Night Hunter Read Free Page B

on the Formica kitchen table. She picked up the two pieces of paper, the formal letter with the fancy embossed letterhead that she’d just torn in half, and carelessly matched the ragged edges together. She leaned forward to see better. At eleven in the morning, she was already well on her way to getting drunk.
    “ She has her nerve , that prissy little Goody Two Shoes.” Twenty years ago Miss Fourth Runner-up wasn’t good enough to be Corinne’s lackey. When it came to beauty, there’d been no comparison between the two. Not one of the runners-up had been in the same league as Corinne Rayann Odett. Not one.
    That was twenty years ago.
    With a trembling hand, she rooted through an overflowing ashtray, looking for the longest butt. She carefully straightened it, put it to her lips, and, leaning over to the stove, lit it from the gas flame under the coffeepot. She heard sizzling and smelled the acrid odor of singed hair.
    Sparks dropped unheeded onto her lap. She coughed, then winced at the sharp pain in her lungs. On the countertop in front of her was a toaster. She could see her reflection in it. The greasy and dented chrome distorted her face. She moved her head slowly, studying the wavy image as her face shortened, then lengthened, her nose hooked down, long and pointed like a witch’s, then pugged up, nostrils large and round like an ape’s.
    Corinne chuckled. The funny part was that her face looked better in the distorted metal than it did in a mirror. Corinne hadn’t bothered to really look at herself in a long time, but in her mind’s eye the true hideous image was cast forever. After two extremely painful operations by a plastic surgeon, the damaging effects of the acid had been altered little. She had lost the sight in her right eye. The angry, purple-and-white puckered skin on the one side of her face pulled her eye and mouth downward. The Phantom of the Opera had nothing on her.
    A phlegmy cough came from the tiny bedroom off the kitchen. Her father called her name.
    Maybe she would accept Donna’s gracious offer to appear on her show. It would serve the bitch right. She could sit with them, the four runners-up, swapping beauty and fashion tips and all that wonderful stuff glamorous women talk about.
    “ Cory?” her father called out in a weak, hoarse voice.
    Now that the old man’s income had been cut off because of his bum health, maybe Donna would offer her a co-host position on the show. Everyone would benefit. Surely, people would tune in to see the marred beauty queen. The ratings would go up. And she’d have something to do, some place to go. God knows she didn’t get out much these days.
    “ Corinne? I’m hungry, daughter. You gonna let your daddy starve?”
    The checks from welfare were regular and she only had to tolerate those do-good social workers snooping through the house now and then. They never stayed long. It was too much of a hassle for them to avoid staring at her, so they did a speedy check, then split.
    “ Corinne? Corinne? I know you’re out there. I can smell cigarette smoke. I thought we was outta butts.” He coughed. “Corinne, howbout some food? You know I gotta eat regular.”
    “ Shut up, you stupid old man,” she screamed, and hurled the half bottle of beer at the opposite wall. “You’ll get your goddamn food when I’m damn good and ready.”

CHAPTER 6
     
    John
     
    John Davie woke at 7:10 in the morning to the delightful sensation of someone expertly manipulating his penis. Lying on his side, he reached down and took hold of the slender hand caressing him. He felt warm breath on his back, then the light nip of teeth on his shoulder.
    “ It ain’t fair,” he said.
    “ What ain’t?” Wilma, John’s upstairs neighbor, whispered against his neck.
    “ That women get hornier with age. Men, on the other hand, only get limp and bald.”
    “ You’re not getting bald.” She wrapped a leg around him. “And you’re certainly not limp. Quite the contrary,