When You Dance With The Devil Read online

  Chapter Four

  Richard met Gregory Hicks in the librarian’s office and shook hands with him, glad to see a young professional man. “Fannie told me you’d teach the computer classes, and I’m grateful for your help. I’m beginning to see how much our people need a leg up.”

  “Glad to do it. These teenagers should be able to do something with a computer other than surf and play games. What do you have in mind?”

  Richard outlined his suggestions for classes with use of the six computers installed at one end of the library’s reading room. “I’d be happy if the kids learned more than surfing. This is their opportunity to get experience building web sites, writing simple programs, word processing, and other useful things. I’ve blocked all so-called adult sites.”

  “I can teach site building and basic programming,” Gregory said, “but this is a public library, so I don’t think we can restrict the program to youths. Adults also need the service.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Yes,” Tyler Griffon, the librarian said. “I had no idea so many people would want these services. Adults are registering in droves.”

  “Great,” Richard said, pleased with the results of the first truly unselfish thing he’d ever done. “I couldn’t be happier.”

  “I expected more men to sign up,” Gregory said to Richard the first Tuesday evening on which they held the adult classes.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Would you please come over here and check my margins?” a woman asked Richard, allowing her breast to press firmly against his arm.

  Stunned by her blatancy, he uttered the first word that came to him. “Excuse me, uh . . . Miss.”

  “No problem whatever,” she replied. “No problem at all. It was my pleasure.”

  He spun around and headed for the front door where he leaned against the wall and prayed for equanimity. He hadn’t felt the enticing pressure of a warm, sweet nipple in months, and he stood there taking deep breaths and trying to reclaim his poise while his mouth watered.

  “Thank you so much for all you’re doing for our community, Mr. Peterson,” a high pitched female voice said. Slowly and reluctantly, he looked around, and his gaze landed on a tall, willowy and well-dressed woman of about forty-five. “I was wondering if you’d come to dinner Saturday evening. My reputation as a cook is considerable.”

  He couldn’t ask her how many guests she would have, and he didn’t care to be the only invitee. He decided to be on the safe side. “I hate to forego a big party at the home of a gracious hostess and miss an opportunity to meet the town’s important people, but it looks—”

  She interrupted him. “My dear, you don’t think I’d share you with a houseful of half-sober people, do you?”

  Whoever said Southern women were sweet, shrinking violets didn’t know which side was up. Sweet, maybe, but if the ones he’d met were a good sample, steely was more like it.

  “I’ll be away.”

  She smiled the smile of a lottery winner. “Next Saturday, then. I love dinners for two on a Saturday evening. They’re so romantic.”

  The tightness in his chest slipped down to his belly. He’d never seen the woman before in his entire life, and he was damned if he’d let her crowd him. “I can’t say I agree with you, ma’am. I . . . uh promised the good Lord never to participate in another one, and that’s one promise I wouldn’t dare break. If you’ll excuse me . . .” He headed back inside.

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought she bared her teeth after she locked her knuckles to her hips. Women! He’d always delighted in their predatory antics. But where the hell had he been and what had he been thinking? Wasting his life on games.

  “Oh, there you are,” a petite blonde exclaimed. “I’ve been looking every place for you. Do you give private lessons? I can’t make the evening classes.”

  He looked steadily at her, his patience rapidly expiring. “Classes in what?”

  Her smile exposed not one dimple but two. “Uh . . . computer.”

  “Sorry. That’s not what I teach.”

  All of a sudden, his annoyance gave way to laughter. The lion had finally gotten his fill. He went into the men’s room where he encountered Gregory. “Man, how do you handle these women?”

  A knowing grin spread over Gregory’s face. “I don’t have to. They leave me alone.”

  “But they tried, didn’t they?”

  “Oh, yes. All you have to do is invite them to Wednesday night prayer meeting. Unless it’s one who doesn’t know what that is, you’re safe.”

  He shook his head from side to side. “Thanks. Give me a big city any day.” Prayer meeting. He couldn’t even say the words.

