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awkward and embarrassing. Yes, she was pretty. Yes, it was very nice to be walking with such a tall
girl and still be taller. And sure, I had enjoyed the yielding firmness of that breast, cupped inside its
thin double layer of proper cotton and sexy nylon. But unless you’re fifteen, an accidental grope at a
lawn party does not qualify as love at first sight.
I got the newly minted (or reminted) Miss Dunhill a beer, and we stood conversing near the
makeshift bar for the requisite amount of time. We laughed when the dove Vince Knowles had rented
for the occasion poked its head out of his top hat and pecked his finger. I pointed out more Denholm
educators (many already leaving Sobriety City on the Alcohol Express). She said she would never get
to know them all and I assured her she would. I asked her to call on me if she needed help with
anything. The requisite number of minutes, the expected conversational gambits. Then she thanked
me again for saving her from a nasty fall, and went to see if she could help gather the kids into the
piñata-bashing mob they would soon become. I watched her go, not in love but a little in lust; I’ll
admit I mused briefly on the stocking-top and the pink garter.
My thoughts returned to her that night as I got ready for bed. She filled a large amount of space in
a very nice way, and my eye hadn’t been the only one following the pleasant sway of her progress in
the print dress, but really, that was it. What more could there be? I’d read a book called A Reliable
Wife not too long before leaving on the world’s strangest trip, and as I climbed into bed, a line from
the novel crossed my mind: “He had lost the habit of romance.”
That’s me, I thought as I turned out the light. Totally out of the habit. And then, as the crickets sang
me to sleep: But it wasn’t just the breast that was nice. It was the weight of her. The weight of her in my
arms.
As it turned out, I hadn’t lost the habit of romance at all.
7
August in Jodie was an oven, with temperatures at least in the nineties every day and often breaking a
hundred. The air-conditioning in my rented house on Mesa Lane was good, but not good enough to
withstand that sort of sustained assault. Sometimes—if there was a cooling shower—the nights were a
little better, but not by much.
I was at my desk on the morning of August 27, working away at The Murder Place in a pair of
basketball shorts and nothing else, when the doorbell rang. I frowned. It was Sunday, I’d heard the
sound of competing church bells not too long previous, and most of the people I knew attended one of
the town’s four or five places of worship.
I pulled on a tee-shirt, and went to the door. Coach Borman was standing there with Ellen
Dockerty, the former head of the Home Ec Department and DCHS’s acting principal for the coming
year; to no one’s surprise, Deke had tendered his resignation on the same day Mimi tendered hers.
Coach was stuffed into a dark blue suit and a loud tie that looked like it was strangling his plug of a
neck. Ellen was wearing a prim gray outfit relieved by a spray of lace at her throat. They looked
solemn. My first thought, as persuasive as it was wild: They know. Somehow they know who I am and
where I came from. They’re here to tell me.
Coach Borman’s lips were trembling, and although Ellen didn’t sob, tears filled her eyes. Then I
knew.
“Is it Mimi?”
Coach nodded. “Deke called me. I got Ellie—I usually take her to church—and we’re letting
people know. The ones she liked the best first.”
“I’m sorry to hear,” I said. “How’s Deke?”