Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [81]
He shot another look behind him. The dachshund stopped at the intersection, then executed a perfect left turn—left lane to left lane, just like a car. Lewis climbed into the cab as Arvill and Burt came out of the grocería.
“Libby still staying at your house?” he asked.
“You want information about Libby, ask Libby.”
“I don’t want information about Libby,” Lewis muttered. “I was just wondering how this is going to sit with her—you and me in one truck—because she’ll hear about it in about five minutes.”
“Why should she care?”
“Yeah.” They were passing the Mills. “Good point.”
Billie drove slowly, although the truck’s V-12 engine could’ve hauled the whole town into another state. “We’ll go cross-country,” Billie said, “if you don’t mind,” and a mile out of town she turned between two huge round river rocks into the groves. They bumped along even more slowly, the windows down. Fumbling in a box of tapes, she handed him one—Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola—to stick into the tape player. The orchestral introduction blazed from the speakers, magisterial, perfect.
Billie turned down the volume. “You having second thoughts about Libby?”
“Naw. It’s just chickenshit how I handled it.”
“So you’re not jealous?”
“Why should I be?”
Billie grinned, then spoke in singsong, “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Is she seeing someone?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“No. But good for her if she is.” That someone else—by his estimation, Arvill—now had sexual access to Libby didn’t thrill him. He gave his head a good scratch, then stretched his arm along the back of the truck’s bench seat, his fingers inches from Billie’s neck.
“Don’t you want to know who?” said Billie.
He could see she was dying to tell him. “No. Just so long as she’s happy.”
Billie gave him a funny look. “Aren’t you curious?”
“If I was that curious, I’d probably still be seeing her.”
“What went wrong with you guys, anyway?”
“Nothing. Ultimately, I wasn’t all that interested.”
“You must not have gotten to know her.”
“I knew her, all right.”
“What did you know about her?”
“All sorts of things.”
“Like what?”
“You know. Sexual things.”
“Ahh.” Billie’s lips curved into a smile. She slowed to a crawl over a patch of washboard ruts.
“And other stuff,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“She’s a talented musician. She has an okay mind.”
“Just okay?”
“You writing a book?”
Billie smirked and rolled her eyes. The violin and viola took turns saying the same thing in different clefs. They came out of the groves, crossed a canal on a reverberative wooden bridge, and dove back into dark foliage, cold shade.
“Libby’s a good person,” said Lewis. “She was born good. It’s her temperament. Life’s no big struggle for her. She accommodates, adjusts, goes with the flow. But she lacks the kind of empathy you find in someone who’s really suffered. I couldn’t connect with her on a deeper level. Intellectually, she’s obviously bright and capable. But some people have more interesting, complicated minds, and bring more intelligence to everyday living.”
Lewis touched Billie’s ear so gently, he wasn’t certain she felt it. “I need someone who’s intellectually nimble,” he said. “Who’s emotionally and spiritually aware. Someone more …” He searched for a word.
“ ‘Tweaked’?” said Billie.
He laughed. “That’ll do.”
Billie raised her eyebrows as she navigated a series of deep ruts. “You two never did strike me as the best match,” she said.
“Why, did you have a better one in mind?”
“For her or for you?”
“Ha! Exactly.” Fine black curls clung to the back of Billie’s neck. With his thumb, he nudged one, and traced the cording of muscles below her ear. “I like quick, complex, one-of-a-kind minds,” he said.
As the violin and viola teased each other through a cadenza, they crossed a road that was either the Round Rock road or a paved spur down to the river. Lewis withdrew his hand, letting it rest on the seat back. They entered another grove on something less than a road and bounced grandly on those thousand-dollar shock absorbers as if on great swells at sea. The second, slower movement of the