When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance) (11 page)

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Authors: Gwynne Forster

BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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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.
She sought solace in one of her books, but the magic didn’t work, and it was the old Sara Jolene who trudged down the stairs that night, walked into the dining room and took her assigned seat without looking left or right or saying a word to anyone. She got up to leave the table and saw that Philip Coles had faced her across the room during the entire meal. But if she had looked in his direction, her gaze would have landed on Percy Lucas, and she preferred never to see him again, so she had focused on her plate.
“Join us in the lounge?” Fannie asked her. She shook her head and was the recipient of Fannie’s glare of disapproval.
“Maybe later,” she said, and didn’t stop walking until she was in her room with the door closed. Sitting alone on the side of her bed, she asked herself why she couldn’t chitchat with people the way the other residents in the house did with ease. And what had she wanted from Percy? Would it have been better, as he said, if he’d dressed it up with flowers and a meal at a nice restaurant? And if he had, would his stripping, getting into bed and telling her to “come on” have disgusted her anyway? Was the way men treated the women in her books a fairy tale, lies that made the women who read them miserable? She wished she knew.
She got up and began preparing for bed. “I’m going to find the answer to that if it takes the rest of my life,” she vowed. “I want what’s coming to me.”
 
 
“What was that all about?” Judd asked Richard later, as they sat alone in the lounge.
“You mean Miss Tilman? I dunno. You would have thought she’d be happy to see the pastor of her mother’s church.”
“Oh, that? I was talking about the way you were studying her, first during supper and then in the lounge here. You made her cringe. I saw it with m’ own two eyes, and there was no lust in it. Did you catch her at something?”
“I never talk about a thing unless I’m sure of my ground, Judd.”
“Or unless you figure it’s something you should keep your mouth shut about. Well, I respect a man who keeps his own counsel.”
“Sure you don’t want to go with me to the library tomorrow evening?”
“For what? To sit around watching people learn how to use a computer? Anybody who’s not making a contribution is in the way. Besides, I spend enough time watching other people live.”
Richard patted Judd’s shoulder. “You’re a tough one, friend.”
As he scaled the stairs two steps at a time, he realized that he enjoyed the old man’s company, that he had begun to regard him as a friend, and he had never thought that of any man. He didn’t have men friends, as much for the judgment of other men as for his own reasons. He had always preferred the company of women and saw men as competitors, obstacles to be pushed from his path by whatever means he chose.
He entered the dining room at a quarter of seven the following morning, intent upon forcing Jolene Tilman either to ignore him or to talk with him, since he knew they would be the only two eating at that time. He read Cooper’s
The Future Has a Past
until the kitchen door swung open promptly at seven and the odor of fresh perking coffee wafted into the room, teasing his nostrils with images of the food to come.
Simultaneously, Jolene walked into the dining room. “Good morning,” he said. “We’re the only ones here. Will you join me?”
He’d never seen a deer caught in the glare of headlights, but from her reaction he could imagine what it was like. He had no doubt then that she had fled the lounge the previous evening because she thought he would confront her about something.
“I’m running a seminar on uses of the computer,” he hastened to say, “and I was wondering if you’d be interested.”
She stopped walking toward her assigned seat, turned and came back to him. “I have to use the computer at my job, and so far, I can’t get the hang of it. I can type in the records, but that’s all.” She sat down, and he relaxed, aware that he had thrown her the perfect hook.
“Adult classes are from eight to ten Tuesday and Thursday nights at the library on M. L. King Jr. Avenue next to the Town Hall.”
“I ought to be able to make that, since I can finish supper by a quarter of eight, provided Marilyn will serve me my dessert separately.”
“I’m sure she will.” He intended to skip dessert rather than give the woman an opportunity to resume making passes at him.
“How’re you making out here? Adjusting to a town this size isn’t easy,” he said, fishing for something that would draw her into conversation.
“It’s no worse than Hagerstown,” she said, keeping her gaze on the biscuits that Rodger placed before them. “I know as many people here as I did there.”
“But you grew up there, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t have anything to do with not knowing people. You’ve been here almost as long as “I have, and you don’t know any of the people who live here accept Judd and maybe Fannie. Where’d you grow up?”
So she knew how to turn the screw. “New York City.”
“How are y’all, this morning,” Lila Mae Henry, the fourth grade teacher, said, taking her assigned seat. “I sure don’t welcome this heat today. Friday was the last day of school, and I thank the Lord.”
There went his opportunity to find out what Jolene Tilman was up to. “What are you doing for the summer?” he asked Lila Mae.
“I got a job as a cashier at WalMart, and you don’t know how happy I am that I can keep my room here. If I’d gone home to Virginia, Fannie would put someone else in my room in a minute. And you can’t blame her; she has bills to pay.”
“Did she get any one to take Ronald Barnes’s room?” he asked, his curiosity about it almost nonexistent.
“Somebody said she was negotiating with a woman in Ocean City, or maybe Ocean Pines. I forget which.”
“Have a good day,” he said, mostly to Jolene, as he rose to leave the table. “Hope to see you at the seminar tomorrow night. We have an excellent computer science teacher.”
“Who’s that?” Lila Mae asked. “Could be someone I know.”
“Gregory Hicks. He’s with the telephone company in Ocean Pines.”
When Jolene’s fork clattered to the table and her eyes rounded to double in size, he knew he wouldn’t see her at the computer classes. The fact that Hicks would be teaching the classes gave her a solid jolt. He was certain of it. Who besides Percy, Bob Tucker and, now, Gregory Hicks had she been involved with?
“When did you say you came to Ocean Pines?” he asked, looking directly at Jolene.
“March.”
He nodded. A lot of traffic in three short months. She didn’t look the type, but what you saw wasn’t necessarily what you got. He went to the lounge for the morning edition of
The Maryland Journal.
He didn’t care what Jolene Tilman did, but he hated the thought of her entrapping an unsuspecting, unsophisticated, and lonely man like Percy Lucas. He had exploited women, many of them, but he could say that, with that one glaring exception, he had always let the woman take the lead. If she wanted a player, he accommodated her. If she got more than she bargained for, he never regarded that as his problem. And from the looks of Percy the previous evening at supper, he’d swear Jolene did a job on him.
Hell! Who am I to accuse her
? Remembering how Jolene had folded into herself, he shrugged.
They might have messed up each other’s heads
.
“There you are, Miss,” he heard Fannie exclaim. “Reverend Coles was extremely disappointed that you didn’t seem pleased to see him, especially when he came mostly to find out how you were getting along after your mother’s death. You hardly spoke to him.” Fannie had her good points, but her sanctimoniousness grated on him. He closed his door.

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