Sweet Junie the Remix

I met Junie during her apprenticeship with the boss' interrogator Sweet Billy. I had been sent to give Billy his payment for the month and found this little girl. She wasn't a little girl but, she looked about fifteen in her rubber coveralls, face shield and blood splatter. When I walked into the backroom of Billy's warehouse she turned, bone saw in one hand.

"The fuck are you?"

I almost laughed, she was cute and mean lookin'.

"I'm Moose. I've got Billy's money."

She nodded and stripped the face smiled off after setting the bone saw aside, she smiled at me and her pretty little brown face got prettier. I smiled back without meaning to. I wanted to pinch her or squeeze her, not in a nasty way but the way you want to squeeze a cute baby until they giggle and fart. My wife has always looked many years younger and I'd learned from many smacks upside my head not to talk to cute women like they are cute.

"Hi Moose, I'm Junie. He told me you were coming. He had to go on a tool run, we broke the drill. You want some coffee?"

"Yes I'd love some."

She stripped off her gloves and walked over to a filthy little coffee machine, I wanted to say no but she was getting the creamer out of the fridge and putting things on a tray. While she worked, I looked over the thing on the table. I could see it was some kind of animal that had been carefully dissected, I bent over to examine some muscle fibers.

"Billy is teaching me about musculature and stuff. You want to see what I made?"

They way her brown eyes lit up, I couldn't say no. She burbled over like a soda pop, holding up pieces of lucite with various bits of flesh and gobbits of gore in them. It would go on to become her signature and the bulk of her work as a legit artist. I followed her around her work area, listened as she talked about capturing movement and giving a sense of suspended time. I smiled when she waxed rhapsodic about something I barely understood.

"I'm sorry. My girlfriend hates hearing about the gross parts and I'm babbling."

"Not at all."

The more excited she got, the more I just wanted to cuddle and pinch her. By the time Billy arrived we were already fast friends and on our second pot of coffee. After I left, I kept up with her work. Even after I retired and only ever heard her name whispered at card games, all the boys loved Sweet Junie and were terrified of her.

When the boss gave me the tongue piece after he took her on permanently, I held it in my hand and marveled at how far she'd come. The Boss and I had dinner just before he went down, we laughed about Sweet Junie and how often she cursed him out and how adorable she was.

"The way she looked at me Moose, don't call me fuckin Beyonce. If she wasn't a queer man-"

"If only man. If only."