Agnes Amour

Daughters That Swap

Chapter 1

Tootsie's wasn't open yet; too early in the morning. Sue Belle Jamison turned slowly and strolled on down Broadway, past the Pink Pussy Massage Parlor, almost colliding with a balding, middle-ager who hurried out the doorway looking guilty. Sue Belle stared at him briefly, wondering if she should follow him and see if he would spring for a room, but he was gone and away before she made up her mind. Finally, with some resignation, she turned and jaywalked across the street to Deeman's.

Too early for the tourists, even, but they would be here. In their walking shorts and brightly colored sport shirts, carrying their camera cases around their necks, the cameras resting on their pot bellies; the men would be sounding off to their equally tourist wives, gawking at the souvenir shops, the record stores and the Alamo-home of fine Western-type clothing.

Sue Belle glanced at the clock over the Easy Loan Pawn Shop doorway. Ten and already Nashville was sweltering in a midsummer heat wave. She pulled a dirty handkerchief from her battered leather purse and dabbed at the sweat rolling down the side of her tanned face. As soon as she wiped it clear another bead swelled up and rolled downward, shining and glistening in the sun.

It was cooler than this in Atlanta. Maybe she should have stayed there a while longer, at least until fall; and the waitress job was a fairly decent one, but what the hell. If she was going to make it big in Nashville she had to get her feet wet.

A fat, dirty-looking delivery man walked out of Deeman's, wiping the foam from his full lips. He belched, nodded to Sue Belle and hurried on up to his delivery truck parked in front of old Ernest Tubbs's Record Shop. Sue Belle watched him until he started the dingy truck and pulled slowly onto the half deserted street.

She was trying to make up her mind whether or not it was too early to make a pickup. She had to eat and eat soon or she just knew she would fall flat on her face. She had decided last night, after sitting all night in that twenty-four-hour cafe near the Greyhound Bus Station that she had to get somebody to shack with. After making all the rounds of the recording studios and booking agents she had tried the restaurants for anything from waitress to dishwasher, but there already were too many others in the same fix ahead of her.

So, she reached her decision. Even though she had grown up around the honky tonks and red necks in that small Georgia town where she had been half-raised, she was still a virgin. She had fought for it many times in the past six years, but she did still have it. When she realized that she wasn't going anyplace she had packed her belongings and thumbed to Atlanta. From there to Nashville, and…

Counting her change, even though she knew she had exactly seventy-three cents to her name, she decided to enter the bar. At fourteen, Sue Belle looked much older. There was a look of wisdom and understanding in her eyes that would have fit a woman twice her age. She had learned much of sex from her mother, a beer bar waitress who took customers into a back room and fucked them for a five-dollar bill. Even at eight she was wise in the way of men. One of her mother's "overnight" guests had sneaked to her bed after her mother had passed out. When he found out that Sue was just too small to enter, Sue had obliged him by playing with his cock until he shot his semen all over her tiny body. There had been many other occasions, too. Sue was wise enough even then, not to put up a fight, but always, she managed to keep them from penetrating her vagina. She had even sucked an overzealous guy's cock. But she had remained a virgin.

She had never been close to her mother, but the older woman had told Sue that her Daddy was a country music singer and that he was working out of Nashville. He had called himself Curly •Bill, but after checking for many months, Sue decided that he was either dead or had changed his name. She didn't have a picture of him, but her mother had described him enough. Usually when she did talk about him, she was so drunk that sometimes her faded past was more dreamlike than real, and Sue didn't know where or at what point fact gave way to fiction. She did know she had inherited her father's talent for singing, and she did know that she was in love with the image of the dream-man her mother had pictured for her so many times. It would be a man like her daddy who would get to pop her cherry. She had said this over and over to herself for the past few years, but now, broke, hungry, and without a bed, she knew she couldn't hold out. She would have to give in so she could continue to live.

She stepped inside Deeman's doorway. Standing for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimness, Sue Belle was aware of the only other two customers inside. One was probably a cook, by the looks of his white pants and shirt, who was having a cold beer before going to work, but he could have been a painter, Sue realized. She couldn't decide which. She liked to look at people and imagine what they did or who they were. Back in Atlanta she could sit by the hour in a busy shopping center and study people. Maybe, too, down deep, she just hoped she might find her daddy.