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When I got home that night, all the sleeplessness of the night before and the emotional strain of the day hit me in the face. It would have done me good to go to karate, blow off some tension. But I was so miserable I couldn't bring myself to dress for it. Waves of black depression rolled over me as I sat at my bare kitchen table. I thought I'd left death behind me when I'd found this little town, picked it off the map because it was called Shakespeare and my name was Bard—as good a reason as any to settle somewhere, I'd figured at the time. I'd tried so many places after I'd gotten out of the hospital: from my parents' home to Jackson, Mississippi, to Waverly, Te
Then I'd found Shakespeare, and Shakespeare needed a maid.
When Pardon Albee had died, it had been a small thing, an individual thing. But this that was happening now, this craziness ... it was generated by a pack mentality, something particularly terrifying and enraging to me. I'd experienced men in packs.
I thought of Jack Leeds, who would never be part of any pack. He'd get over being mad at me ... or he wouldn't. It was out of my hands. I would not go to him, no matter how many grieved girlfriends and widows passed through my mind. Sometimes I hated chemistry, which could play such tricks with your good sense, your promises to yourself.
When the knock came at the front door, I glanced at the clock on the wall. I'd been sitting and staring for an hour. My injured hip hurt when I rose, having been in the same position for so long.
I looked through the peephole. Bobo was on my doorstep, and he looked anxious. I let him in. He was wearing a brown coat over his gi.
"Hey, how are you?" he asked. "I missed you at karate. Marshall did, too." He added that hastily, as though I would accuse him of hogging all the missing that was going around.
If it had been anyone but Bobo, I wouldn't have opened the door. I'd known him since he was just begi
"Have you been crying, Lily?" he asked now.
I reached up to touch my cheek. Yes, I had been.
"It doesn't matter," I said, wanting him to not notice, to drop it.
"Yes, it does," he said. "You're always beating yourself up, Lily. It does matter." Amazingly, Bobo pulled a clean handkerchief from his coat pocket, and wiped my cheeks with gentle fingers.
This was not the way conversations with Bobo usually went. Usually he told me how his classes were going, or we talked about a new throw Marshall had taught us, or the boy Amber Jean was dating.
"Bobo," I began uneasily, puzzled. I was trying to think how to proceed when Bobo acted instead, decisively. He gathered me up and kissed me hard, with an u
"I'm so sorry, Bobo," I said. "I hope I'm always your friend." It was a dreary thing to say, but I meant it.
Not that pushing him away was effortless: It was all too easy to envision welcoming Bobo—young, vigorous, strong, handsome, endearing—into my bed. I'd been hoping to wipe out bad memories with good ones; Bobo and I could certainly give each other a few. Even now I felt the pull of temptation, as I saw his face close around the pain.
"I—have someone else," I told him. And I hated the fact that what I said was true.
"Marshall?" he breathed.
"No. It's not important who it is, Bobo." I made another effort. "You have no idea how tempted and flattered I am." The uneve
"I've cared about you for a long time," he said.
"Thank you." I never meant anything as much. "That makes me proud."
Amazingly, after he'd opened the door to leave, he turned and lifted my hand and kissed it.
I watched his Jeep pull away.
"Touching scene," Jack Leeds said acerbically.
He stepped out of the shadows in the carport and walked across the little patch of lawn to my front door. He stood inches away, his arms crossed over his chest, a sneer on his face.
I could truly almost feel my heart sinking. I thought of closing the door and locking it in his face. I wasn't up to another scene.
"Did you give him the time of his life, Lily? Golden boy, no past to slow him down?"
I felt something snap in me. I'd been pushed beyond some limit. He could read it in my eyes, and I saw him start to uncross his arms in sudden alarm, but I struck him as hard as I could in the solar plexus. He made a sound and began to double over. I folded my arm, aimed the point of my elbow at the base of his skull. I pulled it at the very last instant, because it was a killing blow. But I had pulled the blow too soon, because he could launch himself at me. He knocked me back inside my front door onto the carpet. He kicked the door shut behind him.
This was the second time Jack had had me pi
"Oh yes, Jack, this is love, all right," I said in a trembling voice that I hardly recognized. I rolled off him and sat with my back to him, my hands over my face, waiting for him to hit me or leave.
After a long time I risked a look at him. He was still lying on his back, his eyes fixed on me. He was visibly shaken, and I was glad to see it. He beckoned me with an inward curl of his fingers. I shook my head violently.
After another long time I heard him move. He sat behind me, his legs spread, and pulled me back against him. His arms crossed in front of me, holding me to him, but gently. Gradually I calmed, stopped shaking.
"We're okay, Lily," he said. "We're okay."
"Can this poor sense of timing be why you have such a— checkered career—as a lover?" I asked.
"I—am—sorry," he said between clenched teeth.
"That helps."
"Really sorry."
"Good."
"Can I—?"
"What? What do you want to do, Jack?" He told me. I told him he could try.
Later, in the quiet of my bed, he began to talk about something else. And all the pieces began to fall into place.
"Howell Winthrop, Jr., hired me," he said. We were lying facing each other. "He told me a week ago not to trust you." I could feel my eyes open wide as I absorbed all this. "You saw the men last night. You have to have figured it out."
"I guess Darcy is involved. All the others?"
"Yes, and a few more. Not the whole town, not even a sizable proportion of the white males. Just a few mental misfits who think their dicks are on the line. They think their manhood is tied up in keeping blacks, and women for that matter, in their place."
"So they meet at Winthrop's Sporting Goods."
"The group evolved that way. Most of them are passing through there to buy things pretty often anyway, so it just happened. Ninety-eight percent of the people that patronize Winthrop's are just regular nice people, but the two percent... Howell didn't know anything about it until he noticed that guns were being bought through the store accounts that didn't show up in the store. And it wasn't even Howell that noticed it."