Flirting With Pete: A Novel (13 page)

Caught up in the mood of the crowd, she was smiling when her eyes met those of Dan O’Keefe, who was watching her from across the room. He touched a finger to the cap he wasn’t wearing. She sent him a nod in time to the music and looked off again, always, for that new face. A new man would notice her, look at her as no one else here could. He would talk to her. He would ask her to dance. And the whole town would see.

Wouldn’t
that
be nice.

She ran a glance around the perimeter of the room before focusing on the front door. She wished he would come. Yes, she was impatient, but she had a right to be. It had taken courage to come here, weeks of changing her mind, going back and forth, until she realized that she had no other choice. It was now or never. Once her father was home, there would be no dances for her, no men, no hope.

And tonight she looked good, really good.

Her breath caught. Someone stood in the shadows just beyond the door. He lingered there… not rushing in… perhaps looking around… scoping things out. She drew herself taller, moistened her lips, and waited, waited, waited for him to step into the light.

At last he did. But it was only Bart Gillis. Late forties. Potbellied. Married, with five kids and no job.

She sighed. The night was young. There was time.

As the minutes passed, Little Falls boogied through song after song. Couples filled the dance floor, young and old, same sex, other sex, sibling with sibling, parent with child. If the dancers were good, fine; if they had no idea what they were doing, that was fine, too. As for Jenny, she wasn’t making a fool of
her
self. She shifted from foot to foot to ease the pressure on her toes, and waited for the right dance to come.

And there it was. The band struck up a country tune and a line formed. Jenny knew the dance. She had practiced it in front of her TV and could do it as well as anyone else. Most important, no partner was needed.

As she started forward, she saw friends falling into place beside friends, lovers beside lovers beside sisters and aunts and even pesky little boys showing off their stuff in a flurry of flying elbows and butts, a sight to see— and incredibly, before Jenny could stop staring and join in, the moment had passed.

She returned to her spot by the wall and promised herself to be faster next time.

When the band slid into “Blue Moon,” the crowd that had been bopping around the floor yielded to couples dancing slowly, romantically, cheek to cheek, just as Jenny had done at home so many times with her pillow as a partner and the sweetest of dreams. She kept her eyes down, watching only the slide of shoes and the intimate brush of legs, feeling more awkward and alone by the minute.

A small, familiar face entered her lowered line of sight. The skin was the color of alabaster overlaid with fiery red freckles that accompanied a riotous head of flaming red hair, all of which endeared her to this child and he to her— if the sly slip of his small hand into hers was any indication. It was always this way when he saw her. They were pals.

Joey Battle was his name, and though his family made a point to deny it, Jenny was convinced that somehow, somewhere, they were distantly related. Only three people she knew had quite that same coloring— her mother, herself, and Joey. Had the child been older, Jenny might have imagined that he was her biological brother, adopted out at birth. But Joey was barely five; Jenny’s mother had been dead two years when he was born.

Holding tight to her hand, he slipped into the narrow space between her and the chair. She knelt beside him and asked, “Hey, Joey, what’s up?”

“Mama’s looking for me,” he whispered.

“Something wrong?”

“She says I can’t stay past nine. But no one else is leaving. I don’t see why I gotta be the first one to bed.”

Because your mama’s got the hots for your daddy’s brother,
Jenny thought. She had heard the rumors. Hard not to, standing at any cash register in town. Not that she was surprised. She had gone to school with Selena Battle. She had seen the girl in action. Selena had three kids by three different men and looked to be working on a fourth. She wasn’t about to let Joey get in the way.

“Maybe your mama feels you need the sleep, what with starting kindergarten and all.”

“But that’s not for three whole days, so why do I hafta go to bed
now
?”

“Joey Battle, where you been?”
His mother grabbed a handful of his tee shirt and pulled him out of hiding. She shot Jenny a nervous look. “Hi, MaryBeth. Has he been botherin’ you?” By Joey’s ear, she hissed, “What are you
doin’
here with her? She has better things to do than baby-sit you.”

