Robert Vickers

Mom on the make

CHAPTER ONE

"Goddammit, you fuckin' slut, what d'ya mean sayin' somethin' like that to your husband?" Lee slurred.

Joanne King could barely tolerate the hundred horsepower breath gusting into her face. Her husband had really gone on a binge this time. He was drunker than she could ever remember seeing him. She didn't much like it – and had told him so.

"Please, Lee, don't cause a scene."

"Scene?! You stinking cunt! I'll do any damn thing I damn well please and you're not gonna say a fuckin' word about it!"

Before Joanne could open her lips to speak, Lee backhanded her as hard as he could. The slim, petite woman was almost lifted from her feet and thrown against the wall. Weakly, she felt her crushed lips, the trickle of the red, red blood dribbling down her chin.

"Why did you do that, Lee? Why?" she asked. "Teach you not to give me no more lip, that's why!"

Joanne's knees had turned to rubber. She felt her guts chum and go weak and watery. This was it. She had had it with Lee and his weekly drunks when she had married him almost twenty years ago, he had been a nice, easygoing sort of guy. But the pressures of getting a job, then hanging onto it, had preyed on him. He wasn't the smartest or most talented man in the world, but Joanne had loved him.

The pressures had simply been too much, and he had turned to booze for his comfort.

Joanne had tried to do what she could do to cure him of his dependence on liquor, but it seemed that the more she meddled, the worse Lee got. Finally, Joanne had resigned herself to the fact that Lee probably was better off going on his binges.

The past month had been pure hell for her, though. Lee had gotten totally blasted out of his head every night and had grown more and more callous toward her. Joanne couldn't understand it. All that mattered was the change.