Part 17 (2/2)

”What's the matter with you?” I whispered back.

”Clicking eyeb.a.l.l.s, Junior,” he said. ”Lay a finger on that behind before she's eighteen and I'll disengage your f.u.c.king clutch.” Then he broke down and started laughing.

That was the fall of 1960, a couple of weeks after Teddy Findley and I met, became roommates, and began a friends.h.i.+p that would last far beyond college. He started calling me Junior the day we met. I don't know why, and he never explained it. I finally figured it was because he was taller than me. Two, three inches. n.o.body else, not even Doe, shared that privilege.

Anyway, I waited until she was eighteen. Two and a half years; that's a lot of waiting. And during those two and a half years she kept getting better and better, blossoming from little sister to big sister to woman, while I watched it happen. Teddy didn't help. He became a verbal calendar, taunting me every week of the way.

”How about it, Junior,” he'd say, ”only four months to go.” It never occurred to me until later that I was being sized up all that time: that waiting until she was eighteen had as much to do with me as it did with her.

”Jake! Jake Kilmer. Is that really you?”

She was standing a foot away. I could feel the fire starting in the small of my back and coursing up to my neck, like the fuse on a stick of dynamite.

Time seemed to have evaded her. No lines, no wrinkles. Just pale gray eyes staring straight at me and the warmth of her hand as she squeezed mine.

I stood up and said something totally inadequate like ”Hi, Doe.”

Then she put her anns around me and I was smothered by the warmth of her body pressing against mine, by the hard muscles in her back and the softness of the rest of her. I was consumed with wanting her.

Then she stepped back and looked up at my face, c.o.c.king her head to one side.

”Hardly a gray hair,” she said. ”And every line in the right place. ”

”Is that your way of saying I'm growing old gracefully?” I tried to joke.

”Oh, no,” she said softly, ”not that. You look beautiful.” She stared hard at me for another second or two, and just as quickly turned her attention to Babs.

”I see you've cornered him already,” she said playfully, and then back at me: ”Call me . . . please. I have a private line. It's listed under D. F. Raines. Chief would love to see you.”

I didn't buy that. To Chief I would just be bad news, a vague face from the past, a painful reminder that his son was dead. What she was really asking was, Are you coming to Windsong tonight?

”Sure,” I said.

”Promise?”

”Promise. ”

She didn't just leave, she turned and fled.

I sat back down and looked across the table at Babs, whose mouth was dangling open. She reached up slowly and pushed it closed with a finger.

”You sly son of a b.i.t.c.h,” she said.

”What're you talking about?”

”You know Doe Findley that well?” she said.

”What do you mean, that well?”

”I mean that well.”

”We knew each other in college. Twenty years ago.”

”Uh-huh, honey. That wasn't a 'gee it's nice to see you again after all these years' look. That was a 'where the h.e.l.l have you been for the last twenty years' look.”

”It was probably a shock seeing me again. I knew her brother.”

”I don't care who you knew. These old eyes are not that bad yet. Twenty years, huh?”

”What are you raving about?” I said to her.

”So where did she fall in love with you? She didn't go to Georgia, she went to . . . oh, let's see, one of those snotty colleges up north.”

Now she was doing the coaxing.

”Va.s.sar,” I said. ”Real hard to remember.”

”So you have kept track?”

”Through Teddy.”

”Oh, right. And you just sat there, letting me jabber on about the Findleys and Harry Raines . . . ”

”Trash it,” I said.

”Trash it?”

”Trash it. There's nothing there.”

She wasn't about to back off. She leaned back in her chair and appraised me through narrowed eyes.

”Jake Kilmer. That name ought to mean something to me,” she said.

She sat there struggling with her memories, trying to sort me out of the hundreds of names and faces from her past. Then recognition slowly brightened her eyes.

”Of course,” she said. ”You played football for the Dogs.”

”You have some memory,” I said, wondering how often that interlude was going to keep haunting me. I doubt that it had been mentioned once in the last ten years, and now it seemed to pop up every time I said h.e.l.lo, or maybe it was just popping up in my mind.

”You and Teddy played on the same team, didn't you?”

”For a while.”

”She's not a real happy woman, Kilmer.”

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