Chapter Three
Judd adjusted the pillow that separated him from the straw bottom of the white rocking chair on Fannie’s side porch, leaned back, and let the salty breeze sweep over him as he rocked. Richard didn’t think he had ever seen a man more at peace with all that was around him. He asked himself why Judd radiated contentment, while he himself was beset with agitation. Finding no answer, he put the question to Judd.
“Old people don’t expect anything of themselves, and nobody expects them to do anything but waste away. If one of us starts being useful, there’s hell to pay, and we’re accused of taking jobs from the young people who have families to support. Never mind that we have to eat, and nobody’s prepared to give us anything.” What was he supposed to say to that? He hadn’t given the matter any thought.
“Oh yes,” Judd went on. “You want to know why you can’t relax and live off your bank account. Well, it’s because people expect a man your age to work, and you think that way, too. Find something to do.”
“I want to do something worthwhile, and I don’t mean manual labor, either,” said Richard.
Judd rocked slowly as if to savor every minute of the rhythm he created. “I hope you don’t think I didn’t already know that. Richard: your pride was the first thing I saw when I looked at you. If you’d like, I’ll introduce you to the high school principal. He’ll give you something to do, and you’d be an inspiration to the students.”
Richard didn’t see himself volunteering at a high school, but it would probably beat the boredom he had to tolerate. “Why not? It might prove interesting.”
“Y’all want some sweetened ice tea?”
At the sound of Marilyn’s voice, Richard stifled a groan. “I try not to consume too much caffeine. I’ve had my quota. Thanks.”
“How about you, Judd? Next time, I’ll bring Richard some herbal tea. I blend great herbal teas.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Judd said and accepted the glass of tea that Marilyn handed him.
Marilyn’s face lit up with a smile intended for Richard alone, and she left them, letting her left hand trail casually across Richard’s shoulder. As he had suspected, the woman was both aggressive and brazen in her pursuit of a man. In the past, when a woman expressed an interest in him, he had merely considered it his due and, if he liked what she offered, he took it with no thought of a lasting relationship. With that one heart-shattering exception. Judd’s laugh startled him.
“I won’t ask what you’re thinking,” Richard said to the man who was becoming his friend.
“You may as well have it out with her,” Judd said. “She’s gonna plague you till you either insult her or take her to bed and make a mess of it.”
“If I insult her, she’ll probably serve brains for supper every night for a week, and if I make love with her and louse it up, she’ll broadcast it and ruin my reputation. I’ll have to think about this.”
Judd turned his chair to face the ocean and the wind, settled back and eyed him with what Richard knew was compassion. “Try not to hurt her feelings. A little gentleness goes a long way with women. If you scorn a woman, you’ve made a life-long enemy.”
Richard hadn’t spent much time worrying about how women responded to him; he had usually gotten what he wanted with a smile, a few words of flattery, and a stroke here and there. And he never worried about the effect on a woman of his subsequent disinterest. When he left, he was gone.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you to meet the principal. The school’s right across the park on State Street and Delaware.”
From his peripheral vision, he saw Marilyn approaching with what he was willing to swear was a glass of herbal tea. “I grow herbs in my own garden,” she told him. “This is mint, and there is not a bit of caffeine in it.”
A burglar caught climbing out of a window wouldn’t have been more afraid of captivity than he was at that moment. “I was just leaving,” Richard told her, realizing that the words didn’t make sense. What he wanted to do was pitch the glass across the lawn.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and bathed her bottom lip with her tongue. “You have a minute for this, don’t you?” she asked him. “Anything I give you will make you feel good.”
“I’m not going to test that.” He thought he’d said it under his breath, but the expression on her face told him that she heard it. “Did you hear what I said to her?” he asked Judd after Marilyn left.
“Of course I did. You don’t think you whispered it, do you? But you needn’t worry; that wasn’t strong enough to make her back off. Truth is, I’ve never known her to change course.”
Jolene had alienated Gregory, so now she had neither a particular focus nor a friend with whom to spend her time. “So what?” Jolene said to herself, as she thought about it. It was no skin off her teeth if he’d decided to ignore her. She spent her time wandering along the beach, which, she had discovered, held many facets. She walked in the town park, and when she didn’t feel up to pretending she was happy being alone, she stayed in her room.
If only one of the six entrepreneurs to whom she had applied for a job would telephone her! That morning, after sitting beside the swimming pool for an hour, afraid to jump into it, she despaired, put her long blue skirt over her bathing suit and headed home. As she stepped up on the porch, she collided with Richard.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was sitting around there on the shady side with Judd. I hope I didn’t hurt you. Are you all right?”
She refused his help, picked herself up and walked around him toward the front door, but he grasped her arm, startling her.
