Let me load it into my van.”
She accepted gratefully. The radio was on as they drove toward the rambling house off Euclid where Diana lived in a tiny apartment over a garage. They were almost there when the local announcer began a public-service listing of all the functions for that evening that had been canceled or postponed in a show of respect for the slain president. Among them was the performance of the Youth Symphony scheduled for Robinson Hall.
“Damn.” Diana bit her lip in disappointment and fought back tears. There went another three bucks she wouldn’t have come next payday. Along with the other two she had missed by not working all afternoon at the department, payday would be very short indeed in a budget that was already tight right down to the last nickel. At this rate, how would she ever accumulate enough money to buy next semester’s books?
“That means you’re off tonight?” Garrison Ladd was saying.
Not trusting herself to speak, Diana nodded.
“What will you do instead?”
“Study, I guess,” Diana answered bleakly. “I’ve got some reading to do.”
“How about dinner?”
“Tonight? Isn’t that. .”
“Tacky?” he supplied with a wink. “You think just because somebody knocked off the president, the rest of us shouldn’t eat?”
“It does seem. . well, disrespectful.”
“From what I hear about JFK himself, he’d be the last one to want us missing out on a good time. Come on. I’ll take you someplace special. How about the Eugene Hotel? They have terrific steaks there.”
Diana found herself salivating at the very mention of the word
“All right,” she said. “But I’ve never been to the Eugene Hotel. What should I wear?”
“We’ll manage,” he said.
Despite Iona’s warnings about not inviting men up to her room, it didn’t seem polite to leave Garrison Ladd waiting outside in the cold car while she went up to change. After all, he was an instructor at the university. Surely, someone like that was above reproach.
She started having doubts though when, after closing the apartment door behind him, he stopped just inside the threshold and didn’t move.
Diana turned back and looked at him. “Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll go into the bathroom and change.”
He studied her curiously. The undisguised appraisal in the look made her nervous. “What’s the matter?”
“Come here,” he said, crooking his finger at her.
“Why?”
“Just come here.”
Against her better judgment, she did as she was told, walking toward him slowly, woodenly. What was going on? she wondered. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she shouldn’t be here in her room alone with this man.
Diana stopped when there was less than a foot between them. “What?” she asked.
“Has anyone ever told you how lovely you are?”
“Come on,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t give me that old line.”
She started to move away from him, but he caught her wrist, imprisoning her hand in his and drawing her closer. With his other hand, he brushed the hair back from her face and then traced the slender, curving jaw with a gently caressing finger.
“It’s not a line,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
“People in Joseph don’t talk to the garbageman’s daughter that way,” she said stiffly. Tentatively, she tried to free her hand, but he didn’t let it go.
No doubt about it. Her mother
“They don’t? How do they talk to her?”
Now Diana was genuinely scared. Her apartment was a long way from the main house. If she yelled for help, no one would hear her.
“Let me guess,” Garrison Ladd continued, still holding her captive. “They’d probably say something gross, like ‘Fall down on your back, honey, and spread your legs.’”
At once hot, humiliating tears stung Diana’s cheeks. This was the very thing she had hoped to escape by running away from Joseph, by running away from home. Those words, those exact same words, were ones her father had shouted at Iona in one of his drunken, raging tirades when neither one of them knew their daughter was in the house.
Too young to realize what was going on, Diana knew no words for what her father had done to her mother. She had hidden in the closet and waited until it was over, crying and praying that her father would die, that God would strike Max Cooper dead on the spot, but, of course, He hadn’t.
And now, here she was faced with those very words again, and with whatever else came with those words. She squared her shoulders and prepared to fight. Running away hadn’t done her any good if the words had found her anyway, searched her out here in Eugene in her own apartment. Maybe destiny wasn’t something you could escape by running from one end of the state to the other, but she sure as hell didn’t have to go quietly.
“Let me go,” she snapped. “You’re hurting me.”
“Not until you kiss me, Liza.”
Liza! She felt as though he’d slapped her. Who the hell was Liza? An ex-girlfriend maybe? Had Gary Ladd mixed her up with someone else?
“My name’s not Liza. Let me go!”
He smiled and effortlessly pulled her to him until her taut body was against his chest. “Haven’t you ever heard of Liza Doolittle, Liza? She’s a garbageman’s daughter, too, you know. And my name is Henry Higgins, so what are you going to wear to the ball, my dear?”
He kissed her then, quickly, briefly-a brotherly kiss not even a garbageman’s daughter could fault him for-and led her to the closet, where he began rummaging through her clothing, looking for an appropriate dress.
The rush of relief and gratitude that swept over Diana almost brought her to her knees. He hadn’t meant her any harm. It had all been a game, genuine teasing. She wasn’t used to that, and she didn’t know how to handle it.
“Here we are.” He held up the blue taffeta semiformal Diana’s mother had made for her to wear to the prom. “This should do nicely.”
Gathering everything she needed into a bundle, Diana hurried into the bathroom to change, while Garrison Ladd lounged comfortably on her bigger-than-twin-but-less-than-full-sized bed. The idea of him sitting there big as you please made her blush. Her mother had warned her about that, too, about letting men sit on your bed, but then what did her mother know?
As soon as Diana was dressed, they drove to Garrison’s place, a two-bedroom apartment with a pool, emptied now for the winter. He invited her up, but she wasn’t taking any more chances. She stayed in the car while he went inside to change. He came out wearing a tuxedo-his very own tuxedo. Except for Walter Brennan, maybe, no one in Joseph, Oregon, owned his own tuxedo.
They went to the hotel for a dinner of medium-rare steaks, lush salads, and huge baked potatoes complete with sour cream and chives. Feeling like Cinderella, Diana couldn’t help noticing that Garrison Ladd paid more for that single steak dinner than she’d earn from a full week’s worth of work, but that didn’t keep her from enjoying herself.
They laughed at anyone and everyone, including one tearful waitress who acted as though it were inappropriate for anybody to be out on the town having such a gloriously good time with John F. Kennedy not yet in his grave.
Diana Lee Cooper didn’t know when she’d ever had so much fun. She laughed until she cried, and then she laughed some more, and all the while the part of her that had never laughed before was falling more and more in love by the minute.
Finally, at midnight, she’d had enough. “I’ve got to go home and get some sleep,” she announced. “I’ve got
