Characters in Luckey Quarter

Then—it was the way she was built—Darlene Pullen started to laugh. She sat down in the chair beside the rumpled, abandoned bed with the quarter in one hand and the envelope it had fallen out of in the other, looking back and forth between them and laughing until tears spilled …

“Take Deirdre McCausland out on a date?” She snickered. “I’ll thing of subething,” Paul said. “Leave him alone,” Darlene said. “Don’t bug him for a little while, could you do that?” “Yeah, but what do I get?” Patsy asked her.

… years as a chambermaid, the five years since Deke had left her, she had found drying streaks of what could only have been semen on the TV screen and once a reeking puddle of piss in a bureau drawer), nothing stolen. There was really only the bed to make, the …

Gerda, the Swede who’d been a downtown corner-girl before finding Jesus the previous summer at a revival meeting in Tahoe, propped hers up against one of the bathroom glasses; Melissa put hers under the TV controller.

… she was in Housekeeping with Gerda, Melissa, and Jane (the head housekeeper, she of the formidable gunshell tits and set, red-painted mouth), first drinking coffee, then filling her cart and getting ready for the day, the truckers and cowboys and salesmen were checking out, their honeypot envelopes either filled or …

… hers up against one of the bathroom glasses; Melissa put hers under the TV controller. Darlene always leaned hers against the telephone, and when she came in this morning and found 322’s on the pillow instead, she had known he’d left something for her. Yes, he certainly had. A little …

Patsy, her older kid, needed braces. Darlene had absolutely no idea how she was going to pay for them, she had been worried about it all week, and if this wasn’t the final straw, what was? And if you couldn’t laugh, what could you do?

… Patsy’s braces and get that Sega game system Paul wanted with all his heart. He wouldn’t even have to wait until Christmas, he could have it as a . . . a . . . “A Thanksgiving present,” she said. “Sure, why not? And I’ll pay off the cable people, …

William Avery Trail-Boss Quite often the honeypot was empty—she had found envelopes torn up in the wastebasket, crumpled up in the corner (as if the idea of tipping the chambermaid actually infuriated some guests), floating in the toilet bowl—but sometimes there was a nice little surprise in there, especially if …