“I said, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Peterson. Would you please let go of my arm?”
He reminded her of a red-combed cock with his plumes raised and ready for a fight. “Yes, indeed,” he hissed. “Bubbling with friendliness, aren’t you? I’d like to know what you’re trying to prove.”
She slapped both hands on her hips—something mama said a woman shouldn’t do—and glared at him. “I could ask you the same question. You’re not the only peacock in the yard. Excuse me.”
She dashed up the stairs to dress and got the twelve-thirty bus to Salisbury for her appointment with the hairdresser. “You’re right on time, as usual,” the hairdresser exclaimed when Jolene walked in. “Have a seat, and I’ll be with you in ten minutes.” Knowing that the ten minutes might stretch into forty-five, Jolene sat down and slumped in the chair. She could just as well have gotten the one o’clock bus.
“Did you see in The Maryland Journal today where Callie Smith got married last Saturday?” one woman asked another.
“Did I ever! Can you beat that? We all thought poor Callie was gonna die an old maid.”
“Well, not quite,” another woman chimed in. “Callie ain’t been no maid in thirty-five years. How old you think Callie is? Fifty?”
“Pretty close to it,” Mabel, the hairdresser, said. “And she can wear the hem of her skirts up to her behind and get that weave with the hair hanging down her back, but when she gets in bed with that man, he gon’ know the difference between twenty-five and fifty.”
“You telling me?” the woman holding the newspaper said.
“He already know the difference,” another said, “but I guess it didn’t bother him none. He married her.”
“What he look like?” one asked
“Well, from this picture, he ain’t no Prince Charming, and he sure could use some hair. Course, hair ain’t what makes it swing it the sack.”
“You telling me?”
With her head half-bowed, Jolene’s gaze scanned the room. Every woman there, except her, had an opinion about Callie Smith, whoever she was. She walked over to the magazine rack, not for something to read—she seldom read anything—but for a means of appearing engrossed in something other than the conversation. Her eyes nearly doubled in size at the sight of a book, the cover of which showed a nearly nude blonde in the arms of a swashbuckling pirate. She glanced around, saw that no one looked her way, picked up the book and went back to her chair.
With no interest in reading the book, she skimmed the first few pages without knowing what she saw. “Good Lord!” she breathed and nearly sprang from her chair when her gaze captured a description of a lovers’ kiss with the man’s tongue deep in the woman’s mouth. She slammed the book face down on the chair next to her. But when she realized that none of the women paid her any attention, she picked up the book, made a note of its author and title and replaced it on the chair face down.
“How far is the nearest bookstore?” She asked Mabel as she was about to leave the beauty parlor.
“Walk down to Easter Street, turn left, cross two streets, and it’s in that block.”
Jolene thanked her and hurried to the bookstore. “You have this book?” she asked a clerk, and was assured that the store carried that and several other books by that author. Jolene left the store with seven romance novels by an author known for her sizzling sex scenes.
“It’s a good thing you’re getting off at the end of the line,” the bus driver said to Jolene, “otherwise you’d have missed your stop.” She got off the bus, her face afire, thanks to her newly acquired knowledge of what goes on between a man and a woman. She rushed up the stairs to her room, closed the door and, without opening a window or turning on the air conditioning to temper the ninety-eight-degree heat, Jolene flopped down in a chair with the book she’d been reading on the bus. By the time Fannie banged on Jolene’s door to remind her that she was late for supper, Jolene was well on the way to acquiring a sexual education.
For the first time, she took an interest in her supper companions, wondering if they did or had done the things she had been reading about. Somehow she didn’t think Louvenia’s pursed and wrinkled lips belonged to a woman who had frolicked in bed with a man, but Barbara Sanders, who clerked at the local movie house and whose skirt hems brushed her knees, was definitely suspect. Did Percy Lucas, a truck driver about fifty-five years old or so, wear his pants tight and walk with a swagger because he could make women scream in bed? And was that the reason why Ronald Barnes, the fishnet maker, always winked at her? Was he telling her something?”
She finished her dessert as quickly as she could, though she barely tasted it, said good-night and rushed back up to her room and to her reading. As she opened the book, furor blazed up in her. Emma Tilman hadn’t told her one thing about sex, only ranted against men, turning her daughter into a eunuchoid, a sexually deficient woman. A woman without even the urge to have sex, who didn’t know what it was or what it was supposed to mean.
“You must have wanted it at least once,” she said aloud as if her mother were there with her, “or you wouldn’t have had me. I’m entitled, and I’m not passing up anything that’s supposed to be this great.”
At nine-thirty the next morning, Richard walked with Judd up the steps of Pike Hill High School. “You sure we aren’t too early?” he asked Judd.
