needed to be objective.
But that?s not what! did. What! did was think about that place at the base of her throat, the soft spot,
the one where you can see the pulse beating. I used to stare at it and count the beats. I could tell when
she started getting excited.
I thought about the way she closed her eyes and parted her lips about a quarter of an inch when I was
about to kiss her. She had the softest lips. You could get buried in those lips. I never felt her teeth. I
don?t know how she did it. Her lips were as soft as a down quilt.
Three years, that?s how long I had waited, watching her grow from a fifteen-year-old tease to an
eighteen—year-old woman, playing the brother-sister act when they came up to Athens for football
weekends. That was to appease Chief. When she was about sixteen, her good-bye kisses started
getting softer. And longer.
Talk about strung out.
Get off it, Kilmer. Think about something else. Details, concentrate on details. And events. Reality is
what we?re after here.
I concentrated on her eighteenth-birthday party. It came to me in flashes, like a movie when the film
breaks and they lose a few frames.
She wouldn?t let me see her all that day. The way she acted, you?d have thought it was her wedding
day. About midmorning Chief, Teddy, and I went to the Findley office on Factors? Walk. It was part
of the ritual when we came down for the weekend, going to the office on Saturday morning. We had
to wear ties and sports jackets, setting an example so the workers wouldn?t get the feeling that they
could take it easy because it was the weekend. Chief was big on setting examples. The office was only
open half a day, so the employees thought they were getting a break. “Gives us four hours? jump on
the competition come Monday morning,” Chief said with a wink. He winked a bit for emphasis, a
habit Teddy had picked up.
He?d always pull off some kind of deal, usually on the phone, just to show us how it was done. When
he was wheeler-dealing, his left eye would close about halfway. Teddy called it the Evil Eye. When
the Eye started to narrow, watch out, he was on to something, closing in for the kill. It?s one of the
things the rich inherited, that predatory sense. I guess that?s why they?re rich— they have a built-in
instinct for the jugular.
I never got a true handle on the business. They were into everything. Cotton, shipping, real estate,
industry, farming, you name it. All it did was bedazzle the hell out of me. I don?t think Teddy got into
it either, He was more interested in hell-raising. And poon. That?s what he called it, poon. “Let?s go
down to the beach, Junior, check out the poon.”
