The Talk of the Town (20 page)

Worried on his behalf more than her own, Roxie kept silent and kept pace. For his sake, for their sake, she hoped she had done the right thing by pushing him into doing this. Otherwise—

“How many tickets do you need?” the man in the booth asked.

Roxie looked at Luke.

He shrugged and said “You’re the one who wants to ride the Ferris wheel.”

“It’s a nickel a ride,” the ticket seller said helpfully.

“Let’s buy two each,” she decided, digging for some change in the bottom of her purse.

“Put your money away,” Luke instructed her. “I’m paying.”

Just inside the gate, the babble of voices fell for several stunned seconds, then rose with renewed vigor. They walked a gauntlet of stares down carnival row, passing the guess-your-weight barker, the peep show, and other crowd-pullers on their way to the food booths. There, they perused rows of steamed, grilled, boiled, barbecued and baked delights to fill their every craving.

A tight ball of anger wound within Luke’s stomach, twisting more tightly with each disapproving look cast their way, each derogatory whisper he heard. He couldn’t tolerate exposing Roxie to the barbs he routinely received. As soon as they reached the hot dog booth he said flatly, “I don’t think this was such a good idea.”

Roxie took one look at his taut jaw and decided he was right. But they were here, and she wasn’t a quitter. “I think it’s a great idea. I’m dying for a hot dog.”

“I’m not really hungry,” he said.

“My mouth’s been watering all evening.”

“I think we should go.”

“We’re already here, and I’m hungry even if you’re not. Besides, it’s my treat.”

He frowned and said, “No, it’s not your treat. We’re on a date. I’m paying.”

“As you pointed out earlier,” she reminded him, “it’s not a real date. I put you on the spot, pressing you into this just to annoy Bill and Frederick and John. Therefore, I should pay.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” he said. “You’re not.”

She gave him a look that reminded him of her mother.

“I should, and I am,” Roxie said. “Or, at least,” she amended hastily, taking in his glowering disapproval, “I’m paying half. We’ll go Dutch. How’s that?”

He didn’t like it and told her so, but when she held out he finally agreed to it.

“If you don’t like Dutch treats,” she said with a wicked grin, “you’ll just have to ask me out properly next time.”

“I’ll do that,” Luke said, his whole being cheered with the thought of there being a next time.

They ordered hot dog sandwiches nestled in newspaper boats, a bottle of orange pop for her and a glass of cold spring water for him. Then they found seats across from each other at one of the picnic tables that had been set up and talked about work as they ate. Luke began to relax. It was part of what made Roxie so special, this ability to loosen the coil of tension within him.

Roxie, in turn, felt her spirit lighten as she sensed his mood mellowing. It was part of her newly discovered love, this finding joy in his joy. Immersed as they were in each other, she didn’t realize someone had approached.

“Um, hello, Roxie,” Louise Spencer said with nervous hesitation.

“Hello, Louise.” She smiled up at the Ladies Aide member. “You know Luke Bauer, don’t you?”

Carefully avoiding looking in his direction, Louise waved her hand toward the table where her husband sat. “Uh, well, anyway, Harry and I just wondered if everything is okay.”

Roxie stiffened. She glanced at all two hundred and fifty pounds of Harry Spencer with his beady eyes shining almost malevolently in his red face. She gave him a tight smile, then transferred it to Louise. “Well, the hot dogs are hot and the orange pop is cold.”

Louise had the grace to blush. She murmured a quick, “I’ll see you at the next meeting,” and scurried back to her table.

Seeing the grim set of Luke’s face, Roxie rather wished she’d told Louise what she thought of her and had booted her on her ample rump to emphasize the point. Instead, she said too cheerily, “My hot dog is really good. How’s yours?”

“You’re going to lose friends over this, Roxie,” he predicted.

“Don’t worry about me, Luke. I’m perfectly capable of handling a few snubs.”

“You don’t know how vindictive people can be. You’re so good, you don’t expect the worst from others, but—”

“But if you keep this up, you’ll see the worst from me,” she broke in, only half-teasing. “You don’t need to protect me. Not only do I feel that I’m capable enough on my own, I assure you I get more than enough over-protection from my family.”

