She straddled his lap, backlit by purple neon, grinding as the Red Hot Chili Peppers caterwauled about Californication. Her face was so close he could taste butterscotch from the candies she chain-popped between sets. They were in a private VIP booth, their love lounge.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Cheryl said, voice husky. “You can make me yours, for all of the time.”
“You don’t belong to me,” Eddie said. “You’re Wade’s. He loves you.”
“Wade ain’t like you, Eddie. He’s weak.” Cheryl arched her back. “I hear things. I’m afraid he’s going to get you busted. Or worse. He’s not the friend you think he is.”
It would take Eddie years to wise up to Cheryl’s lies and manipulations. He couldn’t see his hands in the dark. But he knew how his fists would one day smash her face.
“You always get what you want?” he said.
“What I deserve, you mean.” She stroked him.
Eddie closed his eyes.
“Open your goddamn eyes, boyo!” the old man barked. “You owe her that much.”
Eddie obeyed, blinking into focus a cheap pine casket atop a floral-strewn dais. Inside, rose-colored satin framed his mother’s deflated features, rouged and painted into a plastic sheen. He and the old man were alone in the mortuary. “She looks pretty much the same as the last time you beat her,” Eddie said. “Only happier.”
“Is that why you came here? To lay blame?”
Eddie really couldn’t say. He wanted to mourn her, but the only genuine sentiment he’d been able to summon for his mother was conflict. A fitting eulogy. “Guess I wanted to make sure she was finally safe from you.”
“Jesus, but you’re a weak sister.” Eddie could hear the alcohol burn in his father’s pitiless voice. “No way you came from me. I knew the moment she spat you outta her cunny lips I wasn’t your father. But I gave you my name anyway. Know what they call that? A legacy.”
“Swell legacy, Dad. Look what you did for her.”
“What about what you did, Eddie? The shame you put her through. The way you took advantage of her. You forget about that? Need me to remind you?”
“Shut up!” Eddie swung at the old man, who deflected the punch and clamped Eddie’s jaw in one meaty hand. Squeezing, he pushed Eddie against the casket, crashing over vases, toppling arrangements, and scattering blossoms across his mother’s body.
“Let me clue you in, boyo. I gave your mother what she wanted. You call it battery. She called it love. We made our peace a long time ago. How about you?” The old man pushed Eddie’s head toward his mother’s, crushing his face onto her lipstick-encrusted mouth. “Here’s your chance, Eddie. Tell her you’re sorry. Kiss her goodbye.”
Pink underwear kept Eddie from escaping America’s toughest jail. Well, maybe escape was overblowing it. Security was so loose he could’ve walked out the front gate.
But then he wouldn’t have access to pink underwear. He couldn’t believe the money he was making off the things. Hell, he was wearing three pairs at a time just to keep up with demand. And supply? Eddie was kicking back to the laundry crew so they’d keep quiet on the count.
Putting inmates in pink underwear was the brainchild of the Maricopa County Sheriff, who thought degrading men by forcing them to eat green bologna sandwiches, watch the Disney Channel, and work on chain gangs made him America’s Toughest Sheriff.
Of course, the sadistic fuck also built a jail out of tents on the floor of the goddamn Gila Desert. And on that one, Eddie had to give the sheriff props. Satan’s front porch had nothing on a thousand men crammed ten to a tent in 120-degree summers.
Eddie processed into Tent City a couple of months after his nineteenth birthday, which he’d celebrated by racking up a misdemeanor assault charge and causing a near riot at a Mesa bar. Charges would have been worse except when police arrived Eddie was being stomped into the ground by a group of seriously pissed off vatos. Seems Eddie had inflicted a grievous insult to their culture when he cold-cocked one of their homies then shoved his hat under the pachuco’s ass and asked if that was where the candy came out.
Eddie thought he should send the greasers a complimentary pair of pinks. He’d gotten the idea for his underwear caper from a stroke rag,