Kitchen Floor
The man moved on cat’s paws into the front room.
Two young women sat at a red dinning table playing spades with blue casino cards, sharing a damp filterless cigarette, one drained hi-ball glass on the black carpet empty beside the blonde’s shoeless foot, the brunette was saying, “If my boyfriend was any kind of man he would have shot that fucker in the face.”
“If he’s not man enough to do a stretch for his woman you think he’d ever be man enough to be a husband?”
“No, Marion’s man enough to bust the teeth out of any man who lays his hands on me. He’s that sort of man but he’ll lay right down on the floor busting his guts out laughing and let any man say whatever he likes to me. Let them say anything they like and not lift a finger.”
“That’s not right letting a man say whatever he likes to you then him making fun as if you’re a half-wit.”
“It’d be that way but it isn’t. The way it is he’ll start laughing when a man says something crude because he knows I like it. He’ll laugh and let the man go on about it and sooner or later the man will get confident teasing me and put his hands on me. And Marion knows I like it.”
“Then he knocks the man out when he isn’t ready for it.”
“He knows I like that too.”
“Then what?”
“He drives home drunk. We fight in the car in the driveway, then we run to get inside the house and fuck on the kitchen floor.”