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“These young teachers send em to us in the office like we didn’t have anything better to do,” he
said, and then chomped his Pronghorn Burger.
“Sauce, Deke,” Mimi said, and he obediently wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin
from the dispenser.
She, meanwhile, was continuing her inventory of me: sport coat, tie, haircut. The shoes she’d taken
a good look at as I crossed to their booth. “Do you have references, Mr. Amberson?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did quite a bit of substitute teaching in Sarasota County.”
“And in Maine?”
“Not so much there, although I taught for three years in Wisconsin on a regular basis before
quitting to work full-time on my book. Or as much full-time as my finances would allow.” I did have
a reference from St. Vincent’s High School, in Madison. It was a good reference; I had written it
myself. Of course, if anyone checked back, I’d be hung. Deke Simmons wouldn’t do it, but sharp-eyed
Mimi with the leathery cowboy skin might.
“And what is your novel about?”
This might also hang me, but I decided to be honest. As honest as possible, anyway, given my
peculiar circumstances. “A series of murders, and their effect on the community where they happen.”
“Oh my goodness,” Deke said.
She tapped his wrist. “Hush. Go on, Mr. Amberson.”
“My original setting was a fictional Maine city—I called it Dawson—but then I decided it might
be more realistic if I set it in an actual city. A bigger one. I thought Tampa, at first, but it was wrong,
somehow—”
She waved Tampa away. “Too pastel. Too many tourists. You were looking for something a little
more insular, I suspect.”
A very sharp lady. She knew more about my book than I did.
“That’s right. So I decided to try Dallas. I think it’s the right place, but . . .”
“But you wouldn’t want to live there?”
“Exactly.”
“I see.” She picked at her piece of deep-fried fish. Deke was looking at her with a mildly poleaxed
expression. Whatever it was he wanted as he went cantering down the backstretch of life, she appeared
to have it. Not so strange; everybody loves somebody sometime, as Dean Martin would so wisely point
out. But not for another few years. “And when you’re not writing, what do you like to read, Mr.
Amberson?”
“Oh, just about everything.”
“Have you read The Catcher in the Rye?”
Uh-oh, I thought.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked impatient at this. “Oh, call me Mimi. Even the kids call me Mimi, although I insist
they put a Miz with it for propriety’s sake. What do you think of Mr. Salinger’s cri de coeur?”
Lie, or tell the truth? But it wasn’t a serious question. This woman would read a lie the way I could
read . . . well . . . an IMPEACH EARL WARREN billboard.
“I think it says a lot about how lousy the fifties were, and a lot about how good the sixties can be.
If the Holden Caulfields of America don’t lose their outrage, that is. And their courage.”
“Um. Hum.” Picking plenty at her fish, but not eating any that I could see. No wonder she looked
like you could staple a string to the back of her dress and fly her like a kite. “Do you believe it should
be in the school library?”
I sighed, thinking how much I would have enjoyed living and teaching part-time in the town of
Jodie, Texas. “Actually, ma’am—Mimi—I do. Although I believe it should be checked out only to