She could see she hadn’t convinced him. Frustrated, still annoyed with Louise’s well-meaning but aggravating interruption, she bit down hard on her hot dog. A squirt of bright yellow mustard spurted out the end of her bun and across the table, splattering the front of his bone-white shirt. For a second she stared at the stain in horror. Then, not knowing what else to do, she took out her handkerchief out of her purse, dipped it in his water and reached over to dab at it.

“I’m so sorry, Luke! I should have been more careful!”

He stayed her agitated hand. As much as he’d have enjoyed her ministrations—he’d always longed for someone to fuss over him in all the little, tender ways—he didn’t want to toss any more fuel into the speculative fire he could see on the faces of those around them. He pried the handkerchief from her grip and dampened the spot on his shirt.

“Now this would be a prime example of what one of my old cellmates always called the boomerang effect,” he remarked with a solemn frown.

“Boomerang effect?”

“Anger always comes back at you,” he explained.

“Because I was furious with that woman for spoiling our evening,” she guessed, her mood lightening when his frown turned up into a crooked smile.

The words rushed to the tip of her tongue. She longed to say them, longed to tell him she loved him. But she had to be content with saying, “She hasn’t spoiled our evening. It would take a lot more than that to spoil it. At least for me.”

Luke looked at her and all the stares blurred, all the whispers muted. So long as she smiled at him like that, with such tender caring, he couldn’t see or hear anything else. He wanted to tell her how much her smile meant to him, how much
she
meant to him. But he still had difficulty expressing his gentler feelings, even with her. It seemed impossible for him to find a way to say what he felt so deeply.

She saved him the trouble of finding those words when she asked, “Are you ready for some cotton candy?”

He grimaced as he passed her handkerchief back. “You’re really going to eat that stuff?”

“What’s the point in coming to the carnival if you don’t indulge in some spun sugar?” she said on a laugh.

“Have at it,” he said and stood.

Roxie threw away their trash while Luke returned his pop bottle for the penny deposit. As they walked away from the table, she quite deliberately set her hand on his arm. She left it there as they walked down the midway in the lowering dusk.

“I’m beginning to believe,” he drawled, “that there’s a real streak of rebellion in you, after all.”

She laughed. “I told you so.”

They strolled slowly,
ooh
ing when the strongman lifted a draft horse clean over his head,
aah
ing at the beautiful handmade raffle quilts hanging in the back of one of the booths, and completely ignoring the dour-faced night riders who were trying to recruit new members. Every so often they would look over and smile at each other. Words would have been superfluous.

After Roxie had satisfied her sweet tooth with a fluffy mound of spun sugar candy and Luke had crunched down a small bag’s worth of caramel corn, they got in line to ride the Ferris wheel.

The sun went down and the carnival lights came on as their swinging metal car whisked them up, up, up until familiar landmarks looked small and the people on the ground became doll-like.

“Isn’t this swell?” Roxie laughed with delight, her stomach dropping toward her toes as their gondola swooped downward toward earth again.

Luke was sitting with his arm slung along the back of their car. He wasn’t quite embracing her slender shoulders. Almost, but not quite. He watched the breeze lift her hair about her shining face and her skirt billow about her slender legs, and he couldn’t have agreed more.

“Yeah,” he said, shooting her one of his infrequent grins. “Swell.”

The second time they rode the Ferris wheel, it stopped with them at the top while the man at the control stick let some new people get on. Roxie thought it was both scary and sublime, rocking over the crowd and the fairgrounds as if floating on air. Dust swirled up from the ground and voices echoed hollowly on the evening breeze.

“Be careful,” she cautioned Luke when he leaned forward in the swaying bucket for a better view.

His grin widened as he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Are you saying you won’t grab me if I start to fall?”

She wondered what he would say if she told him that she had already fallen. Fallen in love with him, that is. Before she could speculate about it too much, the motorman started the wheel revolving again and they swept down and then back up at a spine-tingling speed that had her gasping for breath and Luke laughing with the glee that she suspected he’d never experienced as a child.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked her when they finally got off the Ferris wheel.

