Chapter 23 #3
A man walked up the aisle, staring at me, with a sign on a stick that said Please Remove Hats!
I set mine in my lap, smoothed my hair, and looked around.
There were a lot of other couples here, young, old, very old, and plenty of noisy children.
In front of us, a band of little boys were shooting spitballs at the hair of two little girls in front of them.
I looked behind us, where upstairs, colored people filled the balcony, paper fans fanning.
It looked hot up there. And in the very back row, on the aisle, I recognized the sad man from the bank with the red ribbon on his lapel, sitting with his sad wife.
The ones Jack had seen to the front door.
“Quiet please,” a voice up high called. “Quiet in the house.” As I turned to face the drawn gold curtain, bam, the lights went out.
It turned to total inky blackness. Jack’s shoulder shifted against mine, and I felt a low thrumming thrill, sitting in the dark together.
Then a flicker, a flicker, and a giant face filled the entire screen and the sound of drums beating filled my chest. “Roosevelt repeals Prohibition, but will your state vote wet or dry?” the face demanded of us.
A few people in the theater hollered, “Vote wet!” but more yelled, “Keep Mi’ssippi dry!
” Then it was on to a cartoon of a black cat dancing in a tuxedo.
The crowd cheered when it got flattened by a steamroller, its little cat soul drifting down to hell.
Finally, the music quieted, and the words The Vampire Bat shone on the screen.
And for the next hour and five minutes, I couldn’t worry about mortgages or taxes or Meg or lipstick on my teeth; all I could worry about was would she or wouldn’t she get her blood sucked up by a bat.
Many did. I moved my hand to the armrest, but Jack’s was already there.
I held mine on his an extra second, for the warm thrill up my spine.
Then I pulled it away and crossed my legs tighter, trying to keep my mind on the rest of the picture.
When the lights came up, Jack turned to me and asked, “What’d you think?”
“You were right. That was very distracting,” I said. He smiled but didn’t turn away and I thought of that word again, sexy. Good Lord, he is so handsome.
I followed Jack up the aisle, my hat in my hand.
The man with the red ribbon on his lapel was still sitting in the back row, his wrinkled face a tale of sadnesses, illnesses, possibly lost children.
He wasn’t going anywhere, staying for the next show, but when he looked up and saw Jack, his shoulders slumped down even more.
Jack saw him, too, I could tell, but he kept walking straight ahead, not even giving the old man the courtesy of a hello.
Outside in the bright sun, I put my hat on, so bothered by what I’d just seen that I had a metallic taste in my mouth.
“You want to walk up to the drugstore counter and get out of the heat?” he asked.
“Mm.” I looked across the street, where the car was parked. The group of spitball boys shot past us, yelping at the hot sidewalk under their bare feet.
“You alright, Birdie?”
I squinted at him from under the brim of my hat. What’s ever stopped me before from speaking my mind? “It just seems like if you’re gonna ruin somebody’s life for a living, you could at least try and be polite.”
He frowned. He had no idea what I meant, which was sort of worse. But then his brow smoothed. He glanced behind him at the glass door. “You mean Mr. Sudderson in the back row?”
“Times are tough. I guess he’s not your problem anymore.”
Jack pressed his lips together like he was trying to hold something back. But then—“You really know how to get to somebody, you know that?”
“I have heard that, yes.”
“I—” He growled to himself. “I didn’t speak to Mr. Sudderson because he’s at the picture show at two in the afternoon on a Saturday.
It’s farmers market day, and it would’ve humiliated him for me to see him there instead of working.
” He winced and added, in a weary voice, “It’s not actually my job to tell people they’ve lost everything—it’s to decide if the bank here is good for a loan—but if anybody’s got to deliver that awful news, I’d rather it be me instead of some of those other cold-hearted cads who work there. ”
God, my mother was right. My mouth was too wide, my opinions too opinionated, and there they went again. I wished Frances hadn’t put more red on my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that.”
He squinted at me in the sun, reached down and squeezed my hand. It wasn’t so much a jolt now as a transfer of light. “One of the reasons I like you is that you’d even notice something like that.”
He was being generous, and I wanted to cover my face like a child.
