He smiled. But did not otherwise answer.
“Warm today, isn’t it?” she suggested.
“Yes.”
“I saw you go by earlier. It was quite a while ago.”
“I suppose it was at that.”
“You must be thirsty.”
“A little.”
“Would you care for some lemonade?”
“That sounds right nice, ma’am.” He remembered the silliness he’d encouraged yesterday, playing at having a limp wrist, and wondered if she would have offered something with more authority if he hadn’t done that.
“Please sit and join me.” She already had a pitcher of cool lemonade on a small table beside her. And an extra tumbler as well. He began to wonder if she’d been sitting here waiting for a chance to speak to him. Well, information can come from the strangest sources. And any of it was welcome so far as he was concerned.
“It would be my pleasure, ma’am.”
“You may call me Clarice if you like.”
“My name is Long.”
“Yes, so I heard.”
“My friends call me Longarm.”
“Then I hope I shall be so privileged.”
Stuffy. But then this was a girl from what was left of the Old South. Perhaps such formality was only to be expected in certain quarters here. “Please do. And may I call you Clarice?”
“Yes, of course.” She poured lemonade for him and refilled her own glass.
They sipped in silence for a few minutes, Longarm not sure what it was she wanted to bring up and Clarice apparently was in no hurry to get to it. Or else unsure how to go about broaching her topic, which he concluded was the more likely of the two considering that she seemed so solemn and serious of expression.
While he waited he looked at her more closely than he had bothered at the ice cream parlor the day before. She was a tall girl and very thin. Yesterday she had been wearing a uniform of sorts, but today she was all ruffles and flounces, her dress of a style that seemed outmoded to his untrained eye but which fitted her nicely. The ivory- colored cloth was cut low at the neck, exposing the small swells of undersized breasts and a slim, rather patrician neck and hollowed collarbones.
Yesterday her hair had been pulled back into a severe bun. Today it was a mass of loose curls the color of wild honey. She wore an ivory ribbon in her hair and another at her throat, with a cameo suspended there.
She really would have been pretty had it not been for the tragedy of the wart that rode the side of her nose with all the malicious ugliness of a leech. He couldn’t help wondering why she did not have the blemish removed. It was a simple enough procedure, safe and inexpensive. Not that it was any of his business what she did. But he couldn’t help wondering nonetheless.
“May I ask you something, Dep …” She paused, smiled. “Longarm?”
“Anything you wish.”
“Do you like little boys?”
“Some better’n others,” he said. The thought of the Meyers kids came to mind when she asked it. That particular bunch he could do without.
“Yesterday you spoke with the little Carlton boy.”
“I did?”
“At the park. You played with him on the teeter-totter.”
He shrugged. What a strange thing for people to be talking about. Hell, he’d forgotten it himself. Now it turned out that this young woman knew all about it. Weird.
“You should understand that the people here do not … accept things that are beyond the norm.”
“What’s your point?” he asked.
“I understand that you … well, I understand. That is all I meant to say on the subject. That and that … you should watch yourself. If anything were to happen … the people here would not take it at all well. Not at all.”
What in tarnation was she …? Then it dawned on him. Yesterday he’d played like he was something that he wasn’t. And then just a little while later he’d been seen at that damn teeter-totter. And now …
Shit, if folks hereabouts got to thinking he was the sort of miserable SOB who’d prey on small children, there wouldn’t be manpower enough in the whole damn state to keep the strait-laced farts in the area from hanging him from a tall, tall tree. Deserve it or not, it could happen. Just went to show that a fellow could out-smart himself if he wasn’t careful. It was something he likely should keep in mind.
“And I was thinking,” Clarice was pressing on, “that, well, the truth is that I don’t know of anyone with the same, um, inclinations. Not anywhere in the county, actually. And I would know. So I am afraid that as long as you are here, you will just have to control yourself.”
He wasn’t real sure, but he kinda thought he could feel some heat building in his cheeks. Just what the hell did she think … never mind, he already knew what she thought. And it wasn’t very flattering. Nor accurate for that matter. But it was without question his own stupid fault. Lordy!
