Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [177]
He stopped gathering and smiled at me.
“Don’t despair, young man. There’s really only one percent of this world that deserve all the money, fame, and beauty that it has to offer. The rest are Deltas or Gammas,” and smiling before his next line, he fixed me with a pointed look, “or Epsilons.”
“I was never in a fraternity,” I said.
“Oh, but you’re in one now,” he said, a light laugh in his voice. “The largest of fraternities, my dear boy. The fraternity of the common man. Wisper, my dear, might I take you home? Really, my lovely girl, you deserve someone so much more significant than this young man could ever hope to be.”
“I don’t want Washburne,” she said, and I took note of the fact that she hadn’t led with ‘I want Corky’.
“No, I see now that you were far too much woman for even my progeny. But certainly you don’t want this man,” he nodded disgustedly in my direction. “This clothist. He can’t even let go of his own fears long enough to be honest with you about how he sees you. He calls you a ‘nudist’ with—as you yourself noted—disdain.”
Damn him. How long had he been following us? Long enough apparently to know exactly how to use me against myself.
“The woman he supposedly loves,” Boone finally finished with amazingly sincere sadness in his voice. Even I almost believed him.
Right up to the point when Washburne moved closer and reminded me with a small cough that he had a gun.
Wisper could only look at me with growing anguish. He was getting to her.
“Corky… ” she began, but seemed to have lost the strength to continue.
“Wisper, they…” I said, but stopped short when Washburne, pretending to rest a comforting hand on my lower back, instead rested the snub-nose of something else there in such a way that the others couldn’t see. Wisper took my inability to complete a sentence as something else entirely.
“Maybe it’s best I do go home,” Wisper said finally, more as a question. “With them?”
When I said nothing, she lowered her head to avoid my eyes.
“Right,” she said. “Goodbye, Corky.”
And with that—guided by the elder Boone doing a damn near perfect imitation of understanding and sympathy—she and River moved toward the exit.
“You gonna say anything?” Ms. Waboombas asked. “You just gonna let her walk outta here and let the bad guys make you out to be some kinda puss?”
Wisper stopped in the doorway as if she too hoped for something from me. I started to speak, but Washburne separated a couple of ribs near my kidneys.
“I know you love her,” Waboombas said. “You gonna tell me love don’t conquer all?” She sounded almost desperate. As if this were as painful for her as it was for us.
All eyes centered on me. Mayor Boone smiled. Sophie pleaded with silently moving lips. Morgan seemed dumbfounded. Even River appeared to want me to say something.
But I said nothing. Wisper said nothing. Waboombas said nothing and just glowered at me.
“So you’re a coward,” Waboombas snarled at me, then turned to Wisper, “and you’re a runner. What a pair you make.”
Wisper looked stricken, then scowled back at Wendy.
“What do you mean, ‘a runner’?” Wisper asked. “I…”
“…run,” Waboombas concluded for her. Then the taller woman gestured with irritation toward Washburne. “Snake oil here wants to marry you. You run. Corky’s grandpa gives you shit. You run. You’re a smart girl. I bet you went to college, right?”
“I…yes,” Wisper said.
“And you quit.”
Wisper looked stunned, but by her silence I knew Waboombas had hit a nerve.
“Corky backslides a little….” Wendy snipped, and didn’t need to finish.
Wisper looked at her, then down at her feet. Finally she turned to me and stared, one last moment, waiting.
“Now would be a good time for you to say somethin’,” Wendy told me pointlessly.
Washburne pressed the gun more forcefully into my back, and I obliged him by saying nothing.
“You see it as running,” Wisper said to Wendy, though she continued staring at me. “I see it as knowing