We walked up the block to the west side of the square.
I was still too appalled at myself to say much, but he seemed to’ve cast it aside.
He pointed to the Colonial Barber Shop, and said he lived upstairs, behind one of those blue doors, temporarily, fortunately, because a man and his large drum set resided next door.
I wondered if I’d ever see inside that blue door and hear those drums.
Inside the drugstore, the cool air spread across my skin, making it tighten and tingle.
We sat on stools at the end of the soda counter, down from a pair of girls who looked younger than me, maybe nineteen or twenty.
They both wore summery flower-print dresses that made my burgundy dress feel fit for February.
I noticed one girl was pretty, the other was plain, with a round, shiny face, but the pretty one was in tears laughing at something the plain-faced one had just said.
“Two fountain Co-Colas, please,” Jack said. The soda jerk dripped syrup into two tall glasses and held them under a whoosh of soda water. I recrossed my legs so I could breathe better in the slim dress.
“So your life’s dream was to sweep floors in a bank,” I said as the young man set our glasses down. “How’d you get demoted to actual banker from that?” I smiled so he’d know I was joking.
“I cleaned those floors, and I mean cleaned, for the better part of a year,” he said, shaking his head. “Then one morning I found a five-dollar bill under a desk and handed it over to the bank president. Caught his attention.”
“That was lucky.” I took a sip of my Co-Cola, sweet and so cold it made my throat ache.
Jack shook his head. “I saved every cent I made to put that five-dollar bill there.”
I laughed, but he didn’t. “You ever heard ‘Panola County poor’ before?” When I nodded, he said, “Well, we were poorer than that, growing up.”
He had a dimple, deep in the middle of his chin, and I wanted to press my finger against it.
He was thirty-five years old, the youngest of five brothers he loved with his life, but he’d learned early to wrap an arm around his plate of food so they couldn’t steal it.
I thought of him devouring his grilled cheese at the diner in four bites.
Not bad manners, it was a tactic for survival.
He bit his lip in a very charming way and said, “So you know, I haven’t done something like this in a long time.”
How long? I wanted to ask, and, Who was she, was she beautiful or was she sexy like me or, dear God, both, just tell me now that I’m out of my league here, but I was afraid he’d ask how long it’d been for me. So I just said, “Me neither.”
Behind us, the bell hanging on the doorknob jangled as a dozen or so young men streamed in.
Their laughter bounced off the black-and-white tile in the drugstore.
They were sweaty faced with red numbers sewn on their shirts and U of M on their ball caps.
An Ole Miss ball team practicing, I guess, before class started in a few weeks.
They consumed the stools around the pair of girls or stood behind them, rubbernecking over their flowery shoulders.
One stuck his face between the girls and brayed a laugh, and I saw the pretty one look at her friend.
Neither looked surprised, like this happened to them wherever they went.
“Maybe we’ll give them some room,” Jack said, motioning to the new arrivals, and pulled a dollar out of a leather billfold, same as my daddy had carried.
While he waited on the soda jerk, he swiveled his stool to face me.
“Before we get run out of here, really, how long do you think you’ll be in town? ”
I held my breath; there was so much possibility in the question. “I’m taking it day by day, but I’ll probably be here another few weeks.”
“Good. I know you already checked the Tartts’ telephone bill, but Rory could have made calls from the bank before he was fired.”
Oh. That.
“When you make a long-distance call, you have to sign a log or Eleanor’ll get cross. I could check the log for you next week. Who knows, maybe it’ll tell you something?”
“That’s very nice of you to offer.” I had no idea if it would help, but at least it meant I’d have a reason to talk to him again.
The radio worked fine most of the ride home, playing Ethel Waters singing “Stormy Weather” and an older song, “Am I Blue?,” until her voice disappeared behind the static. We kept the windows down even on the dusty part of the road, and Jack walked me to the front door.
“Thank you for today,” I said. “It helped.”
“Good,” he said and leaned down and kissed my left cheek, a quarter inch from my lips.
It felt succulent, being that close to his mouth.
He walked back to his car, and I wondered if I’d blown my chance with him before I really even had one.
I leaned against the front door and watched him drive away, craving the taste of Red Hots.