But there was something happening back there behind the 1,000 cock stare. Thinking back to sunny times on the farm? Schoolyard days playing Red Rover with her friends and being teased by freckle-faced boys? Maybe. But I doubted it. I figured she wasn’t thinking much beyond getting a batch of forgetfulness stuck in her arm or up her nose, or reeling in another two-legged meal ticket. Talk about a daily grind.

"Wanna date, honey?" she asked in a little voice as I passed. Honey? I hadn’t been called that since I was a kid mugging around at the motel pool run by one of my dad’s friends. In summertime, dad would hold court on a lawn chair surrounded by his cronies, the whole mob of them squeezed into Speedos and wrapped in alligator boot flesh. Just sizzling in the heat like happy iguanas on Galapagos.

The women could have been movie mobsters’ wives: dyed blond hair stacked high and hard; sunglasses that got bigger each year to hide crumbling eyes and once-sharp cheekbones; and wired-up leopard bathing suits that creaked beneath the prodigious weight of migratory bosoms. They’d sit there day after day, summer after summer, faces turned in reverential sacrifice toward the sun–the last of their Valen-tinos not yet lured away by the transient mysteries of younger, firmer sirens. They coated themselves with oil, gobs of buttery lube. Basting like big-titted turkeys, complete with gobbler necks and heavy brown drumsticks.

The pool was a treat for me and my brother. We’d spend all day in the water, wrestling, swimming, holding our breaths, pissing in the shallow end–all that stuff that ices a kid’s cake. When we got wrinkly and blue-lipped, we’d wrap ourselves in towels and worm ourselves in beside dad.

The conversation among he and the boys was always the same, shit-funny slags being tossed around and someone recounting the previous night’s misadventures. They all used swear words like punctuation marks and I revered them because they never changed the way they spoke when us kids skittered over. No rolling eyes or whispered pig Latin. I felt like I was privy to their secret, exciting world. I felt like an adult. Scooched there beside my big, laughing dad and spun up in my terry-towel chrysalis I was taught the invaluable lessons of humour and friendship and the community of men.

The wives sat in their gaggle on the outskirt of the sacred ring of lawn chairs chatting and scolding each other’s brats. Every now and then they’d rattle their ice at me. "Honey," they’d yodel, "be a sweetheart and fetch me a rum and coke. Tell Sam to put it on Dutch’s tab." Entranced by their conical swimsuit breasts, I’d nod a dutiful yes and go water-bugging to the bartender. Sometimes I’d steal a sip on my way back. On those really sweet, sweaty days, when the sun hung forever and the entire crew was there, I’d have a good little buzz going by the end of our stay. Hazy memories of warm summer days.

But this was no warm day at the pool and this teenage ass merchant was about 40 summers short of calling me honey. I stopped. She slipped out of the doorway and barged her tiny body into my open jacket. She repeated her offer, "Wanna date?" I instinctively shifted away from her, but she pressed her advantage inward. Her head was at my chest and her bloodless fingers brushed my hips. Those damaged blue eyes looked through me to the promise of a brief interlude from winter’s street corner.