“I was a businessman for over fifty years, and I know that when I want to see somebody important, I should make an appointment.”
If he had paid attention to Judd’s navy blue suit, white shirt and red tie, he’d have spared himself that reprimand. “I stand corrected, sir,” he said.
“And well you should.”
They passed security and were escorted to the office of the assistant principal, who informed them that the principal was in Annapolis at a meeting. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Walker,” she said. “I was planning to call you about taking some of our honor students on another expedition next fall. I think the last one you offered was our most popular project ever.”
“Thank you, Ms. Marin. Mr. Peterson here is a citizen of the world, used to be an ambassador and executive director of an important nongovernmental organization and all that. He’s looking for something to keep him busy, and I told him that you could use a volunteer of his class.”
She didn’t look him in the eye, and when he let her know that he appreciated her good looks, the blood heated her face. His antenna shot up. Better not get on the wrong side of this woman, his inner sense warned.
Quickly, Richard cloaked himself in his most professional demeanor, banishing the womanizer he’d once been and leaving her to wonder if she had imagined his signal. “I’d be happy to run a career guidance clinic for you, or to give your seniors a series of workshops on international relations as a possible career. However you think I could best be of help.”
She followed his lead, and if she reacted to him, she hid it. “Would it be an imposition to ask if you would do both?”
“None whatever. I’m glad to help.”
Her aplomb apparently restored, she leaned back in her chair, signaling that she was in command of the meeting. “It’s too late for career guidance this year, because school closes in a couple of weeks, but we could schedule the clinic for the beginning of the next term. We’ve needed this from someone who knows what isn’t in the textbooks, who has experienced success in his chosen field, and knows what kind of information our children need. Mr. Walker, you can’t know what a favor you’ve done us by introducing us to Mr. Peterson.”
“He’s a good man, and that’s what we need around here. Well, we’d better be going. You can reach us over at the boarding house,” said Judd.
She glanced at Richard as if to ask, “You too?” And he’d have given anything to know whether she wanted the information for personal or for business purposes. “Thank you so much, Mr. Peterson,” she said. “I look forward to working with you.”
He extended his hand, and her reluctance to take it did not escape him. “I’m glad to have met you, Ms. Marin, or is it Dr. Marin?”
“Dr. Marin,” she said and refused to let her gaze connect with his.
“Let’s stop over here in the park for a spell,” Judd said as they left the school. “I love to sit here among the flowers and shrubs. My Enid loved flowers, and she kept our garden and our home filled with them. By the way, what kind of message were you sending Miss Marin? For a minute there, I thought you were hitting on her.”
Richard stretched his long legs out in front of him, picked up a short stick and threw it into a bush. “I was only reacting to the look she gave me, but when I caught myself doing it, I nipped it in the bud. I’m not going to start something with a white woman in this tiny Southern town. She didn’t look that good.”
Judd rubbed his chin a few times and then leaned forward. “I just figured out something about you, Richard. You’re a player. A natural born player. How’d you manage to go so far in life without getting into trouble? I mean serious trouble?”
“Damned if I know. Luck. Maybe. But as I told you before: that’s behind me.”
Judd nodded his head. “Maybe.”
There was a time, as recently as six months earlier, that when a woman showed as much interest in him, and especially extemporaneously, as Dr. Marin did, his libido heated up, and he didn’t rest until he got her. With one exception, getting the woman had neither taxed his imagination nor his energy. That exception was Estelle Mitchell. He had thought that his interest in her was of no greater moment than what he’d experienced for any of the dozen or so other women he’d slept with and forgotten. But Miss Mitchell had let him know that she required substance in a relationship and found it in the person of John Lucas, a man he had dismissed as unworthy of consideration as his competition. Too late, he discovered that the man had won Estelle’s heart.
He pulled himself out of his reminiscence, back from the past that still pained and depressed him. He meant to get a handle on it, and he’d start by making himself busy and keeping his penis in his pants.
“I see you don’t believe me,” he said to Judd, “but somehow I don’t have an urge to convince you. Is there a library here in Pike Hill?” He had to do something while he waited for school to open, and writing his memoirs hadn’t yet engaged his interest sufficiently to make him knuckle down and do it.
“Library’s on M. L. King Jr. Avenue, facing the Baptist church.”
“Thanks.” He opened his cell phone and called Fannie. “I won’t be in for lunch today.”
To his disgust, the library had only one old and outmoded computer. He’d have to buy his own, although he didn’t want to encumber himself with possessions, for he didn’t know how long he would remain in Pike Hill.
“That library doesn’t even have a modern computer,” he told Fannie at dinner.
