Read A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell for Free Online

huge, clumsy bee. My face went in--lipstick corals and green leaves
as delicate as nylon. Virginia was, I then saw, taking a nap on a
daybed a few feet away. She looked patient, flat on her back, serene,
her teeth concealed.
    When I got back to the bar, Hoop and Mary were
squared off about something I got the feeling was well rehearsed.
    " If it had sunk it would still be all right,"
Mary was saying.
    " Sunk?" Hoop boomed. "Aboard the
U.S.S.--"
    " Too much that should sink never does!"
Mary intoned, slapping the bar with a flat-palmed crack that made
Hoop jump. She put her arm around my shoulder.
    Hoop winked at me.
    I said, "Hi, Poop. Hoop."
    He tried to take my glass.
    " Have you gathered," Mary said, again
inches from my ear, "that my old man and Hoop won the Second
World War holding hands?"
    " Sort of."
    "And I imagine a young man like you has been
around, too."
    " I've not been a man named Drown." Looking
back, I see this remark could have been tasteless--I still don't know
that her husband didn't drown--but it was innocently said.
    " Funny," Mary said.
    " Do you do that stuff for a living?"
    "Ha," Mary said, motioning for Hoop to
light her cigarette. "That's community theater. I do to get out
of the house."
    Hoop lit her up and she blew a big spiral at the
ceiling, watching it as if she had forgotten us for a bit.
    " My point is, the world doesn't go around on
biographies. Remember that and we'll get on fine. No bio."
    " I will." I had to recall the Orphan.
    " Act!" Hoop suddenly shouted. "That's
about right . Chief
knows more than he looks. She acts ,
all right."
    Mary looked at Hoop. "Ensign Hooper here
believes in quartering on board while in port." She held her
cigarette near her ear, smoke swirling irregularly up around her
hair.
    She looked at me with low eyelids. "What do you
intend to do about
Mother Nature?" she said.
    *Hoop stopped his fussing with bar things.
    " I'm not sure yet," I said.
    " Mush!" Hoop said. "We're out of ice."
He went to the kitchen.
    Mary leaned toward me, as if falling, and pressed her
forehead to mine, holding me behind the neck with her cold drink
hand. She rolled our foreheads together.
    " How do these work?" Hoop stood in the door
with a blue plastic tray of ice cubes. "There's no arm."
    " Twist them, Hoop," Mary said.
    " There's no arm," Hoop said again.
    " They don't make arms on them anymore," I
offered.
    Hoop looked at me. "Yeah, I see."
    I took it for a slur. "You torque them, Hoop,"
I said, trying to somehow slur him back.
    " Yes, Hoop," Mary said. " Torque
you ice trays ."
    She made the sense I couldn't. She was holding some
liquor. She laughed.
    Hoop turned and retreated. We heard ice cubes popping
loose and hitting the floor.
    " Friggin torque is right." Hoop came back
and fitted the new cubes into the glass-lined ice bucket. As soon as
he settled them in and achieved a tight fit with the lid, Mary held
her glass in the air to him, tapping out her cigarette. I started to
swivel away from the bar, but she got me by the waistband and tugged
me back around.
    Hoop hurled the ingredients of another drink toward a
fresh glass. He scrubbed the rim with lemon rind. "Always your
friggin twist on these," he said again. Mary looked at the
ceiling. Ray Conniff was skipping. "Goddamn, Connie," Hoop
said suddenly, leaning toward her over the bar. "You don't
respect--"
    Mary pushed her stool away and saddlebagged herself
over the bar, reaching a set of keys which she retrieved in a
violent, upward fling. She marched into the kitchen. Hoop said,
"She's going to tear a page now, kid."
    We heard a roar from the kitchen. In the garage,
through a door off the kitchen, we found Mary in a high, boxy, old
Mercury, revving its engine with a thoughtful, deliberate expression
on her face. We stood next to the car with our drinks, smelling the
exhaust. Mary floored carbon out, deafening us. She got out and
gallantly held open the door, to me.
    " Jesus," Hoop said.
    " Don't say a damned word, Hoop." To