Shakespeare’s Trollop

person.

“Married is what you would like?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised at myself. “That’s what I would like.”

“To be kept secret?”

“Just for a while. I’d just like to get used to it before we told anyone.”

“Now?”

“No.” I shrugged. “Anytime. But they put the names of people who’ve applied for marriage licenses in the paper. How could we get around that? Providing you…?” I felt very anxious as I waited for him to speak.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I’d like that, too.” He looked sort of surprised to discover that he would, though. He put his hand over mine where it was resting on the table. “Soon,” he finished.

I tried to imagine that Jack did not feel about me the way I felt about him. I tried picturing Jack tiring of me in a month or two, opting for some woman in Little Rock who was more convenient and less prickly. I projected myself into that position of pain and rejection.

But I couldn’t imagine it,-

I didn’t count on much in this life, but I counted on Jack’s love. Though he’d just confessed it this morning, I’d known Jack loved me, and I’d known it with certainty.

I wasn’t going to jump up and down and scream and run home to tell my mother we needed to pick out china and reserve the church. The time in my life I might have done that had long since passed by. Now that I had Jack, I had everything I needed. I didn’t need the congratulations and gifts of other people to confirm that.

“Damn,” Jack said, grinning like a maniac. He jumped up and began swinging his arms as if he didn’t quite know what to do. “Damn!”

I felt as radiant as if I’d been painted with light. Without knowing I was standing or moving I found myself glued to Jack from head to foot, our arms wrapped around each other, the smiles on our faces too silly for words.

We’d always had electricity between us, and the high emotion we felt turned us into dynamos.

We celebrated exceptionally well.

Afterward, the kitchen was in an even worse mess. Since he’d cooked, I cleaned while Jack made the bed. Then, with the unusual prospect of a free day stretching ahead of us, we decided to take a walk together.

It was a perfect morning, both in the perimeters of our life together and in the weather outside. The spring morning was just warm enough, and the sky was bright and clear. I hadn’t felt this way in years. I hadn’t even come close. I was so happy it almost hurt, and I was scared to death.

After we’d gone a few blocks, I began telling Jack about Deedra. I told him about the new sheriff, and her brother; about Lacey asking me for help, and the embarrassing items I’d found in Deedra’s apartment; about Becca and Janet and the funeral, and the fire at Joe C’s house; about the will Bobo had read when he was prying in the rolltop desk.

“Joe C’s not leaving Calla anything?” Jack was incredulous. “After she’s taken care of him for the past fifteen years or however long he’s been too frail?”

“At least fifteen,” I said. “According to what she’s told me. He’s leaving the more distant kids, the great-niece and great-nephews-Bobo, Amber Jean, and Howell Three, the Winthrop kids-an item of furniture apiece. Of course, that’s probably not going to happen now, though there may be something worth saving in the house. I don’t know. And the direct descendants are going to split the proceeds from the sale of the house.”

“Who are the direct descendants again?”

“Becca and her brother, Anthony,” I began, trying to remember what Calla had told me weeks before. “They descended from-”

“Just give me the list, not the begats,” Jack warned me. I remembered Jack had gone to church as a child; I remembered that he’d been brought up Baptist. I wondered if we had some other things to talk about.

“Okay. Also there are Sarah, Hardy, and Christian Prader, who live in North Carolina. I’ve never seen them. And Deedra, who’s out of the picture.”

“And you think the house and lot are worth what?”

“Three hundred and fifty thousand was the figure I heard.”

“Seventy thousand apiece isn’t anything to sneer at.”

I thought of what seventy thousand dollars could do for me.

In the newspaper, almost every day, I read about corporations that have millions and billions of dollars. On the television news, I heard about people who are “worth” that much. But for a person like me, seventy thousand dollars was a very serious amount of money.

Seventy thousand. I could buy a new car, a pressing need of mine. I wouldn’t have to scrimp to save enough to pay my property taxes and my gym membership and my insurance payments, both car and health. If I got sick, I could go to the doctor and pay for my medicine all at one time, and I wouldn’t have to clean Carrie’s office for free for months afterward.

I could buy Jack a nice present.

“What would you like me to get you when I get seventy thousand dollars?” I asked him, an unusual piece of whimsy for me.

Jack leaned close and whispered in my ear.

“You can get that for next to nothing,” I told him, trying not to look embarrassed.

We’d walked to the front of Joe C’s house, and I pointed, drawing Jack’s attention to the blackened front windows. Without commenting, Jack strode up the driveway and circled the house. Through the high bushes (the ones that hadn’t been beaten out of shape by the firefighters) I glimpsed him at different points, looking up, looking at the ground, scoping it out. I watched Jack’s face get progressively grimmer.

“You went in there,” Jack commented as he rejoined me. He stood by my side, looking down at me.

I nodded, not quite focusing on him because I was assessing the damage. The upstairs looked all right, at least from the sidewalk. There was debris scattered on the yard, charred bits of this and that. When the breeze shifted direction, I could smell that terrible burned smell.

“You went in there,” Jack said.

“Yes,” I said, more doubtfully.

“Were you out of your fucking mind?” he said in a low, intense voice that gathered all my attention.

“It was on fire.”

“You don’t go in buildings on fire,” Jack told me, and all the anger he’d suppressed this morning erupted. “You walk away.”

“I knew Joe C was in the house!” I said, beginning to get angry myself. I don’t like explaining the obvious. “I couldn’t let him burn.”

“You listen to me, Lily Bard,” Jack said, starting down the sidewalk almost too swiftly for me to keep up. “You listen to me.” He stopped dead, turned to face me, began waving a finger in my face. I stared down at my feet, feeling my mouth begin to purse and my eyes narrow.

“When a house is on fire, you don’t go in,” he informed me, keeping his voice low with a visible effort. “No matter who is in that house… if your mom is in that house, if your dad is in that house, if your sister is in that house. If I am in that house. You. Don’t. Go. In.”

I took a very deep breath, kept focused on my Nikes.

“Yes, my lord,” I said gently.

He threw his hands up in the air. “That’s it!” he told the sky. “That’s it!” Off he strode.

I wasn’t about to pursue him, because I’d have to scramble to keep up, and that just wasn’t going to happen. I took off in the opposite direction.

“Lily!” called a woman’s voice behind me. “Lily, wait up!”

Though I was tempted to start running, I stopped and turned.

Becca Whitley was hurrying down the sidewalk after me, her hand wrapped around the bicep of a huge man with pale curly hair. My first thought was that this man should get together with Deputy Emanuel and form a tag- team to go on the wrestling circuit.

Becca was as decorated as ever, with rhinestone earrings and lips outlined with such a dark pencil she looked positively garish. When she was in full warpaint, it was always a little jarring to remember she was so graceful and