“Well, tell ’em they need one, and help ’em get it,” she said, as if it could be done with little more than the snap of his fingers. “Mr. Barnes is going to be leaving us, so if you know a good person for his room, please tell ’em about Thank the Lord Boarding House. ’Course, I’m not worried. The Lord always looks after me.”
“My circle of friends is very small, Fannie.”
“Yeah, but it would be a lot bigger if you’d quit looking down your nose at people. Judd and I are the only people you ever talk with in this house, and you been here going on two months. Doesn’t that tell you anything? Look at poor Jolene over there. She doesn’t even know how to relate to people. Talk to her sometime.”
He sipped the espresso coffee that he suspected Marilyn had made just for him, and tried to figure out the best way to rid Fannie of that idea. “She went out with Joe Tucker’s brother, which means she knows how to relate to the kind of man who interests her.”
Fannie gaped at him, her coffee cup suspended between the table and her mouth. “She what?” He repeated it. “Well, I’ll be . . . that explains a few things. Another woman who doesn’t know the difference between a strong wind and a little breeze.”
Richard didn’t see the tragedy of it if, indeed, there was one. “No point in worrying about it. If a man’s got the music that makes a woman dance, she’ll move to his beat. Period. Common sense has nothing to do with it.”
Fannie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Haven’t you paid any attention to Jolene? She doesn’t even know that people dance. She’s got every mark of a sheltered, over-protected woman. Well, I did my best.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her as long as she stays here,” he said. “Nothing good and nothing bad. And while she’s marking time, she’ll probably learn something about life.”
Fannie reached over and patted his hand. “Right. And I hope you have the same good fortune.”
He stared at her. How could she say that to him, a man of the world? “Are you insulting me?”
When he tried to extract his hand from hers, she held on to it. “No, I’m not, Richard. I’m trying to tell you that, for all your accomplishments, until you open yourself to people and give yourself to them, you won’t understand life any better than Jolene does.”
Half-standing and half-sitting now, he glared at her but, unfazed, she smiled, though the smile came slowly. “Okay. That’s my last lecture.” She got up, as if to leave the table, and bumped into Marilyn, the cook.
“How’d you like your espresso tonight?” Marilyn asked Richard, ignoring Fannie. “You’re a man of taste, and I know you’re used to having things just right.” She patted his shoulder and then slid an arm across it. “Y’all have a nice, pleasant evening. You hear?”
He watched Marilyn swish out of the dining room toward the kitchen, then glanced back at Fannie. “What does she want from me?”
Fannie’s eyebrows shot up, and she appeared to stifle a laugh. “If I thought that was a serious question, I’d answer it. But I will say this: When Marilyn decides she wants something, she goes after it like a wolf after fresh meat. So you watch out.”
He threw up his hands. “Can’t you say something to her? Call her off?”
A grin spread over her face. “Wouldn’t do a bit of good. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. Put a new lock on your door.” When he closed his bedroom door that night, he secured it with a chair. As hot as he suspected Marilyn would be, he definitely was not going there.
Fannie couldn’t wait for the service to end that Sunday morning. Her mind hadn’t been on the sermon, but on what could have happened between Jolene and Gregory. He had been incensed at her place the Saturday afternoon when Jolene stood him up. She didn’t meddle in the affairs of her houseguests and prided herself on that fact, but she was always happy to help if she could. And Jolene had been acting strangely lately, walking around with her head in a paperback book and her mouth covered with rouge.
“You looking fine this morning, Mr. Hicks. Didn’t Rev. preach this morning! Hallelujah.”
“How are you, Miss Fannie? Yes. He was up to his usual high standards.”
She could see that he didn’t plan to ask her about Jolene, and she didn’t know how to bring up the subject, so she stalled. “Supposed to be a scorcher today, Mr. Hicks. I guess everybody will be heading for the beach. Jolene told me once that she can’t swim.”
“That so? Well, have a blessed day. Good-bye.”
She felt like a fool. He knew she was fishing for information about their relationship, and he didn’t intend to discuss it. Well, she was going to ask Jolene. She’d done the woman a favor, and she deserved an explanation.
When she got home, she found Jolene sitting on a side porch with her face buried in a paperback book. “Rev. sure did preach this morning, Jolene. You should have heard him. What you reading?”
Jolene closed the book and dropped it in her tote bag. “A novel. I was just going inside away from this heat.”
“Spent a few minutes with Mr. Hicks at church, and I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t ask about you. Have you spoken with him since that Saturday he came here and you’d forgotten you had a date with him? Surely he isn’t still mad about that. The Bible says forgive and forget.”
“That’s easier said than done. By the way, I’m going to Salisbury Monday morning to check on a job. It sounds like something I can do.”
