physical communion. Means sex with an emotional tinge to it.”
“Goddamn,” Step said with a laugh. “Did you grow a vagina somewheres along the way?”
“Laugh all you want, but that don’t change the fact that I don’t just need a hooker to hump. I need a lady that I can exchange emotional wherewithal with.”
“I don’t get you at all, Kenny. You’re dumb enough to think there’s such a thing as a nobility prize on the one hand, but on the other, you come up with this pack animal, emotional communion bullshit that makes you sound halfway smart.”
“First off, I’m sure as I can be about that nobility prize. Folks have been winning that thing almost every year for a few years now, and second off, I read up on things.”
“Read? What the shit do you read?”
“Stuff that was writ to be read.”
“Like what?”
“Stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“I got my daddy’s collection of magazines and the like when he died. It feeds my mind on various topics.”
“Magazines? You mean Playboy?”
Kenny smirked. “I recollect coming across an edition or two in his collection, yes.”
Step shook his head. “So in between cranking off throughout the day, you read up on emotional wherewithal and other such nonsense in these pornographic periodicals?”
Kenny shrugged. “I got a curious mind. I ain’t ashamed of that.” He fiddled with his cap. “Do you got that with Bones?”
“Got what with Bones?”
“Emotional wherewithal.”
“What I got with Bones ain’t none of your business.”
“How come you don’t like to talk on your relationship with that gal?”
Step groaned. “Don’t get started on your questions. I ain’t in the mood.”
“I give up the lady cop’s card. You can answer a few questions.”
“I told you Ima get Bones to fix you up. That makes us square on the card business.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Kenny started up again. “What about Angie? Only time you talk about her is when you’re three sheets to the wind.”
Step’s blood went cold. He slowed the truck and pulled over to the side of the interstate. Staring straight ahead, he said, “Angie ain’t never gonna be a thing we talk about. You hear me?”
Kenny was sorry the words had come out of his mouth. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. I just got all worked up. I won’t say nothing about Angie or little Nellie from this day on.”
Step turned to him slowly with bloodshot eyes.
“Damn!” Kenny said. “I didn’t mean to say that other name at all. Things just spill out of my mouth sometimes. I don’t want to stir up no bad memories for you. It’s this whole emotional release thing going on in my head. It makes me ramble on sometimes.”
It took every bit of restraint Step had to refrain from wrapping his hands around Kenny’s throat and squeezing the life out of him. He threw the truck in drive, punched the gas, and merged back onto the interstate, nearly sideswiping a car in the process. Lucky for the driver of the other vehicle, he was too shocked to honk. If he had, Step would have closed him out without a second thought.