  Richard didn’t know when he had been as exhausted from anything that could be described as work. The responsibilities of an ambassador and, later, as an executive-director hadn’t once pushed him to a mental sweat, not to speak of a physical one. He got back to the boarding-house at about ten-fifteen, saw Judd in the lounge and joined him. A few minutes later, Jolene came into the lounge and got a soft drink from the machine, waved at them and left.

  “I wonder if she realizes that she resembles Fannie,” Judd said.

  “Does she? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “What have you noticed about anybody who lives in this house?”

  Richard stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “I’ve noticed your sharp tongue but I ignore it, because your age gives you license to be overbearing.”

  A half-smile played around Judd’s lips, lips slightly shriveled from age. “You and Miss Tilman have something in common, and from where I sit, it isn’t laudable. She walks around here with her face in a book so she doesn’t have to look at the rest of us, and you strut around here with your nose in the air for the same reason.”

  Richard couldn’t help being amused. When Judd got on a roll, his thoughts became words, and if you didn’t want to hear them, you’d best leave. “Aw, come on Judd,” he said. “I don’t try to ignore you.”

  “Course you don’t, but I’m the only one, ’less it’s Fannie.”

  “I’m too tired to argue with you. You know, it’s been years since the last time I was tired. I could use a good long swim.”

  “Doesn’t pay to swim out there at night, but I’ll join you for one in the morning.”

  Richard stood. “Works for me. I’ll be down here at seven ready to go.”

  He told Judd good night, and as he walked through the foyer, he saw Jolene’s back and stopped. She leaned against the wall beside the dining room door talking with Percy Lucas, the truck driver. He let them have the privacy they seemed to want—since they elected to talk there rather than in the lounge—and headed up the stairs.

  “I can’t give you a ride in my rig,” Percy Lucas was telling Jolene. “It’s against company rules.” Percy must surely be between fifty and sixty, she figured, not too good looking, and old enough to appreciate a woman as young as she.

  Thinking that if she smiled, he’d give in, she forced a smile and pressed her right hand to his chest. “But just for a short ride. I’ve never been in a big eighteen-wheel truck.” She put a pout in her voice and on her face.

  “Look, babe. You’re cute and all that, but not enough to make me put my head through a noose. If a man my age loses his job, he ain’t gonna get another one. Pussy just ain’t that good, babe.”

  “Who said anything about—”

  He interrupted her. “I tell it like it is, and that’s what you’re leading up to. I was here when you came here months ago, and you just noticed me. You been acting strange ever since you started walking around here with your eyes in some book.”

  “Now, Percy, that’s not fair. You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have anybody to talk to, so I read. And I always noticed you, but you didn’t expect me to walk up to you and tell you I thought you were nice, you know, start up a conversation, did you?”

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, I guess not. When can we go out
? I’m off Sunday through Tuesday.”

  Maybe she was making a mistake, but he looked like a man of experience, and since he was older, she surmised, he’d be grateful for a younger woman’s attention.

  Somehow, she didn’t anticipate the Sunday afternoon date with Percy with the same enthusiasm she had invested in Bob and Jim. Nevertheless, she put on her little gray and white seersucker suit and headed for the parking lot beside General Hospital three blocks south of the boardinghouse, where she had agreed to wait for him. When she passed Rhone Street, she could see the Assawoman Bay and the powerful turbulence of the Atlantic Ocean, and her thoughts drifted to Gregory Hicks and the one time he gave her swimming lessons. Maybe she shouldn’t have stood him up for Bob Tucker, but Bob had excited her in a way that she didn’t understand. A crazy, itchy kind of way.

  When she turned into Bay Avenue, she saw the red Hyundai at the entrance to the parking lot. Percy reached over, opened the door, and she got in and fastened her seat belt. She couldn’t help comparing him unfavorably with Gregory, who had always fastened her seat belt. And he’d never failed to get out of his car, walk around to the passenger’s door and open it for her, too.