“Well, I gave you a good reference.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Not a peep out of her either. Some men don’t hold still for two-timing, and looks like that’s what she did,” Fannie murmured to herself as Jolene hurried up the stairs to her room.
“Four hundred and twenty-five a week is all I’m paying for somebody who never held a job,” the man said to Jolene. “It’s good pay. If your work’s satisfactory, you should get a raise in about six months.”
What choice did she have? She hadn’t heard from any of her other applications. “Do I get paid for overtime?”
“Yeah. But you have to do something about your hair and the way you look. This is a beauty spa, and the women who work here have to look great. I’ll give you a hair cut and style, and one of the operators will give you a facial and a make-up job. That’s free.” His gaze swept over her. “You wear a size fourteen?”
She nodded, though she wore anything from twelve to sixteen depending on how much of a bargain it was. He opened what looked like a storage closet and handed her a uniform. “Women operators wear pink uniforms, and the men wear pink shirts and black pants. You ready to go to work?”
“Yes, sir.” He took her to the front of the shop. “You answer the phone real cheerful so people will want to come in here. You work the cash register, and you keep the operators’ accounts straight. I’ll spend today working with you as soon as we fix up your hair and your face. I don’t want to catch you reading. The gal who had this job couldn’t do her work for reading books.”
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll do my job.”
Three hours later, Jolene hardly recognized herself, although she attributed the change she saw to the pink uniform. She didn’t have one bright color in her closet, and maybe she should buy something pink.
Joe Tucker’s long sharp whistle when Jolene sat down beside him at dinner got the attention of everyone in the dining room. “If I didn’t know it was you, I’d swear I was seeing things,” he said. “You sure do look great.” After determining the reason for Joe’s exclamation, the other boarders returned to their food and their conversations.
Jolene thanked Joe for the compliment, though her heart wasn’t in it. After the hottest lovemaking she had read about so far, Blake Edmond Hunter had nonetheless walked away from Melinda Rodgers, and she just couldn’t see how he would do such a thing. The way Melinda had made him feel, you’d think he’d keep himself glued to her. In her disappointment, she had been tempted to toss Scarlet Woman into the wastebasket without finishing it. For the first time in her memory she had released a string of expletives, and she’d aimed them at the author of that book.
She caught the seven-thirty bus to Salisbury the next morning and finished Scarlet Woman during the trip, greatly relieved that Blake went back to Melinda and made love to her again. She read the love scene over and over until she finally substituted herself for Melinda. She would have to buy some more books, but at six dollars each and at the speed with which she consumed them, she had to find a second-hand bookstore or a library that carried them. She didn’t feel so alone, now that she had the books.
“Hmmm. This place is looking up,” said a deep male voice that sounded as if it were but a few inches from her ear.
She glanced up to find a young, handsome man cataloging her assets, something she hadn’t previously observed. However, she pretended not to understand that he was making a pass at her. “Did you want to make an appointment with one of our operators?” She asked him.
“Hardly. I’ve got a load of stuff on the truck from Kemi Laboratories and Pink. You want to sign for it?”
She wasn’t certain that she had the authority to sign for anything, and she told him as much. “Trust me, babe, anything you got’s good in my book.”
“We’re talking about my signature.”
“How about going to a movie with me one night? Where do you live?”
“Over in Pike Hill.”
“In that case, let’s make it Saturday. We can see a five-thirty show, eat something, and get you home before midnight. What do you say?”
“What’s your name?”
“Jim Riggs. What’s yours?” He turned over a receipt and prepared to write. “And what’s your address in Pike Hill?”
“Jolene. Number eighteen, Ocean Road.”
He winked at her. “See you Saturday at four,” and she watched him walk through the shop in search of the owner. Tight jeans covered what seemed to her like an exquisite behind, and he strode like the heroes in the novels she’d come to love.
As she boarded the bus to go home, she watched the couples who waited in line and those who were already seated. Did they do the things those people did in her books? She wished she could ask the woman in the red dress who snuggled so close to the man beside her. Age apparently didn’t make a difference, she decided, watching one aged couple holding hands. I’m missing all this. Lord, I wish mama was alive and I could tell her what she did to me. I’m not over the hill yet, and I’m going to get some of what’s due me.
Meanwhile Richard decided to take Fannie’s advice and try to have modern computers placed in the library, for he suspected that the schools were short of them if, indeed, they had any. After calling in favors from friends in Washington and New York, he got a promise of six modern desktop PCs.
“I’m taking your advice,” he told Fannie at supper that night. “In a week, we’ll have those computers. Now, we’ll have to find somebody to teach these kids how to use them.”
“I’ll ask Mr. Hicks if he can help. He—”
“We got baked Alaska tonight, Richard, and you get yours first.”
