Billy Cutter left the Bull Riders reception early and sober. Without shooters, the jokes weren’t as funny or the women as intoxicating as at the parties before his injury. At 6 a.m. the next morning, Billy made his way to the mini-mall McDonalds down from the Exhibit Hall. He ordered coffee, a Big Breakfast with Hot Cakes, and an Egg McMuffin. Given the hours he spent daily in rehab, he didn’t worry about calories.
Until Billy reinjured his left shoulder and withdrew at Calgary, the old timers had predicted William C. “Billy” Cutter to win the Bull Riding event at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR). Fighting through the pain, refusing to succumb to the temptation of opiates, he found a doctor willing to pass him on the physical and started competing again. Only the top 15 in each event qualify for the NFR in Las Vegas. Billy finished 16th. His 135,000 Twitter fans claimed he’d been robbed by his bull assignments. Maybe….
When he finished the pancakes, Billy noticed a weekend cowboy sitting with a working woman. The man had on a wrinkled western cut suit, wilted pearl-button shirt, Tony Lamas, and a spotless Black BronKo. Black BronKo (with a capital K) were the first cowboy hats made in China. Billy guessed the guy sold them.
The woman wore a cocktail dress with black sparkles, stiletto heels, and an exhausted impatient expression. A ladies Black BronKo rested crown down on the table beside her. There were bruises on her upper arms. Twenty years younger, she could be a runner-up for Miss Rodeo Queen.
After failing to qualify for the NFR, Billy had been invited to Australia to re-coop. He had friends on the Australian rodeo circuit and knew an aboriginal woman in Darwin. Tarni ran a oceanfront restaurant, but she had been raised on a ranch. She knew cattle.
Billy’s agent Kent Barnes had bigger plans. “You’re a lock for the Courage Award. No cash prize, but great publicity for your book.” So, Billy Cutter, world class rider and newly published author (All the Bull in the World), found himself at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas early on a Wednesday morning, the second week in December.
The Hat methodically worked his way through three Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuits and two cartons of milk. He stole occasional glances at the woman as she ate her Fruit ’N Yogurt Parfait and sipped coffee.
Finally, Rodeo Queen tossed the white plastic spoon down and set the empty yogurt container on the tray. “All right. You’ve fed me,” she told The Hat. “Get my clothes and called me an Uber.” She lowered her voice. “I’m fine now.”
“What about my offer…?”
“I want to go home.” She stood up.
“Please….” The Hat reached for her. Billy stood to intervene.
“It’s okay.” Rodeo Queen waved him off. “Doug’s not the bad guy.”
“You don’t need help?”
“Need? Not exactly need– I can handle men like Douglas. But since you’re offering, and since you’re Billy Cutter–”
“Let me grab my coffee.”
Billy dumped his trash and put his tray on the rack before joining them. They were quietly arguing when he sat down. “I’m all ears.” He removed his Stetson.
“My name is Doug Zelinka,” The Hat told him. “Sharon and I attended a party in the Black BronKo suite last night. She had too much to drink, so my boss asked me to make sure she got breakfast and a ride home.” Billy pointed to the bruises on her arm. “I didn’t do those.”
Billy turned to Sharon. “It’s complicated,” she told him. “Doug’s Chinese employer was upset that I lied about my age. Of course, once he saw me in this dress, everything was fine, until the buyer for a big outdoor equipment chain latched on to me. The mope drugged my drink.”
“Allegedly drugged your drink,” Doug interjected.
Sharon faced Billy. “One sip and I knew he’d given me a roofie. When I poured the drink on the son-of-a-bitch, he grabbed me.” She pursed her lips, “That’s where I got the bruises.”
“Security took the buyer aside to explain the rules,” Doug explained.
“No. He took him to find him a different hooker– A man in a suit arrived with an envelope of cash and a nondisclosure agreement. He said someone would stay with me until the drug wore off and would make sure I got home.”
Doug scanned the food court nervously. “Her street clothes are in a locker. She needs to change.”
“I have to return the dress. It’s a rental.”
Billy felt his anger rising. “Did your boss help drug her?”
Doug shook his head. “He paid good money for whores, booze, and strippers. Why would anyone need a roofie to get laid?” He turned to Sharon. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Why don’t you get her clothes while I speak with Sharon? You might catch a couple hours sleep before you have to be back in the exhibition hall. I’ll make sure she gets home.”
She handed Doug the locker key. “The number is on it.” When he was out of earshot Sharon said softly, “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do much.”
“You did enough.” She picked up her coffee cup.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Well, this is rather sudden…,” she joked, tossing her shockingly blonde hair.
“Humor me.”