  Percy handed her a pair of dark glasses. “Hi, babe. Put these on so people won’t recognize you. All anybody around here ever does is gossip.”

  “Thanks for being on time, Percy. I didn’t want to stand out here in the hot sun and get a sun stroke.”

  “I always look out for my women, babe.”

  He drove to the outskirts of Ocean Pines, turned off the highway and parked in front of a modest, two-story private house.

  “Don’t say nothing to nobody, babe. Just walk straight up the stairs.”

  A queasiness settled in her belly as she walked into the house. With the center stairs facing the door, she had no difficulty following Percy’s instruction. At the top of the stairs, her guess as to what he intended became a certainty. She didn’t like it, but consoled herself with the thought that he probably had plans to make their tryst memorable. After all, he’d said she was attractive. With that and her youth, you’d think he’d do everything he could to please her.

  He followed her up the stairs, opened a door, took her by the hand and walked into a very small bedroom.

  “This is a nice clean place, so you don’t have nothing to worry about,” he said, kicked off his shoes and began pulling off his clothes. She dropped herself into a chair and stared at him. Even with her limited experience, she knew this wasn’t right.

  He pulled off his boxer shorts, walked around to the other side of the bed, got in it and pulled the covers up to his neck. “Come on, babe. What you waiting for? I’m paying by the hour.”

  She dropped her pocketbook on the floor beside her chair and braced her hands on her knees. “I don’t feel right about this, Percy. In fact, I don’t feel a thing. This isn’t how I expected the afternoon would go.”

  He sat up in bed, dropping the covers and exposing his paunch. “What are you talking about? You wanna go spending a lot of money in bars and restaurants pretending what ain’t real, when all the while this is where you plan to end up? Come on, woman and get in this bed.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess prostitutes can do that, but I can’t.”

  “Well, if it’s a kiss you want, come over here and I’ll give it to you.”

  She shivered as if a cold draft had blown over her. Wouldn’t anybody ever understand how she felt? “What I want now is to go home. I’ll pay for the room, but I’m not getting into that bed with you. I need somebody to care about me, cherish me and make me feel loved, and you don’t know what that is.” She tried to hold back the tears that streaked down her cheeks, but the sounds of her sobbing soon filled the little room.

  “What are you crying about? Hell, woman, I should have known better than to get mixed up with you. The room’s thirty-five dollars.”

  She heard his feet hit the floor, and when she looked up a few minutes later, he stood before her. Dressed. “What did you think I was? You were the one making up to me and giving me the come on. Don’t tell me you just wanted to hold hands; a man don’t get no charge out of that.” She only glared at him, too humiliated and too angry to respond.

  “Don’t you breathe this to a soul. You hear?” he went on, and held out his hand. “It’s thirty-five dollars. Let’s go.” She opened her pocketbook, counted out the money, and handed it to him.

  He counted it, folded the bills and put them in his pocket. “And I mean don’t you tell nobody. I’d be the laughingstock of the boardinghouse.”

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want anybody to know, either.”

  Twenty minutes later in the hospital’s parking lot, he parked and let her get out of the car. “I’ll see you at supper,” he said in a voice approximating a growl.

  She didn’t answer, merely turned away and headed with leaden steps up Ocean Road to the boardinghouse. Her shoes made prints in the softened asphalt when she crossed to the other side of the street where trees would shade her from the searing sunshine. She wiped perspiration from her hairline and stained her once-white handkerchief with the bronze face powder that caked on her skin. At the corner of Rhone and Ocean Road, she leaned against the lamppost, exhausted from the heat and from her travail with Percy, and waited for the light to change. If only she could tell somebody how she felt. So alone, and with no one to care whether she lived or died.

  What makes you think you deserve a friend? She stopped short. Where did that idea come from?

  “Pretty hot out there, isn’t it?” Judd asked Jolene when she entered the boardinghouse. “You look like you mighty near wilted.”

  “It’s hot, all right.” She started past him toward the stairs.