She’d hoped to ride one of the carousel’s painted ponies, maybe even try to win some useless prize at one of the booths, but she realized that he’d probably had enough for one evening and simply said, “I’m ready when you are.”

Figuring they were safe from prying eyes, Luke slipped an arm around Roxie’s waist as they walked through the field to her car. Her skirt rustled softly, femininely about her calves, and he imagined the gentle hush of it beneath his palm. Her hair whisked in the playful breeze, and he pictured the honey-gold of it threaded about his fingers. Her fragrance wafted on the air, and he could almost taste the sweetness of it upon his lips as he pressed his mouth against the pulse of her throat.

“It’s a nice evening,” he said, when they reached her car.

Roxie thought it was a beautiful evening, but she simply stopped beside the driver’s door and murmured, “Yes, it is.”

“Not the least bit muggy.”

“No, not at all.”

He squinted up at the old gold orb climbing the night sky. “Full moon tonight.”

She leaned back against her car and clutched the strap of her purse with both hands. “It sure is bright.”

They were stalling, making small talk, because they were reluctant to say good-night.

“Are you going home from here?” he asked her after a few more inane observations.

She shrugged, wondering where this was leading. “Where else would I go?”

“Out to the old schoolhouse.”

“The old schoolhouse?”

“It’s the perfect place to watch the stars come out.”

“Ah.”

“You interested?”

“Absolutely.” She wouldn’t have admitted it to save her soul, but she hoped he had more in mind than seeing stars. “Would you like to drive?”

He would and, after opening the passenger door for her, he did.

They headed out of town, the headlights bouncing off row-crops shriveling in the fields and pens empty of cattle or pigs as they rattled over yet another country washboard of a road. Finally they came to a small grove of trees that ringed a weathered wooden cube of a building with boarded-up windows and an X made of two-by-four’s barring the door. An old merry-go-round missing a couple of seats sat in the middle of the dirt yard, a black iron bell hung silently from a hook on the porch overhang, and a narrow outhouse leaned lopsidedly at a discreet distance in the back.

Roxie laughed as she looked around. “I’d forgotten all about this place.”

“I rediscovered it on my walks.” Luke didn’t say that he’d gone looking for it. In the long-ago days it had been his place of solace. He’d broken into the building more times than he could count, simply to sit in the cool dark solitude.

“My brothers went to grade school here.”

“I did, too.”

She made a moue. “I looked forward to coming here as well, but it closed the year before I started school. It took me months to get over my disappointment.”

“It used to be where I brought girls to pitch a little woo,” he said with a rakish grin.

She lowered her lashes and peered at him from beneath them. “Used to be, you say?”

He couldn’t believe she could be flirting with him. The mere thought of it accelerated his heartbeat. He thrust open his door. “Let’s go sit out in the breeze.”

Roxie watched him cut around the front of the car, his white shirt showing up starkly against the blackness, then stepped out when he opened her door. She left her purse on the front seat and followed him. Leaves rustled in the trees, night birds chirped, and locusts whirred in a cacophonous harmony as he led her up three steps to the wooden porch. For the second time that day, they sat side by side. Only this time they deliberately sat close to each other.

She felt a gentle puff of wind cooling her skin. Unreasonably, her blood began warming. Luke was so close, so achingly close. A stretch of her finger and she would know how the night air sat upon his arm.

She peeked sidelong at him. “So did you?” she asked, and heard the huskiness in her voice.

“Did I what?” Luke felt his body respond to every sound and every move she made, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

“Pitch a little woo. You know, with all those girls you said you brought here.”

“My God, the questions you ask.”

She aimlessly twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “You had quite a reputation back then, you know.”

“I did?”

“Luke Bauer, the lady-killer,” she confirmed. “The girls in my high school class were always gossiping about you.”

“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” he said with a twisted smile.

“It was all very complimentary, I assure you.”

“How so?”

“Speculation about your . . . prowess . . . was rampant. And when Kay Ray Kelly turned up pregnant, we—”