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Sailor Ripley & Lula Pace Fortune, Wild at Heart, Barry Gifford

Lula was looking up at the back of Sailor’s head, admiring his curly chestnut hair. “Honey?” she said. “I sure am glad that prison haircut is on its way to growin’ out. Gives me somethin’ to grab hold of while we’re makin’ love.”

“You remind me of my daddy, you know?” said Lula. “Mama told me he liked skinny women whose breasts were just a bit too big for their bodies. He had a long nose, too, like yours. Did I ever tell you how he died?”

Lula sat up and fixed a pillow behind her back. Her long black hair…fanned out behind her on the powder blue pillowcase like a raven’s wings. Her large grey eyes fascinated Sailor. When he was on the road gang he had thought about Lula’s eyes, swum in them as if they were great cool, grey lakes with small violet islands in the middle. They kept him sane.

“Five years ago?” Lula said. “When I was fifteen?”

“Sometimes I feel just like one of Dracula’s wives. You know, those skinny women in see-through robes with long hair and fingernails who follow the Count around and do what he says.”