  “You can cool off just as well down here,” he said. “I was just about to treat m’self to a nice cold bottle of ginger ale. Can I get one for you?” He stood between her and the stairs, all but challenging her to walk around him.

  “Thanks, but I’m beat.”

  He stepped back and let her pass. “A man who lives alone, dies alone.”

  She stopped midway up the stairs, as pictures of the seven people at her mother’s burial floated back to her. Emma Tilman had lived alone, died with only her daughter present, and had been on speaking terms with only two of the people who stood at her burial. She turned and walked back down the stairs.

  “I’ll have a ginger ale, but I won’t be much company.”

  He walked over to the soft drink dispenser, tall and sprightly for all his eighty-four years. She took a seat in the lounge, although she wished she was in her room.

  Judd opened one of the bottles, got a paper cup and poured her a drink. “Sometimes, you don’t need talk, just company. I’ve been sitting here watching the tennis matches over in Ocean Pines and wondering if I was ever that young.”

  “Tennis in this heat?” she asked. “It must be over a hundred degrees out there. I could hardly make it back here to the house.” She slapped her hand over her mouth, fearing that he would ask where she’d been, but her comment brought a different kind of response from him.

  “Live your life while you’re young enough to enjoy it, Jolene. I hope you don’t mind my calling you Jolene. When you get old, all you can do is watch other people live.”

  “But I’ve seen you swimming in the bay, Mr. Walker.”

  “And thank God I can still do it. Been swimming since I was three, so it comes natural.”

  She drank the remainder of the soft drink and rose to leave. “Thanks for the drink, Mr. Walker.” She paused. “And for the company.”

  “It was my pleasure. We live here in this boardinghouse, because we don’t want to be alone. And that applies to all of us.”

  It was nice talking with him, she admitted to herself, and while she sat with him, she hadn’t felt lonely. She stepped into her room and was closing the door when she heard Fannie’s voice.

  “Philip! What a surprise!” Philip? Did Fannie have a man? She threw off her
jacket and skirt and headed for the shower.

  “Jolene. Jolene,” Fannie called, knocking on Jolene’s door as she did so. “Reverend Coles is here, and he’s asking to see you.” She opened the door. “Come on in, Fannie. You’re his sister, aren’t you? He said you are, but I forgot about it, I guess because I didn’t see a resemblance.”

  “That’s what everybody says. Philip looks just like our mother, and I look like our father. Put on something and come downstairs.”

  She slipped on a pink linen shirtdress and went with Fannie to the lounge where Philip Coles sat talking with Judd and Richard. He rose and walked to meet them. Looking at him not as a preacher, but as a man, she saw a handsome, sleepy-eyed man who reminded her of the men in her books. She had never noticed that his smooth brown skin, towering physique, and chiseled features set him apart from most men. Even at the age of sixty or so, Philip Coles could give Richard Peterson a run for his money. She wondered why he had never married.

  “How are you, Sara Jolene? You look wonderful, like a new person. I knew you would thrive here.”

  “I’m fine, Reverend Coles. And I’m Jolene now. I dropped the Sara. I . . . uh . . . I’m working as a receptionist in Salisbury.” She wanted to laugh and to dance when she said it, for Philip Coles knew that she’d had no experience at holding down a job and taking care of herself financially. She smiled and her chest felt as if it expanded. “I’m doing just fine.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” he said, “and you can’t know how happy that makes me.”

  She glanced at Richard Peterson and shrank back. His gaze was a laser piercing her and making her transparent before his eyes. What did he know? He didn’t blink, and she had to look away, but not before Judd Walker examined the expression on Richard’s face. He had caught her at something, but what and with whom?

  “I’m glad you came, Reverend Coles,” she said. “Good-bye.” She didn’t care what they thought. She had to get out of there. Richard Peterson had seen her with either Jim, Bob, or Percy. She ran up the stairs to her room, shut the door and bolted it. Lord, please don’t let him tell Reverend Coles. And Judd. Don’t let him tell Judd. She didn’t know how she would face them at supper.