My Sister Patrice and the Fat Man Who Loved Her

My Sister, Patrice, and the Fat Man who loved her.


Shy as she was when sober, Patrice would transform into a sailor’s fantasy if you gave her enough to drink. Men who met her in night clubs soon discovered this. Fortunately, I’d developed relationships with most of the local bartenders, waitresses, doormen, and frequent customers of most nearby establishments. I like to think that the hundred bucks I slap in their palms has little to do with my being notified when Patrice gets out of hand. I like to think these people really are concerned for her well-being. I can’t even begin to put a number on how many times I’d been rattled out of a pleasant dream by a late-night phone call from a frantic bartender.

Tonight, just when I’d slipped from consciousness, a sharp ring in the darkness brought me back to reality.

I rolled onto my back, grabbed the receiver on the nightstand, brought it to my ear and grunted.

“Your sister,” the woman’s voice at the end of the line said, “is at it again.”

After jotting down the location and hanging up the phone, I slid out of bed and slipped on some clothes. Still groggy, I sat on the edge of the bed and laced up my sneakers. Throwing on an old army jacket, I shut the door behind me and, since I didn’t drive, started the two mile trot over to Seventy-Fifth and Elmira -- home of the seedy Shamrock Club.

***

It was a warm July night. Halfway to the nightclub, while cutting through a residential neighborhood, I shed my jacket and tucked it in the crook of my elbow. I ran past lawn sprinklers that clicked away in the front yards of identical homes. Without any clouds to block the full moon‘s brightness, I could see the spritzing spray arc from the sprinklers and hit the grass. This was the kind of neighborhood I hoped to live in someday, the kind of place I’d like to bring a wife, raise a few kids. Although nobody else was outdoors, a few curtained windows were lit up by a flickering light behind them. I imagined a happy couple cuddled up in front of a fire. Every now and again the peacefulness of the neighborhood would break when the angry bark of a dog would rise up from behind a wooden fence. I could do with a dog, too.

But all that family stuff was a dream as long as I had Patrice to worry about.

Outside the neighborhoods, I got to Elmira, where I hung a left and followed a string of traffic lights for six or seven shop-lined blocks until I stood beneath the flashing green Shamrock that overhung the nightclub’s entrance.

I leaned on the wooden door and stepped inside.

***

Standing inside the doorway, staring through the curling smoke in the blue lit room, I spotted Patrice immediately. She was up on the stage, stripped down to bra and panties, moving her arms to a wild beat coming out of the jukebox speakers. She wasn’t wearing her thick glasses and the pin that usually kept her hair up in a bun had been removed. I wondered then, how many of the men cheering her on had it taken to heft my heavy sister onto the stage.

I caught sight of a petite little blonde heading my way. The woman grinned. She blotted her right hand on her apron, then held it out. I dug a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket and she wasted no time wrapping her fingers around it and stuffing it into her apron pocket.

“How much she had to drink?” I asked the blonde. She thrust her hand out again. I frowned and shook my head. The waitress shrugged and said, “Lots.”

“Who’s been buying the drinks for her?”

The waitress cupped her chin. “Why? You gonna do something to him?”

“I just want to talk to him,” I said. When the waitress didn’t say anything. I fished another twenty out of my pocket.

Taking it, she smiled and said, “The fat guy in front of her. The one with the black fedora.”

I sighed, took a step forward and heard the waitress say, “Don’t make no trouble in here. And if you do, don’t tell no one you know me.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I said, “I’m just looking out for my sister.” She skittled off, swaying her bony ass back toward the pool tables, where she’d left her tray on the felt.

Patrice, all three-hundred-eighty pounds of her, wobbled on the wooden bar, which dipped beneath her weight. With her fisted hands on her hips, she stared straight ahead, shucking her shoulders and shuffling her bare feet in an awkward rhythm. The fat man sitting directly in front of her was staring up, grinning broadly, working an unlit cigar in one corner of his lips. His black felt fedora sat on his head at an angle and when I sat in the stool next to him, I could smell the sour sweat soaking his shirt.

The bartender slid a Budweiser across the bar. I picked up the bottle, gazed a moment at the label, then brought it to my lips. When I set the bottle on the bar, I turned to the fat man and said, “You got yourself a prize up there, don’t you?”

I caught him staring at me in the mirror behind the bar. In the mirror, the guy’s face sat right between Patrice’s heavy thighs, right beneath her broad ass. It was quite the illusion. I watched him shift his unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

“That your girl?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the mirror, trying to blank out my sister’s big ass.

