Yonder Stands Your Orphan by Barry Hannah

paperwork
with a Chevrolet dealership cheap-ass ball-point on a
chain.
I ain’t got any Blue Cross Blue Shield, never had any, never been to that Warren General Hospital but twice when Edie had the Valium problem and wrecked my Mercedes SUV
.
    The bitch Dee. Giving it up to the old navy nancy. Now she’ll pay. She’ll be vomiting my trinkets back to me and signing every one in blood. Them rotten kids’ll pay too. They never took a kind look at me
.
    He walked into the concert side of the casino. Even maimed, he was drawn here. The hot Latin music, now slower, the relaxed crowd. Classier. Softness of just folks and glasses and the slowly turning woman onstage, the Coyote. She glistened from a Spanish picture book. It was a family scene. Nobody was hustling, nobody screaming for minutes or colors or change or keno or slots. He wanted to rest here. The Cuban woman sang nearly too well. He wetted up. Tears, blood, pants humidity.
What you call the sweat that runs down the crack in your sister-in-law’s ass. Relative humidity
. The husband saxophonist managed a pleasant reprisal to the misty Cuban ballads his wife sang. She was not just loins and squalling voice box. Were Cubans a race? Nice folks then. Could she sing while cunnilingusing new little Marcine, who’d never even thought of a woman that way? He could just see it:
Cinema Marcineté: New Love
. The Coyote, whoa what a moment, in the Now, baby, in her flimsy skirt and strappy take-me-now pumps. Hugh Hefner should be stuffed and cornholed, right here, tonight. Chicago-ass Rodin in some pageant hailing his revolution, set a river on fire in the shape of Raquel Welch.
    Larry Flynt was more Mortimer’s style. Office in a black skyscraper in Los Angeles. The man assured him that none of his women were forced—no heroin or cocaine or poverty necessary for a real party girl. Throughout knownhistory, a constant line stood at his door, clamoring to advocate themselves by public acts of eroticism. It was always fresh like a new colony shipwrecked on a far island. The women were like those busty Ph.D. women in rocket-ship movies. Present for no clear reason. Otherwise, they had boyfriends and lesbian lovers who respected their power.
    This wisdom pleased Mortimer, especially as he pictured his fleet of SUVs circling down the counties even to Natchez, New Orleans; over to Jackson and Little Rock. These flush homes on the best tires, holding any number of men and women in them. The smoked windows behind which would be revealed to what state trooper or hamlet rubberneck no drugs, no weapons, little cash, the sweetest pop ballad of the minute licking the stereo four ways. An urban chauffeur like Lloyd, locked in his seat belt beside Edie, who could talk chocolate into your ears.
    Think of the tiny beginnings from that old white hearse and limo rental in Cape Girardeau. A mom-and-pop affair. Five girls. He could get tearful about it. Somebody should’ve taken a picture. They couldn’t afford a Polaroid.
    But now, as a eunuch, what was he to them? Girls smiled over at him. Foxes. Those shoulders, those greedy eyes. Here was Dee, sitting at a long table. Dee was surprised to see him sit down at the table, hunched, hushed. The lying whore saw nothing but mirth. She must be drunk, chattering with Melanie Wooten. He knew Dee envied Melanie her natural style and charity, her clothes and carriage.
    The only mistake he’d made was loving this woman.
    Before he made his appeal for help and all would change at the table, yes they would love to hustle around as Samaritans, pushing each other out of the way to help, he could watch a bit longer. The Latin music was soft, the singer pliant, sumptuous. You wished she’d sing that way for you.Her husband now a voice of restraint and muted refrain in answer to her. But he looked like a thin prisoner of disgust.
    Mortimer continued the casting in his head for a video.
You’d take away the oldest here.