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Bass was a little nervous walking up to Sally Jezebel’s window-ten like this in broad daylight when people were still wide awake and watching.
Still and all he was pleased to notice that Sally Jezebel’s flagpole bloomers were indeed flying at half-mast – just as she had promised.
“It’s a cozy little spot,” Bass said, trying his best to be nice to the lady who was providing him with so much free whiskey.
Sally just shrugged.
“It isn’t all that much as far as independent living goes,” Sally said. “But I figure that it is a whole lot better than any of the alternatives you might actually care to mention.”
“That’s an awful lot of wedding dresses you’ve got sewn up into the walls of this tent,” Bass said. “Did you ever give any thought towards opening up your very own millinery shop?”
Sally just grinned.
“Some of them wedding dresses are mine,” she admitted. “A half dozen of them – but some of them dresses were given to me by women who caught their would-be grooms in bed with me.”
“What about them rings?” Bass asked.
Sally was wearing a necklace of six golden wedding rings, tied together with a twist of bright copper wire and strands of her own carefully braided hair.
“They were given to me,” she told Bass, showing him a plain golden ring. “This was the first one.”
“Special, is it?”
She looked away hastily.
“Naw,” she said. “It’s just a ring. A cheap one at that. It turned my finger green every time that I wore it.”
Bass looked at her carefully.
“Bullshit,” he decided.
“It did to,” she protested. “Turned it green every time.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Bass said. “That ring is wrapped up in a special kind of special. Even a boob like me can see that same kind of special burning in your eyes like a far off campfire, no matter how hard you try and tell me that it ain’t so.”
He let her sit and simmer for awhile.
Finally she spoke, laying out her words soft and careful.
“It WAS special,” she said. “When he gave me that ring my heart just up and fluttered like a duck in a mud puddle.”
She looked away.
Bass let her look for just as long as she needed to.
Some feelings were meant to be savored.
Some moments should never be rushed.
Finally she shook her head and cleared her heart with a rueful chuckle.
“They all brought them for me out of their own volition,” she said. “They offered them up to me like they figured a little gold ring was going to change what I really am.”
“They ought to know better,” Bass said. “You’re just a whore, is all. There’s nothing wrong with being one. You just got to know where you sitting in this life which we all got to live in.”
“I ain’t JUST anything,” Sally argued. “There’s no JUST in me what so ever. Not one little bit. What I am is my own woman – and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much.”
“I hear you talking, Sally,” Bass said. “And I ain’t arguing one little bit.”
Only she wasn’t done talking.
“Do you see each one of these here wedding rings?” she asked.
Bass couldn’t help but see them – the way that she waved them in his face.
“If you string them all together like this and they look a hell of a lot like a set of fancy leg irons, now don’t they?” Sally asked.
Bass had to admit she was right.
“Each one of them fellows knelt down before me and took aim at my heart like they were foing to bag me like a prize elk,” she said. “I took the ring and the wedding dress and then I went back to my whoring ways, every time.”
“You like the whoring that much, Sally?” Bass asked.
“Like doesn’t come into it,” Sally said. “I need the whoring, is all. It’s a little like a picture frame hung on an empty wall. It lets me know just where I am at.”
“Come again?”
“A fellow might buy you when you’re a whore, but it’s nothing more than a temporary kind of rent. A wedding ring – now that’s a whoring job forever – the way that I see it. Forever and amen with damn little payoff at the end of the road.”
“Amen,” Bass echoed.
“Come right down to it, a body doesn’t need anybody else to hold itself on up,” Sally said. “Two good legs and one smooth back, that’s all I’ll ever need.”
Up until recently Bass might have actually agreed with her. However, lately he wasn’t all that sure of what he needed to call himself whatever he chose to call himself.
“What about love?” he asked. “I hear tell there are some folks who put some stock in that particular notion.”
Sally just laughed.
“Love is good enough for greasing the chute but so is a good cuddle and a nuzzle or even two honest bits when it comes down to it. Love is nothing special, no matter what they tell you. People feel it all the time – love – kind of like the rain coming down.”
She smiled and shook her head sadly.
“Tears and water, wind and rain,” she finished up. “It all washes away soon enough.”
Bass stared at her sitting there with the moonlight and the lantern glow glinting softly through the stained glass and the whiskey. He thought he saw something else in her eyes.
Was she laughing at him?
Even if she was it didn’t really matter.
Talking to this woman refreshed Bass in a way that no bottle of whiskey ever did.
“Speaking of which,” Bass said.
He reached for the bottle.
He shook it.
“The first bottle is empty,” he said.
“So it is.”
“We ought to uncork that second bottle.”
“Are you afraid that somebody is going to steal it on you if you don’t drink it down fast enough?”
“Well, what else is there for us?” he asked.
Sally just looked at him.
Bass looked back at Sally.
Finally she spoke.
“If I hadn’t already broken my chamber pot over Newt Gallagher’s head you’d most likely be wearing it on your own,” she said.
“What did I do?”
“It’s what you didn’t do,” she said. “You have never tried to poke me – not even once. Don’t you like girls?”
“I like girls just fine,” Bass said.
“Don’t you like me?”
“I don’t know.”
She grabbed for the empty bottle but Bass was a little faster.
“I can hit you with the full one,” she warned, reaching for the other bottle.
“That would be an awful waste,” Bass pointed out.
“The whiskey is mine to waste,” Sally said. “It washes away just as fast as tears and water.”
Bass was getting exasperated at Sally’s stubbornness.
“Will you let me talk?” he asked.
“Talking is easy,” Sally said. “Just let the words fall out of your mouth. I’ll listen, for now.”
“I like you just fine, Sally,” Bass said. “I’ve never liked a whore so much before now – anymore than I might like a particular rope or hat.”
“Nice to feel special,” she said.
“I guess you are special at that,” he said. “You are special, because I don’t know any other word for it. I just like being with you, the same way that I like breathing. You make me feel comfortable. You calm me in a way that a drink or the devil never did. I sleep better, lying next to you – even when you stink of your after-business.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Sally said.
“I have my moments,” Bass admitted.
She sat there, staring at him like he was some new species of animal.
“Let’s just wait a while before opening the second bottle,” she said, unfastening her blouse. “We might want to work up a bit more of a thirst, if you are interested.”
He reached up and tangled his hand in her long soft hair.
He always did love to feel her hair – even if he didn’t poke her. He usually liked to tangle his fingers into it just before he went to sleep – like it was some sort of a soft yellow rope that he could hang onto while he slipped away.
Bass didn’t really know it but that tangling was damned near the last pleasant thing he would do in this lifetime.
“Is that a professional interest?” he asked.
“No sir,” Sally said. “This is just because I want to.”
After they had done it – after the moaning and the sweating and the sighs – after the pink snake had wormed down and popped from her cork hole and after the always-embarrassing after-fuck pussy farts Bass lay back down and fell asleep.
He snored softly, not feeling a thing as she tied him hand and foot and waited for Silver Grimes to come and get exactly what he had paid her for.
Sally Jezebel was all for business – every time.