“What if it is?” the guy said. His hand came up, first to swipe at his sweaty forehead, then to straighten his hat. “You got something against big women,” he said.

“Not me,” I replied, sipping again from my beer. “I like women with a little meat.” I stared up at my sister and said, “Take it all off, girl!”

Drunk as she was, Patrice kept up with her dancing. She raised her tree-trunk arms behind her, unsnapped her bra. The bra dropped to the bar in front of the fat man like a shop awning whose ropes had been cut. I reached across the fat man and took the bra, twirled it in the air. “Dance, mama, dance,” I shouted.

My sister began to work her breasts in a manner in which they flopped in front of her like a couple of giant flounders on the deck of a boat. The slapping sound they made when they struck the skin of her stomach was loud enough to make me cringe.

I dug a hundred dollars out of my pocket, told Patrice to turn around, show me her ass. When she did, I stuffed the money under the elastic that squeezed her left thigh.

The fat guy narrowed his eyes. He took his cigar out of his mouth. He removed his fedora and placed it on the bar in front of him. “Listen, fella,” he said. “this here’s my girl and I don’t appreciate what you’re doing.”

Ignoring that fat guy, I shouted up to Patrice. “Come on, baby, work them titties.” Patrice buried her plump hands beneath her breasts and the flopping intensified.

The fat man placed his hands on the brim of his hat and spun it around on the bar.

Patrice turned back around to face him. “Take off the panties!” I shouted.

“That’s enough!” the fat man said. He slammed a fist on the counter. A few glasses tipped onto their sides. My own bottle jumped up off the bar.

I spun in my stool to face the fat man. “She your wife or something?” I asked him. “She even your girlfriend?”

He took the cigar out of his mouth and held it in front of his face. I reached into my pocket, took out a wad of hundred dollar bills. I fanned them in front of my face and shouted up to Patrice, “Mama,” I shouted, “Want to cruise over to my place?”

Patrice, like she does whenever she gets this way, continued to stare vacantly ahead of her. Alcohol always did this to her. It’s genetic, trust me. After more than a couple beers it happens to me, too.

The fat man cleared his throat and said to me, “I think you need to back off, buddy. The girl’s with me.”

“Yeah,” I said. I shook the money, which rattled the air like leaves in the wind. “Tell you what,” I go on to say. “See this money in my hand. I’m betting ten times this much that you can’t show me a marriage certificate by the end of the week.”

The fat man stared at his cigar and thought about it for a while. In the meantime, Patrice began to thumb down her enormous panties. I squeezed my eyes shut, opening them again when the fat man said, “Make it twenty times and you got a deal.”

By this time, Patrice’s panties were past her thighs, snagged on her knees. I told the fat man he’d better get his fiane dressed. He looked up at Patrice, but didn’t say anything.

I climbed up onto the bar and stood in front of my sister. I put my hands on her shoulders and shook her. She continued her dance. I shook some more, having to keep my head tilted to keep from being slapped by her flopping breasts. Finally, like someone who’d just been zapped with a taser, Patrice stopped moving and shivered uncontrollably. Her mouth opened, her eyes widened. “Oh no,” she whispered, “It didn’t happen again, did it?” She quickly tugged up her panties. I took her arm, guided her to the edge of the bar where the fat man, who’d replaced his hat on his head and was still chewing on his cigar, held out an arm to help her down.

The man helped her on with her bra. He found her tent-sized dress, her glasses, her handbag and her hairpin. We all left the Shamrock Club together. Outdoors, I flagged down a cab, watched my sister and the fat man climb into the back seat, watched the front end of the cab rise nine inches. I gave the cabbie more than enough to get them to the airport. Before the cab sped off, I leaned in the window and told the fat man, “By Friday I expect to see a marriage certificate.” The fat man nodded. His arm was around my sister, his palm resting on her shoulder. He nuzzled into her neck and kissed her. Then the fat man looked past Patrice and straight at me. He said, “You didn’t have to that. You didn’t have to offer the money. We got married last night. Tonight was for your benefit.”

I wasn’t following. Patrice threw her head back on the headrest and laughed out loud. Her eyes began to water. Her breasts quaked beneath her dress. “Oh, brother, dear brother,” she said. “Too much. You’re too much.”

My sister blew me a kiss and the cab sped off, its headlights lighting up the sky as its taillights faded.