He glanced up to see Marilyn holding a flaming, white, mounded cake-like dessert with raspberries strung around its sides. At the buzz of murmurs from the other boarders, Marilyn hastened to reassure them. “Everybody’s getting one, so don’t get your backs up.”
Before he could respond, Fannie practically growled her disapproval. “Where’s mine? Richard is not the only person sitting at this table.”
Marilyn’s face bloomed into a broad smile. “No, but he’s the only one wearing pants.” She grinned down at Richard. “Taste it. I knocked myself out making it.”
He didn’t want to encourage her, but he loved baked Alaska, so he tasted a forkful. Heaven. “First class,” he said in what he regarded as an understatement.
“I know it. Nobody beats me making this.” She stroked his back before rushing to the kitchen.
“I sure hope you put a new lock on your door,” Fannie said, her annoyance at Marilyn evident in her tone and demeanor.
“I forgot it, but there are other means. Fannie, this stuff is to die for.”
“I know it. Problem is she also knows it.”
“Where’s the fire?” Judd asked Richard when he hurried out of the dining room without drinking the espresso that Marilyn had begun serving for Richard’s benefit.
“I believe in heading off trouble.”
“You mean Marilyn? I wish you luck. A couple of men finally left here because she wouldn’t leave them alone.”
“We’ll see. I’d love to beat you at blackjack, but not tonight. Let’s meet for breakfast around eight.” He had begun to enjoy his morning talks with Judd, aware that a liking for the old man had begun to steal up on him like a wind out of nowhere.
Minutes after he stepped into his room, he heard a light tap on his door. With his fists locked to his hip bones, he told himself to ignore it, but upon reflection, he figured that Marilyn hadn’t finished after supper clean-up. So, the second, louder knock drew him to the door.
He opened it. “I knew you wouldn’t want to pass up your espresso,” Marilyn said, brushing past him into his bedroom, “since you know I make it ’specially for you. I’ll take care of you. You know that.” She put the coffee, a napkin and a bar of chocolate on his night table and smiled in anticipation of a gesture of appreciation from him.
He leaned against the wall beside the open door, his arms folded and his ankles crossed. He didn’t have to be a gentleman about it, and if she made a move, he’d have it out with her. If he was going to fall off the wagon, so to speak, he’d go after a woman less in a position to beleaguer him constantly.
“Members of the opposite sex are not allowed in guest bedrooms, Marilyn. You know it’s against house rules.”
“Those rules aren’t intended for me, you know.” She sauntered over to him, and he raised both hands, palms out.
“If I had wanted coffee, I would have remained in the dining room until you or Rodger brought it.”
“Aw, come on. You know you want it.”
If he had ever heard a double entendre, that was it. “Do I look like the kind of man who’s incapable of going after a woman he wants? Do I?”
“No, but here in the house with all these people, you’re just shy.”
“Shy, hell! I like to choose my own poison, and I’m damned good at it. I’d like you to leave.”
Her long mascaraed lashes closed over her eyes as she looked down and kicked at the carpet. “You’re joking.”
“Joking? Do you see me laughing? Let’s not let this turn ugly, Marilyn. This was a mistake. If you got the impression that I’d welcome any level of intimacy with you, I’m sorry. I’m not here for that.”
She cocked her head and looked up at him, her expression unreadable. “You’re not gay, are you?”
His laugh came out harsh and unfriendly. “My sex partners have been females aged thirteen to sixty-four, black, white, Latino, blondes, brunettes, redheads, tall, short and in between, skinny and fat. Anything else you want to know about them? When I want a woman, she does not have to chase me. Understand?”
“You won’t tell anybody about this.” She raised her head. “Will you?”
He lifted his left shoulder in a careless shrug. “Not unless we have another, similar encounter.” He pointed to his night table. “Would you take that with you?” She took up the tray and walked out without meeting his gaze.
Richard walked over to the window and looked out on the moonlight-shrouded bay. He needed someone, but not Marilyn. Someone who could make him forget Estelle. In the distance he saw a fisherman’s boat silhouetted in the night and shook himself vigorously as if to unshackle himself from the chains of unrequited love, to sail free as that boat sailed over the waves. He was making progress; only a short six months earlier, he would have emptied himself into Marilyn without a single qualm and let her deal with it. For many respectable men, refusing to tomcat wouldn’t be an achievement, but for him, it spelled progress. If he could do something for someone, as Fannie had suggested, maybe that would make up for some of the wrongs he’d done. He turned away from the window, got ready for bed and wrestled with himself and his libido. He hadn’t set out to alter his lifestyle, but in trying to change his attitude toward and behavior with women and in choosing to eschew superficiality and to contribute unselfishly to the community, he had done precisely that. Only God knew what he could expect.
