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“I bet I know which one it was,” Faye said. “She have kind of a Betty Boop hairstyle?”

“I believe so.”

“What else she say?”

“You’re a widow, lost your husband.”

“She tell you marshals gunned him down?”

“Nothing about that.”

“It’s what everybody thinks. She mention any other names?”

What everybody thinks. Carl put that away and said, “No, she got busy serving customers.”

“You live in Checotah?”

He told her Henryetta, he was visiting his old grandma about to pass. She asked him, “What’s your name again?” He told her and she said, “Well, come on in, Carl, and have a glass of ice tea.” Sounding now like she wouldn’t mind company.

There wasn’t much to the living room besides a rag rug on the floor and stiff black furniture, chairs and a sofa, their cane seats giving way from years of being sat on. The radio was playing in the kitchen. Faye went out there and pretty soon Carl could hear her chipping ice. He stepped over to a table laid out with magazines, True Confession, Photoplay, Liberty, Dime Western, one called Spicy. . . .

Her voice reached him, asking, “You like Gid Tanner?”

Carl recognized the radio music. He said, “Yeah, I do,” as he looked at pictures in Spicy of girls doing housework in their underwear, one girl up on a ladder in teddies with a feather duster.

“Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers,” Faye’s voice said. “You know who I kinda like? That Al Jolson, he sure sounds like a nigger on that mammy song. But you want to know who my very favorite is?”

Carl said, “Jimmie Rodgers?” looking at pictures of Joan Crawford and Elissa Landi now in Photoplay.

“I like Jimmie okay. . . . How many sugars?”

“Three’ll do ’er. How about Uncle Dave Macon? He was on just a minute ago.”

“ ‘Take Me Back to My Old Carolina Home.’ I don’t care for the way he half-sings and half-talks a song. If you’re a singer you oughta sing. No, my favorite’s Maybelle Carter and the Carter Family. The pure loneliness she gets in her voice just tears me up.”

“Must be how you feel,” Carl said, “living out here.”

She said, “Don’t give it another thought.”

“Sit here by yourself reading magazines . . .”

“Honey,” Faye said, “you’re not as cute as you think you are. Drink your ice tea and beat it.”

“I’m sympathizing with you,” Carl said. “The only reason I came, I wondered if you and I might even’ve known each other from funerals, and our moms being in the same club. . . . That’s all.” He smiled just a little, saying, “I wanted to see what you look like.”

Faye said, “All right, you are cute, but don’t get nosy.”

She left him with his iced tea and went in the bedroom. Now what? Carl took Photoplay across the room to sit in a chair facing the table of magazines and the bedroom door, left open. He turned pages in the magazine. It wasn’t a minute later she stuck her head out.

“You’ve been to Purity, haven’t you?”

“Lot of times.”

She stepped into plain sight now wearing a pair of sheer, peach-colored teddies, the crotch sagging beneath her white thighs. Faye said, “You hear about the time Pretty Boy Floyd came in?”

Carl could see London, he could see France. . . . “While you were working there?”

“Since then, not too long ago. The word got around Pretty Boy Floyd was at Purity and it practically shut down the whole town. Nobody’d come out of their house.” She stood with hands on her hips in kind of a slouch. “I did meet him one time. Was at a speak in Oklahoma City.”

“You talk to him?”

“Yeah, we talked about . . . you know, different things.” She looked like she might be trying to think of what they did talk about, but said then, “Who’s the most famous person you ever met?”

He wasn’t expecting the question. Still, he thought about it for no more than a few seconds before telling her, “I guess it would have to be Frank Miller.”

Faye said, “Oh . . .?” like the name didn’t mean much to her. Carl could tell, though, she was being careful, on her guard.

“Was in a drugstore when I was a kid,” Carl said, “and Frank Miller came in for a pack of Luckies. I’d stopped there for a peach ice-cream cone, my favorite. You know