Vodka: Cherry & Chocolate

"We, my dear, are home," John said.

"Thought you wanted get rid of me," Marianne snapped.

"Hey, let's just call it a misunderstanding, okay?" John said magnanimously, and stepped out of the truck.

Deborah Hall was delighted when John introduced her to Marianne. Her sunken face beamed up at the girl and she patted the girl's hand. Then Deborah turned her attention to John.

"I, Theresa White?" Deborah whispered. "She, she's the lawyer; she's got the will. I, everything, everything's yours."

"Momma, we, we really need talk about that now?" John asked, tears streaming down his face.

"Well, when would we talk about it?" Deborah rasped out.

Three days later, Collier roused John at three forty one in the morning to let him know Deborah had passed. Marianne held him as he sobbed.

At the funeral, an elegant arrangement was delivered. Reading the card, John was stunned to see that it was from Barron Blouchen. Arriving home, the young man John had hired to house-sit showed John a basket of assorted fruits and another basket of booze had arrived. Both were from Barron Blouchen.

"I'll be fucked; the man does have a heart," John said, making himself a bald dirty Marianne with the contents of the booze basket.

"Why'd you have that guy stay here; you knew Barron was going send this stuff?" Marianne asked, peeling a ruby red grapefruit from the fruit basket.

"Sweetheart, some people? Read obituaries and when everyone's at the funeral? They go to the house and break in," John explained.

"That, that's sick!" Marianne gasped, horrified.

"Well, I don't think a whole lot of healthy people turn to crime," John said, determining to pass along the recipe for a bald dirty Marianne with his thank you note to Barron Blouchen.

A month after his mother's funeral, John sent another thank you note to Barron Blouchen. Arriving home after a day of working at Alliance Square Barbershop, located on the ground floor of 2 Alliance Square, Marianne showed John two long cardboard tubes that Barron Blouchen had sent. Even though one was addressed to Marianne, she'd not opened it.

The one addressed to Marianne took John's breath away. It was a distorted, disjointed portrait of a nude Marianne. Barron's focal point had been Marianne's stunning eyes.

The painting Barron had sent to John was Barron's vision of Marianne's left breast, lacy border of the black corset just visible underneath the twisted, tortured breast. Marianne's pierced nipple and nipple ring had been Barron's point of focus. The painting was both jarring and beautiful.

"And, you can tell they're original Barron Blouchen portraits," John mused, pointing to the small number 8 with a slash from top to bottom, creating a backward and forward 'B' in the lower right corner.

"They, they got to be worth a couple of hundred bucks," Marianne said regarding her own portrait with reverence.

"Uh, more like a couple of thousand," John agreed.

The reason for Barron bestowing these portraits to two random people he'd once fucked and discarded would remain a mystery to John and Marianne. Letters and voice mails went unanswered, but truthfully, John had not expected any response from the temperamental drunkard.

The navel ring, Marianne had removed when her stomach started poking out. The clitoral ring had been removed after Marianne's first examination from Dr. Swartz; she didn't like the knowing smirk the man had given her. Even though she'd found another doctor, Marianne did not thread the ring through the piercing again. She agreed, she would remove the nipple rings two weeks before her due date; she planned to breast feed their baby.

"Baby's going get drunk, too," Marianne laughed, hand over her swollen belly. "Minute doctor says I can? I'm fixing me a big old dirty Marianne."

"I'd recommend a bald dirty Marianne," John smiled, opening the door of the home to let a smiling Cindy enter.

THE END.

**Author's Note: I write these stories for my pleasure; I post them here for your enjoyment. I thank you sincerely for reading my stories.

I especially thank those that take the time to leave comments, good and bad. I likewise thank those that take the time to rate my work, those that 'Favorite' my words.

This is another one of those anomalies; there are no characters from any other story making an appearance in this story.

Nulough's Vodka is pronounced 'new lows.' In other words, if you are drinking this slop, you have truly reached new lows in your alcohol consumption.

Have a swell day. And some of you? Have a swollen day.