He joined Judd for breakfast the next morning, expecting Marilyn to give him a cold shoulder. However, her smile beamed as brightly for him as ever, although she didn’t put her arm around his shoulder or touch him as she had recently made a habit of doing.
“I saw her sneaking up the stairs last night right after supper,” Judd said when Marilyn left their table, “but from the look of things this morning, she didn’t score any points.”
“I’m a resolute man, though I concede that if it had been Halle Berry, I wouldn’t be boasting this morning about the strength of my resolve.”
“Looks as if she backed off . . . at least for now.”
He looked at Judd and grinned. “She works here, so it would be easy to indict her for sexual harassment.”
What passed for laughter rumbled out of Judd’s throat. “What judge would believe you? People look at you and see a player, just like Marilyn does.”
“Players have rights. I’m getting some computers for the library, and Fannie says she knows a man who’ll teach the local kids who don’t already know how to use them. Maybe I’ll start a computer club or something like that.”
Judd extended his hand for a shake. “Now, you’re doing something important for the people around here. You won’t be the big shot you used to be, maybe, but you’ll make more friends than you dreamed of. I’m proud of ya, son.”
Richard stopped eating and pushed the plate of waffles and sausage aside. “That’s the first time I have ever heard those words.” When Judd frowned, he added, “I wasn’t the child who tried to please his parents. I was too selfish for that.”
“But that was then.”
“Yeah. I’m on a different course now.”
Jolene, too, was on a different course. She met Jim at the door of the boardinghouse and realized that she had forgotten how he looked. Not bad, she thought. “Where are we going?” she asked him after he kissed her left cheek.
“Salisbury. I thought we’d see Hurricane, unless you’d rather see a different movie. It’s old, but I hear it’s pretty good. What do you say?”
She hadn’t seen it but, in any case, she didn’t care which movie she saw because she knew nothing of screen actors and actresses. She hadn’t kept up with theatrical news, so the names of most stars meant nothing to her. Shaken by the sight of violence and blood, she snuggled close to her date and held her breath until forced to expel it.
“Want to go for something to eat?” Jim asked her. “You’ll never get back to your place in time to eat supper there.
“You’re right, and my landlady can’t stand the thought of anybody coming to the table late.”
“Do you like Chinese food?”
Embarrassed to tell him that she had never eaten in a Chinese restaurant or tasted Chinese food, she said in as offhand a manner as she could affect, “Who doesn’t?” She hadn’t lied, but she hadn’t exposed herself, either.
“You really do like Chinese food, don’t you?” he asked her later as they ate in the first Chinese restaurant she’d ever entered.
“It’s good. I love these flavors.”
“I’d been hoping they had a better kitchen,” he said, and she knew he realized that she either hadn’t eaten much Chinese food, or had poor taste.
Outside the restaurant, he faced her and put both his hands on her shoulders. “It’s early. Come by my place, why don’t you? I’ll take you home when you’re ready to go.”
She turned her back to him and looked into the distant darkness. He was a tall man, well over six feet, strong and nice-looking. Maybe he would introduce her to the way the women felt in her books. She thought of them as her books, because they were so precious to her. Her flesh quivered when his big hands stroked her back, warming her through her blouse. She closed her eyes, remembering how Melinda felt when Blake’s lips covered her nipple.
“Come on,” he whispered, “if you want to go.”
“If it isn’t too far,” she said, camouflaging her eagerness to receive what, according to her books, he wanted to give her.
“It’s not far. About ten minutes by car. Coming?”
Why did he ask her a second time? Couldn’t he see that she wanted to go with him? If he asked her one more time, she’d find the bus to Pike Hill, get on it and go home. “How far is your car?”
“Across the street.” He took her hand and didn’t release it until he seated her in the passenger seat of the car.
He fastened their seat belts and a few minutes later, stopped in front of a four-story apartment house, a corner building on a quiet, clean street. When she remarked that he lived in a nice neighborhood, he replied, “Think so?” She didn’t know what to make of that. They entered a small, reasonably tidy apartment on the third floor at the front of the building.
“Have a seat,” he said. “I’ll get us something to drink.”
“I don’t drink,” she said.
“How about half a glass of white wine to toast our friendship?”
She wished she was sophisticated and at ease with men, so she could lean back and cross her legs the way the women did in the books she read. “Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do. Whenever you say the word, I’ll take you home.” Why was he leaving it to her? Then she remembered that the men in her books always made certain that the women wanted them, and she relaxed a little.
He left the living room and returned with two glasses of white wine. He clicked her glass and said, “Here’s to us.”
Here’s to mama, she said to herself, If she could just see me now! She put the glass to her lips.
