So he just went on pumping her organ as she inspired his with a calico-covered thigh and the solemn notes of what he only recalled as 'Cock of Ages.'
Then they had to quit horsing around in the organ alcove for a spell as the preacher and some other professional liars said nice things about the old dead drunk in the fancy box. As he sat there, off to one side with Prunella, Longarm murmured a suggestion as to what they ought to play him out of the church with. She said she'd do it if he promised not to sing the dirty words to 'Farther Along.'
He assured her, 'It's one of my favorite hymns sung straight. Most of 'em promise all sorts of things I ain't so sure they can ever deliver. But that more sensible one only suggests we'll all understand this confusion farther along in the mysterious hereafter.'
He shot a somber glance at the raised lid of the old drunk's casket as he thoughtfully added, 'Right now, the guest of honor in yonder box knows more about what lies yonder than the rest of us.'
'If anybody does,' she demurred in a wistful tone. 'The poor old man wasn't able to make a lick of sense with his brain full of whiskey. How clear might it function full of embalming fluid?'
Longarm made a wry face and observed that that seemed to be a sort of scientific attitude for a church organist. To which she replied, 'I'm here for the same reasons most everyone else was invited. The poor old thing was too important to send off with only the very few who cared about him. They asked me to play this organ because I said I knew a few hymns they didn't have the music for. After I see him out the front door with 'Farther Along' I'm calling it a day here. It looks like rain and the Methodist Burial Grounds on the south side of town are over a mile away.'
Longarm sighed. 'You're right about the coming rain. It's been a mighty wet green-up so far this year. But my boss, Marshal Vail, lent me his family surrey for the occasion, and it's a good thing we put up the side curtains this morning suspecting that early overcast of soggy intentions.'
She shrugged, somehow moving her thigh against his in the process, as she softly replied, 'It's too bad you feel obliged to drive out to the burial grounds then. With my luck the hansom I hail out front will have open sides and my skirts will surely get spotted by the time I'm home.'
When he hesitated, weighing the odds of his being seriously missed in a crowd of rain-soaked strangers, she threw in, 'Fortunately, I don't live far. So no matter how wet I get, I'll doubtless be snug and dry in my Turkish bathrobe, sipping hot chocolate by the fire, by the time the rest of you wade free of that fresh-laid sod out on the south side of town.'
Longarm grimaced and quietly asked, 'Might you have any toasting spits and marshmallows to go with that rainy-day fire, ma'am?'
She murmured, 'My friends call me Pru, and I suppose we could stop along the way for fresh marshmallows if that would be your pleasure.'
But it wasn't. So of course they didn't, as he drove her the other way through a serious April shower while everyone else headed out to the south in the wake of that rubber-tired hearse drawn by six black high-steppers. Billy Vail's less imposing surrey only rated a team of ill-matched bays. But Pru said they were sweet, and Longarm thought she might be as well when she suggested the horses would be better off rubbed down, fed, and watered in her own carriage house seeing that he might be staying long enough to toast some marshmallows.
He wasn't dumb enough to scout for a grocery shop open on a rainy Sabbath, or remark on her earlier admission that they'd not find any marshmallows once they got to her place on Logan Street. For he'd learned early on that there was nothing a mortal man could do to speed the pace of a woman with her mind made up. On the other hand, a total fool could change a woman's mind and cool her off by clumsy moves or the wrong words. So he hardly said anything as he and Billy Vail's team followed her directions. Sure enough, the next thing he knew the two of them were warming up before the coal fire in her bedchamber with nary a marshmallow or even that Turkish bathrobe to distract them. She did most of the work, on top, with the ruby glow from the coal fire inspiring a man to new heights as it rippled over her voluptuous torso and naked bouncing bubbles.
They naturally finished up in her four-poster across the room, with him on top, and then they shared one of his three-for-a-nickel cheroots with her tousled brown hair spread across his bare chest. He could have found out a lot more about her had he wanted. But he changed the subject to their more recent delights as she began to tell him the story of her life. He'd already figured she lived alone as a grown woman of some property on the fashionable side of Lincoln Street. So after that, anything else she had to tell a new lover figured to be depressing. Most men knew better than to brag about catching the clap off Arapaho squaws who beat them when they came home drunk. So he'd never figured out why gals felt they had to tell every young boy they met about getting screwed in the ass by an elder brother while their mothers beat them with horsewhips. So he assured old Pru he didn't care who'd been in the right or wrong during her recent divorce and property settlement. He put out their smoke, and put what she said she liked better back where she said she liked it best.
He wouldn't know what a mess he was in before he'd spent a good eighteen hours with her, laying, lying, or whatever. As another silly song suggested, if she'd had wings, he'd have screwed her flying!
It would have been rude to take leave of such a swell hostess right after she'd served him ham and eggs in bed even though it was a workday. So Longarm got to the Federal Building along about ten, still walking a mite funny. He didn't need the smirking typewriter-player in the front office to tell him what a chewing he was in for. He just sighed and said, 'Don't try to understand it, Henry. Maybe someday, once you figure out why boys and girls are built different, you'll get out of the habit of showing up so early every damned old Monday morn!'
The skinny pale-faced clerk assured Longarm he liked women just fine, in moderation, and added, 'You'd better get on back there and take your medicine like a man, Custis. Our boss is really pissed at you this time.'
Longarm shrugged and strode on back to the oak-paneled private office of Marshal William Vail. He resisted the impulse to cast a guilty glance at the banjo clock on one wall. He sat uninvited in Billy Vail's field of fire and told the shorter, older, and stouter cuss on the far side of that cluttered desk, 'Had to make certain your team was warm and dry after I washed down your surrey up in the carriage house at your place, Billy. Got a hell of a lot of 'dobe on the chassis, thanks to all that rain yesterday.'
Billy Vail bit down on the stubby cigar in his bulldog mouth and replied, 'Bullshit! You never drove that gal out to no graveyard along no dirty roads! You run her straight home from the funeral after carrying on scandalously with her in front of the whole damned congregation!'
Longarm tried, 'I was only helping the lady pump the organ, for Pete's sake!'
Vail repressed a chuckle and managed to turn it into a snap as he replied, 'Her husband's name is Paul, not Pete. But you sure as thunder did a heap for his sake. He's been trying to catch somebody pumping his wife's organs, and what'll you bet he had the two of you followed, and timed, by the detective firm he's had watching her a good six months or more!'
