Ronnie pushed limp green beans across his plate and into his watery gravy. “Sure.” He hadn’t been much interested in Shake lately, now that she was all fat and swollen and crabby. Right now his brain was occupied with someone else. All day long he’d been replaying his encounter with the skinny blond babysitter. That bitch had been . . . unbelievably hot. He shifted in his chair, practically overwhelmed by feelings of lust and need.
Marjorie focused on Shake. “It wouldn’t hurt you none to practice with that baby,” she said. She was busy sawing at a piece of overdone strip steak with a dull steak knife. The broiler in the damn stove was on the blink again and she’d had to pan fry the meat. Now it tasted more like liver than steak.
“Practice?” came Shake’s derisive hoot. “What for?” One of her hands was drawn unconsciously to her swollen belly. “I’m gonna give this baby up for adoption anyhow.” She massaged the mass under her stretched-out Pantera T-shirt. “So what’s the harm if we go over to Judge’s and have a couple of drinks?” Shake was particularly fond of Crapple Bombs, a lethal concoction of Red Bull, Crown Royal, and Apple Pucker. “Who’s gonna be the wiser?”
“Don’t get smart with me, girlie,” Marjorie snapped. “You’re a guest in my house. Your old man disowned you and threw you out on your scrawny ass, remember?”
Shake gave a mirthless laugh. “Only because your precious son knocked me up.” They’d played this blame game before. Always going round and round in an endless loop, never coming to any sort of resolution.
“If it’s even mine,” Ronnie said.
Hurt showed in Shake’s eyes. “It is. You know it is.”
“What the hell did you think was gonna happen?” Marjorie asked. “Prancing around onstage with shiny sequins pasted over your titties, wearing hooker heels and bending over to show your cooch?” She snorted. “Exotic dancer. Hah.”
Shake had been a crowd favorite at Club Paradise. Unhappy men from all over the North Country had come, flashlights in hand, to sit at the bar and shine their wavering beam at Shake’s moneymaker.
“Go see if the baby’s wet,” Marjorie ordered Shake. The kid had been in their house for less than twenty-four hours and already things were in an uproar.
“Babies are always wet,” Shake said, toying with what was left of her unappetizing dinner. “Besides, I gotta get changed if we’re going out.” She threw a hopeful glance at Ronnie. Unfortunately, he could be a real limp dick when it came to standing up to his mother. In fact, if she’d known how much of a momma’s boy he really was, she never would have moved in here in the first place. Shake regretted that she hadn’t just run away. Take a bus to Chicago and figure something out. Now it was too late. Now she was due any day, fat and waddling, unattractive, a prisoner of her unborn child.
“Waaaaaah!” A shrill cry echoed from down the hallway again. The kid was persistent.
“Baby’s still crying,” Marjorie said. Her thin, penciled brows rose in a mild challenge as she worked on staring down Shake.
Ronnie’s hands smacked down flat and hard on the table, jouncing the dishes and silverware, upending his cup of coffee. “Damn it,” he snarled. “I’ll go.”
He stormed out of the kitchen and down the hallway, into the living room, where the baby was lying in an old plastic bassinette. He placed a hand on the side of the bassinette and shook it, jostling the baby and causing it to cry that much harder.
“Shut up,” Ronnie whispered.
The upturned pink face was turning almost purple now as the baby wailed away, her shrieks piercing the air.
Ronnie stared at it impassively. His mind was beginning to drift, blocking out the squalling noise. He wondered idly what the baby would look like stuffed?
Probably, he decided . . . just like one of Mom’s stupid dolls.
*
FIVE minutes later, Ronnie was out the door and on his way. Shake had pleaded with him to take her along. His mother had yammered after him like some goddamned little ankle biter dog. But Ronnie was on a mission.
When he pulled his car up in front of Judge’s, he was happy to see there were still a couple of newspapers left in the green metal box that sat out front. He dropped in four quarters, grabbed a paper, and went inside, his guts prickling in anticipation.
Ronnie shoved two dollars across the bar and ordered a Leinenkugel draft beer. Then, as all around him music thumped and beer bottles rattled, he pulled out the news section of the Sunday paper. He was starting to feel a little anxious now, hoping he’d be able to find what he was looking for.