Martini Blond by Bradley Mason Hamlin

Maybe it was the curve of her elbow leading up to the martini glass in her hand, or the way her lips moved as she ate her green olive off the end of an ice pick. Maybe. Maybe it was her eyes that made him feel like he had Mexican jumping beans inside his trousers.
    “I think you’d better leave,” he told her.
    She puckered those soft red lips as she drank. Her thin white blouse unbuttoned to the bra, the nipples like bullets, ready to explode. Count Basie on the old turn table as she said, “I think I’ll stick around.”
    “They say I can’t preach anymore. Capitol City Asylum’s just waiting to put the net over me again. Now you’re sitting around here, drinking my liquor, uncrossing your legs, flashing those hellfire inner thighs like some awful sign of the apocalypse.”
    Maybe it was the way she let her thick blonde hair hang in her face, what a mess, or the way that black skirt wanted to explode off her ass.
    “Wanna touch me?” she said. “Come on, preacher man, fuck me like you’re the Anti-Christ on fire.”
    She laughed. She drank.
    “Look honey, I’m a holy man,” he said. “Let’s have communion first.” He grabbed the fifth of gin and didn’t bother with a glass.
    “You’re a poet,” she said, “and not a very good one.”
    “How dare you!”
    “What?” she said, “threaten your commitment to celibacy?”
    “The thing about being a poet.”
    Maybe it was the way she leaned forward letting the curves and nature do their job. Maybe it was all that booze inside his own head, but he said, “Doll, you’ve got to leave. It’s time for me to hammer out the gospel.”
    “I don’t give a damn if you’re a priest or a poet, just let me see that hammer.”
    She laughed. She drank.
    Maybe it was the way she breathed, sleepy-eyed.
    He heard footsteps. Not the cops. The other guys. He knew those shoes. Lab mice. Psycho wagon. “It’s too late, Joe Moe,” she said. “The sharks are hungry, and you’re drowning in your own blood.”
    The men came in without warning, but smiling. “Well, well,” said Orderly No. 1, “having fun, are we?”
    Orderly No. 2: “You know it’s dangerous for you, Joe, out here, dangerous …”
    The men had enough muscle to get the jacket on Joe.
    “You look good in white,” she said. She laughed. She drank.
    “I’m a man of God,” he said. “A man in black. I’ve stood on that goddamned mountain-top and drunk whiskey with Johnny Cash!”
    “You’re my man,” she said. Her dark eyes narrowed as the attendants took their time dragging Joe toward the door. They wanted a last look at the woman with the martini. Unaware it could be them inside the straps.
    “Maybe you’ll escape, like Houdini,” she said.
    “Yeah baby, maybe I’ll be out of this coat before you can finish my booze and unbutton your bra. I’m not drowning in this motion picture; there’s never been a man tough enough to bust my appendix.”
    She smiled.
    “When you get back we’ll both be something new,” she told Joe.
    “I know kid, I know. I love you, baby.”
    “Sure,” she said, taking his face in her hands, laying on a lasting kiss to remember in the madhouse. The men turned their backs on her and dragged Joe out the door. That’s how the first one got it—in the back. She pulled out the pick and buried it into his neck.
    There was some screaming.
    Blood squirting.
    The other guy stood, shocked, amazed. Joe removed his straightjacket and handed it back to the orderly. His shoulder hurt like a virgin nun in a whorehouse but he still had it, he thought, still had it. He could still pull off the old dislocation bit. “Have you ever heard the voice of the Governing Omnipotent Deity?” he asked the man in white with the big round blue eyes. No answer. So Joe tried to strangle the words out of him with the restriction straps.
    Dead.
    Maybe it was the sound she made screaming crazy orgasm fireworks as the red and blue neon lights of the cop cars flashed across the cracks in the walls of the cheap hotel room as the good guys chased someone else. Maybe it was the rain and the thunder and God making murder on the world, but Joe felt alive, really ass-kicking okay alive, his skeleton good and happy to live inside his body. He was hard. A tough guy. A holy man. He held his head high and shouted out a prayer for the recently departed lying dead inside the doorway. Count Basie’s orchestra gave it all they had, and Joe thought—that’s all you can really do. Stick it to the man. A woman sang with the band, someone black singing something blue.
    “Let’s dance,” he said.
    “Sure,” she slurred. Still smiling, she finished what must have been her six martini since he let her inside.
    He pulled her close. “You shouldn’t have called them,” he said. “It wasn’t nice that you called. Maybe they called the fuzz, too.”
    “Maybe, yeah, I know, but … well, you were out of practice, baby, and getting so damned self-righteous.”
    “Sometimes it’s tough being the only one with all the answers.”
    “Do you still want to me to go away?” she asked.
    He looked at her. The long messy blonde hair. The lips. The D cups. The hips. The miles of legs.
    “No,” he said, “I believe the All Mighty intended for us to be together.”

About the author:
Bradley Mason Hamlin is a writer, editor, and publisher, born in Los Angeles and currently living in "Capital City" Sacramento, California with his beautiful wife Nicky and their many amazing children. His poetry, short stories, and articles have appeared in books of selected writings, anthologies, and several magazines and newspapers in print and on line. He is also the creator of the metaphysical crime series: Monster Zipper, featuring the Intoxicated Detective, available at: www.mysteryisland.net.