Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [53]
The fireworks, intermittent before, were now continuous; this was the grand finale, a preview of the end of the world. In the tiny gap between a high-pitched whine and the ensuing detonation, Lewis leaned down. “Gotta go. Bye.” And he was gone. Boom!
Billie dragged her chair closer to Libby’s. “Happy now?”
“I thought you didn’t know him.”
“I’ve only really talked to him once.”
Little Bill knelt between his mother and Libby. “Is he your new boyfriend, Libby?”
Libby loved Little Bill. He was soft-spoken, considerate, and, for a teenager, exquisitely gentle. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“He’s cool,” said Little Bill.
“You think so?”
“Especially his ponytail.”
LEWIS helped Libby haul a futon onto her front deck, where they slept naked under the stars. Their sex was grunty, unabashed, undiscussed. Once, during foreplay, he’d asked her what she wanted from him sexually. “I hate that question,” she said. “I just want to be ground into the bedsprings.”
He constantly expected the other shoe to drop. He wasn’t hauling her to the opera, after all, or even to the movies. He wasn’t mowing her lawn or completing any bridge foursome. Just dinner at Red’s a couple times a week and fishing on Sundays. He was getting away with something; specifically, sex, free and clear. Occasionally he wondered—could it really go unpunished?
Libby intuitively played according to his rules. No accidentally bumping into him around town. No hangup phone calls at work. No surprise visits, ever. He made it clear he was leaving the first week of September, and she’d made no attempt to weave any connective threads into the future.
“It’s not serious,” Lewis assured Red in one postprandial walk over to the Blue House. “It’s just fun.”
“You’re seeing her three, four times a week? Sounds full-steam-ahead to me.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not about to move in with her.”
“But you’ve considered it?”
“I could never live in a trailer. Not with Libby, not with the Queen of Sheba.”
Red’s lips twitched in a smile, instantly suppressed.
“And if you must know, Libby’s not really my body type.”
“That matters so much to you?”
“I’m not saying anything’s wrong with her. She’s not accountable for my taste.” Lewis honestly did prefer either tiny, slim women or tall, strong, regal women—the dainty or the glorious—and Libby was neither. “She’s more like a friend than someone I’d fall in love with.”
“Ah, all this self-knowledge,” said Red. “Could it be the result of a fearless and searching moral inventory?”
Lewis balled up his fist and delivered a light punch to Red’s shoulder. “Nag, nag, nag,” he said.
IF PEOPLE wanted to know about Deputy Sheriff Burt McLemoore leaving his wife for the babysitter, they had to go to the grocería. If they wanted to know about town council and school board meetings, weddings and church news, blood drives and how promptly the fire department responded to a man in anaphylactic shock from a bee sting, they turned to the Rito River News, a small-town tabloid leavened with local advertisements. Round Rock placed the same ad every week: a photo of an unidentifiable man hunched over a bottle and a glass, with the caption “Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired?”
The most entertaining writing was usually found in short pieces from a third-rate wire service, stories selected solely on the basis of how much unsold ad space needed to be filled. WIFE BEHEADS HUSBAND—HEAD FOUND IN BREADBOX. CANNIBALISM IN ECUADOR. WOMAN MARKETS GRANDMOTHER’S SECRET WART CURE.
Libby was paging through the paper as Lewis cooked dinner and Red arranged small, heat-kissed roses in a vase. “Hey, you guys,” Libby said, spreading the paper over Red’s kitchen table. “Read this.”
HUMAN TOUCH PRESERVES
Home Experiment Spurs UC Scientists
Santa Cruz, CA. In a home experiment, local massage therapist Heiko Hakuono may have found proof that human touch is capable of preserving perishable organic matter.
Hakuono, who owns Full Body Care, Inc., has long been convinced of the healing power of human hands. One day, when a friend of hers