“I don’t mind—” Jenny started to say, but Selena was already dragging Joey off; the big clock over the stage read nine.

Jenny looked at that clock and tried not to worry. There hadn’t been any new faces arriving in a while, although that didn’t really mean anything, she supposed. He was late, that was all. She figured work had delayed him, or traffic on the interstate. She imagined he might even have found himself at the last minute without a clean shirt— and she could just see him rushing one from the washer to the dryer, then pressing it— or trying to, because he wasn’t very good at ironing. No, he really needed someone like Jenny to iron his shirts.

She was expert at ironing shirts.

Guessing that he would be a while longer, she let up on smiling and gave the muscles of her face a rest. Around her, people were doing the same for their feet. Anita Silva had fallen into the chair on Jenny’s right and was turned away to talk with Bethany Carr. All Jenny could see of Johnny Watts, talking with his wife on her left, were his wide shoulders and back.

Jenny leaned against the wall. She alternately stepped out of one shoe, then the other, and did her best to look winded from dancing and grateful for the break, just like everyone else.

“Pick your partners, ladies,” Reverend Putty called, and women throughout the hall reached for their men and led them onto the floor.

Pick someone,
Jenny told herself, quickly looking around the room.
Anyone,
she told herself, but, for the life of her, she didn’t see a man she wanted to dance with, certainly no one within reach, let alone one who would actually accept if she asked. After a minute she felt foolish for even looking.

So she touched her throat in an indication of thirst and slipped along the edge of the dance floor toward the refreshment table. The wait there was a long one. Each time her turn came, someone more thirsty pushed in ahead of her, but it wasn’t worth making a scene. When she finally had her cider, she took it to a new nook on the opposite side of the hall. She sipped from the cup. She alternately tapped her toe, rapped her hand against her thigh, and nodded in time to the music.

She had barely finished her drink when lines formed for the Electric Slide. Quickly, before losing her nerve, she crossed the floor and fell into step with the others, and if her heart was beating double time, no one knew, because the Electric Slide was her dance. Her body knew its moves. She didn’t have to give them a second thought. Before she could begin to see who was or wasn’t looking at her and with what degree of distrust, she was moving back and forth across the floor in perfect step with everyone else.

Relaxing for the very first time in days, her body caught the beat. Arms, legs, hips— she moved with ease, and what fun it was! She didn’t think about her hair or her freckles or her father. She shot grins at Reverend Putty and at the people beside her. Incredibly, they grinned back. In that instant, she was everything she had never been in Little Falls: she was pretty, she was happy, she was part of the crowd.

She danced until the very last note had been played, then cheered as the others did. All too quickly the line broke up into smaller clusters that drifted off. Clinging to the moment, Jenny raised her hands and clapped for the band. But her applause was lonely this time. Everyone else had moved on.

Feeling flushed, she made for the door. A wave of refreshingly cool air hit her the instant she stepped out on the porch. She fanned herself with a hand, considered her options, finally found a free spot, and perched on the old wood rail.

“Hey, MaryBeth.”

She looked around. Dudley Wright III stood not four feet away. He was tall, thin, and still adolescent looking, though she figured him to be twenty-six, what with his being two years ahead of her in school.

In any case, he was not the man of Jenny’s dreams.

What he was, was a reporter for the local weekly newspaper founded by his grandfather and currently published by his father. Everyone knew that Dudley III wanted to be editor in chief by the time he was thirty, but that the promotion was dependent on his showing the doggedness, imagination, and writing skill that his grandfather, Dudley Senior— retired but still calling the shots— deemed necessary for carrying on the family tradition.

On occasion, Jenny had wondered at the kind of pressure poor Dudley lived under. This wasn’t one of those occasions. Given that the Wrights approached the Clydes for one reason and one reason alone, she was on guard.

He came closer. “I saw you dancing. You looked happy. Was it the dance or knowing Darden’s getting out?”

Jenny touched her neck and found escaped strands of hair clinging there. She pushed them back into her braid. “It’s real warm in there.”