“I’ve got an ex-husband who works steady in the construction industry, but he stays one step ahead of the courts who want to garnish his wages for past-due child support. I have two teenage sons who think I shouldn’t have three part-time jobs and work odd hours just so they can go to college. They’re worried that I don’t get out enough.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“No, I don’t have a boyfriend.” Sharon put her empty coffee cup down.
“I’m meeting my agent this eight this morning. I have a new sponsor, and he wants to meet my girlfriend–”
“But you don’t have one?”
“I had hoped to secure a suitable candidate at a party last night, but I didn’t find anyone wholesome enough.”
She laughed. “And you think I’m a good candidate? Because I’m wholesome?” Sharon leaned across the table, her breasts spilling out of the red dress, her makeup caked and fading, the bruises livid on her arms.
“Without makeup and in street clothes, you could pass for wholesome.”
“And why is that important?” She touched his arm.
Billy’s face flushed. “Kent thinks I spend too much time with whores.”
Sharon laughed again. “Do you?”
“Used to. Don’t anymore. Haven’t for some time. Not since I got sober and climbed back on the bulls.”
“So, you are not seeking my company in a professional capacity?”
“No. I need a girlfriend.”
“And you think I’m her?”
“I suspect you’ve been spun around and knocked down a lot, but you keep getting back up. That’s something I respect.”
Doug arrived with a worn USMC duffle bag that he set on the floor beside Sharon. She snatched it up. “Time to get wholesome.”
Doug raised his eyebrows. “Don’t ask,” Billy told him. “It’s hard to explain.”
When Sharon returned, Billy was talking with an older gentleman in a pale gray suit. She handed Doug the garment bag with the rental dress, costume jewelry, and shoes. “Take the hat, too,” she told him, pointing to the BronKo Rodeo Queen on the table.
From her duffle bag, Sharon took a sun-beaten Charlie 1 Horse hat with a turquoise beaded raffia. She’d scrubbed her face clean and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She wore ancient Levi jeans, Justin boots, and a faded long-sleeved checkered shirt with white pearl snaps. “Wholesome enough for you, cowboy?”
“Can you cook?” The man in the suit asked.
“Sharon,” Billy said, motioning to the man, “this is my agent, Kent Barnes.” He turned to Kent. “This is my girlfriend.”
“I’m Sharon Loffler.” She stuck out her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you.” Kent seemed amused. “I cook for Billy all the time. Is there something you’re hungry for?”
“The new sponsor has this ad concept–” He paused and reappraised her. “You’re Billy’s girlfriend?” Sharon smiled. “What’s the last meal you fixed him?”
“I bought a bucket of fried chicken at the Ready Stop and microwaved mac and cheese.”
The agent nodded. “They want Billy–looking all rugged cowboy–to face the camera and say, ‘Rodeo means pain.’ They flash a clip of his injury, shots from rehab, then Billy back on a bull. ‘Billy Cutter, rodeo champion, the favored rider, brought down, fighting back, resolved to compete again.’ The camera holds on him accepting the Courage award, then it cuts to him, standing before a table of food, with his arm wrapped around a shapely woman’s waist. Billy says, ‘Comfort means home cooking and Wild Buffalo Jeans.’”
“Fried food, comfortable clothes, and pussy,” Sharon suggested, “the Male American Dream.”
“You bet your sweet ass it is.” Kent hesitated. “You might be a little older than the sponsor envisioned.”
She sat back in her chair and carefully opened the lid of her coffee. “Wild Buffalo Jeans says that when life knocks you down, you need the guts to get back up, because that’s what’s Billy’s done. Do you think some scrawny-assed twenty-something porcelain doll can help him with that?”
Kent considered her question. “I guess not.”
“Think about the women who will see the ad,” Sharon added, “the ones who buy jeans for their husbands and boyfriends, the ones with a poster in their kitchen of Billy riding a bull. They know he’s not with me for my mac and cheese.”
“I like that angle. I’ll pitch it to the Wild Buffalo folks.” Kent had another thought. “Have you modeled before?”
“Not the kind of photo shoots a girl would put on her resume, but I know my way around men with cameras,” she demurred. “When can Billy and I meet these folks?”
“Lunch is at 1:30, but leave the Levi’s at home.”
“We can buy new jeans on the strip,” Billy suggested.
“I’ll need to text my sons, too. Let them know what’s up.” She told Kent, “They’re 13 and 15.”
“Do they like rodeo?”
“They think they’re cowboys.” Sharon picked up her old Marine Corps duffle bag. “But they’re too smart to ride bulls.” She handed the bag to Billy to carry.
“I’ll take luck over brains any day,” Billy said, “but it doesn’t hurt to have both.”
Paul Lewellan retired after forty-nine years of teaching in secondary schools and private colleges. Now he lives and gardens in Davenport, Iowa, with his wife Pamela, his Shi Tzu Mannie, and her ginger tabby Sunny. He keeps a safe social distance from everyone else.