Jamie

“You smell good. Who’s this ‘guy’ you’re meeting? Are you back on the market?” He wiggled both blond eyebrows at me. “Does that mean Doc Nyce is no longer petting your cat?” I frowned. “Petting my cat?” What did Bogart, our vegetarian cat, have to do with Doc? Jeff leaned in for another sniff. “I’m really good at petting cats, too.” Oh, dear Lord! My brain had finally dipped low enough into the gutter to catch Jeff’s meaning. I shoved him back a step. “Doc is still petting my …” No! Just walk away, doofus. I started to do just that, but then stopped and turned back. In case Tiffany was going to be hearing the play-by-play of my run-in with Jeff, I wanted to clarify things so the red-headed siren wouldn’t get any ideas about trying to steal Doc away from me. We’d done that song and dance before, and there would be no encores on that score. “Doc Nyce is still my boyfriend,” I announced. Sheesh, “boyfriend” was such a silly word for a woman my age. “I mean, we’re a definite couple in all the ways.” Jeff grinned. “Which ways are those?” “You know, the ‘couple’ ways.” When he just stared at me with a dumb grin, I added, “Boom, boom, out goes the lights.” His laughter rang out loud and clear, catching the attention of people on the opposite side of the street. “I’m not sure if you know this, Violet Parker, but that old song actually refers to landing a knock-out punch.” Thinking back on all the times I’d pinched, elbowed, and tackled Doc, including the black eye I’d accidentally given him, I shrugged. “Sex with Doc is amazingly physical. He’s a real heavy hitter under the sheets, delivering a solid one-two sock-’em every time.” I wasn’t sure what I was alluding to by this point, but I kept throwing out boxing slang to fill the void. “I’d give you the real dirty blow-by-blow, but we don’t sell ringside tickets for our wild sex matches.” His jaw gaped. “No kidding?” Before my big mouth unleashed another round of idiotic sex-boxing ambiguities, I said, “See you around, Jeff.”
― Ann Charles, Never Say Sever in Deadwood

“Nonsense! Nonsense!” snorted Tasbrough. “That couldn’t happen here in America, not possibly! We’re a country of freemen.” “The answer to that,” suggested Doremus Jessup, “if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is ‘the hell it can’t!’ Why, there’s no country in the world that can get more hysterical—yes, or more obsequious!—than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns his State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio—divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding’s appointees? Could Hitler’s bunch, or Windrip’s, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut ‘Liberty cabbage’ and somebody actually proposed calling German measles ‘Liberty measles’? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the—well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?. . .Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?. . .Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor—no, that couldn’t happen in America! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours! We’re ready to start on a Children’s Crusade—only of adults—right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!” “Well, what if they are?”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“You’re sending your flying monkeys after the self-righteous blowhard, aren’t you?” “I can’t. They’re out on another vengeful mission.” “Oh,”
― Ann Charles, A Wild Fright in Deadwood

“What could go wrong?” “I don’t know, Killer, but if you see trouble coming, duck this time instead of batting it out the window.” I snorted. “Executioners don’t duck, they swing.”
― Ann Charles, Devil Days in Deadwood