“Tuesday’s the big day. Right?”

She didn’t want to think about it. Not tonight.

“How do you feel about it? What’s it been— five years?”

She figured he knew it had been six years, not five. She figured he had been talking with his father about it. His father had covered the case from arrest to trial to conviction. She figured they decided it was Dudley III’s turn now.

She searched the night for her chestnut tree, found it, wished she were there.

“He got out early,” Dudley remarked.

“They give time off for good behavior.”

“Still. He was convicted of murder.”

“Involuntary manslaughter,” she corrected.

“I wonder what it’s like, knowing you’ve taken a life.”

“You could ask him,” she said, though she knew full well that if Dudley Wright III came to the house, Darden would slam the door in his face. Darden was a private man. He claimed prison had been a relief, after being raped by the press.

“So, what’ll he do when he gets back?” Dudley asked. “He has to work, doesn’t he? Isn’t that a condition of parole?”

“He has a moving business.”

“Had,” Dudley was good enough to remind her. “After all this time, his contacts will have dried up, not to mention the truck. Will it still run?”

Jenny didn’t want to talk about this. She really didn’t. She imagined being out by her tree, leaning against it in the dark of night, talking to someone who cared. The man she waited for had more caring in his baby finger than Dudley Wright III had in his whole knobby body.

“I have to tell you,” he warned as if he was doing her a favor, “people are worried. They aren’t sure how they’ll like having an ex-con in town. Does it worry you that he might not fit in?”

“He never did,” she said, but distractedly. She could have sworn she saw movement at her tree. Someone was there.

“Being independent is one thing,” Dudley argued, “being ostracized is another. How will your father take to that? Has he thought this whole thing out?”

A car swung out of the parking lot. As its headlights arced around, they lit a man standing by the chestnut tree, watching the goings-on. A local taking a break from the dance? Jenny didn’t think so. None of the locals were that tall. None were wearing a leather jacket and boots shiny enough to reflect the headlights of a car. None carried a motorcycle helmet.

“Has he thought about what it’ll mean to return to a place where everyone knows where he’s been and why?” Dudley asked.

Jenny was beside herself with excitement. She was trying to decide whether to stay where she was and let the stranger come to her or approach him herself, when Dudley broke into her thoughts with a sharp reminder. “MaryBeth?”

“Excuse me?”

“I asked if Darden knows the drawbacks of returning to the scene of the crime.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Some folks think he should relocate, just start over somewhere else.”

Jenny thought the same thing, but she knew it wouldn’t happen. Darden had made that clear the last time she had gone to see him. Little Falls was his home, he said. He had a right to come back, he said, and he didn’t give a good goddamn whether the town liked it or not. Let them put up with something
they
didn’t like for a change, he said.

“Bad things happened to him here,” Dudley went on. “Maybe he shouldn’t come back.”

“Is that what people are saying?”

“Some. Well, lots.”

“You, too?”

“I’m a journalist. I can’t take a stand.”

Jenny had no use for cowards. Deciding that he wasn’t worth another second of her time, she looked back at her tree. But whatever aura had alerted her to the motorcyclist’s presence before was gone. She cupped her hands around her eyes to block out the sidelight and sharpen her vision. Still she couldn’t see him.

It was Dudley’s fault. He had seen Dudley with her and thought she was taken.

“Does Darden scare you?” Dudley asked.

She shot him an angry look. “Why should he? Why are you asking me these things? What do you want from me?”

“An interview. People want to know how you feel about Darden getting out of prison and coming back here. They want to know what he’s planning to do. They want to know what
you
plan to do once he’s back. They’re curious, and they’re worried, and you’re the only one who can give them an inside look. This is the biggest story around here since the day Merle’s cousin showed up married to a stripper. It’s front-page stuff.”

Jenny shook her head firmly. The curiosity of the townsfolk wasn’t her problem. Their
worries
weren’t her problem. She had problems enough of her own. An interview on the front page? Good God, that was the last thing she wanted. Darden would
kill
her.