After a few sips, it seemed as if warm smoke swirled around in the pit of her belly and began working its way toward her vagina. She crossed her legs so that she could better enjoy the glorious new feeling.
Jim took the glass from her fingers, leaned over and pressed his lips to hers. Then he gazed at her. “Open your mouth for me.”
Oh, Lord. He was going to put his tongue in her mouth. With her right hand, she gripped his shoulder for support and parted her lips. His tongue plowed into her, and he held the back of her head while it danced in and out of her mouth. Just like Blake did to Melinda. She opened her mouth wider, and his fingers fumbled at the buttons on her blouse. Anxious for more, she unbuttoned it for him, and he took it off her and tossed it into a chair.
“Ooh. Oh, Lord,” she screamed, as he sucked her right nipple into his mouth and massaged her other breast. Suddenly, he stopped. “Wh . . . What is it?” She asked.
“Let’s go in here.” Within a minute, he rid her of her clothing. “Hmm. Nice,” he said, then picked her up and put her on the bed.
She didn’t look at him while he undressed. She couldn’t. She had never seen a man naked. He got in bed and began to fondle and kiss her. She waited to feel something, but didn’t until he began suckling her and his fingers found their way past her belly to the lips of her vagina.
“Open your legs,” he said, and she did, eager now for what would come.
He was on top of her now with one hand beneath her hip. “Take me in.”
She didn’t know what he meant, and when she didn’t respond, she suddenly felt the pressure of his penis, big and thick against her, and stiffened. “Relax. You’ll adjust to me in a minute.”
“Ow!” She screamed, as he tore into her. She had never felt such pain. Tears streamed down her face.
“What the hell!” He stopped and looked down at her. “Are you telling me this is your first time? My Lord, woman! Are you out of your mind?”
“Please,” she said.
“Please what?”
“I needed to do this.”
“I wish you’d told me.” He wiped her face with a corner of the sheet, bent to her breast and suckled her first gently and then vigorously.
“It’s all right,” she said, but he didn’t answer. After a while he began to move in a frenzied rhythm the way she imagined the men in her books did, but all she felt was the pressure of that large organ pushing into her. At last he stopped and pulled out of her.
“I’ve never been so shocked in my life,” he said later, lying beside her. “Let’s dress. It’s getting late, and I have to take you home.”
As they drove back to Pike Hill, he said very little, and she wondered if he was mad at her for some reason. Shouldn’t she be mad at him? He was supposed to make the earth move and volcanoes erupt, wasn’t he? But, except when he was sucking her breasts, all she’d felt was a deathly pain.
He parked in front of Thank the Lord Boarding House and cut the motor. “Why did you do this, Jolene? I want to know why a good-looking woman your age would throw away her virginity on a stranger, a man she doesn’t know a damned thing about. You haven’t asked me one question about myself. You don’t know whether I impregnated you. I can’t believe you did this.”
Fear streaked through her. She’d die if her next period didn’t come. “Did you?”
He turned and looked straight at her. “Hell no, I didn’t. I’m not crazy if you are. I pulled out. Look, I gotta be going. I know you feel badly, and I’m sorry, but I sure wish this hadn’t happened. I wasn’t even serious when I asked you to go home with me.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
“The answer to that question tells me a lot about a woman.”
“Are we going to see each other again?”
He shook his head. “Only when I deliver something to the shop. This was too much for me.”
He got out, went around to the passenger’s door and opened it. “I’ll walk you to your front door.”
She raised her head and laid back her shoulders. “Don’t bother. You were just as big a mistake for me as I was for you. Good-bye.”
“I didn’t say—”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Whatever!”
Upstairs in her room later, she showered, crawled into bed and sought solace in her copy of Scarlet Woman. Maybe if she read a couple of chapters before she went to sleep, she would forget that Jim what’s-his-name existed. She reread once more the sizzling scene in which Blake introduced Melinda to the mysteries of lovemaking, adoring and cherishing her. Tears blurred her vision, and she closed the book. Dejected. Jim hadn’t cherished her, and he’d made it clear that he didn’t care to see her again.
A sadness seeped into her, draining her of hope and of the expectation that she would ever know the joy with a man that other women knew. Suddenly, she brushed away a tear and sat up straight. Surely, the author of her books wouldn’t write those wonderful things if they weren’t true. Jim hadn’t done right by her. She wouldn’t give up.
In her loneliness and desperation to have what other women experienced with their men, Jolene did not see her own role in the fiasco attending her abortive liaison with Jim, for she didn’t know the role that love, affection, and tenderness played in the enjoyment of sex. She fell asleep plotting another sexual romp. According to her books, men loved sex and needed it frequently, so getting one should be a cinch.