When You Dance With The Devil

by Gwynne Forster

  With no interest in reading the book, she skimmed the first few pages without knowing what she saw. “Good Lord!” she breathed and nearly sprang from her chair when her gaze captured a description of a lovers’ kiss with the man’s tongue deep in the woman’s mouth. She slammed the book face down on the chair next to her. But when she realized that none of the women paid her any attention, she picked up the book, made a note of its author and title and replaced it on the chair face down.

  “How far is the nearest bookstore?” She asked Mabel as she was about to leave the beauty parlor.

  “Walk down to Easter Street, turn left, cross two streets, and it’s in that block.”

  Jolene thanked her and hurried to the bookstore. “You have this book?” she asked a clerk, and was assured that the store carried that and several other books by that author. Jolene left the store with seven romance novels by an author known for her sizzling sex scenes.

  “It’s a good thing you’re getting off at the end of the line,” the bus driver said to Jolene, “otherwise you’d have missed your stop.” She got off the bus, her face afire, thanks to her newly acquired knowledge of what goes on between a man and a woman. She rushed up the stairs to her room, closed the door and, without opening a window or turning on the air conditioning to temper the ninety-eight-degree heat, Jolene flopped down in a chair with the book she’d been reading on the bus. By the time Fannie banged on Jolene’s door to remind her that she was late for supper, Jolene was well on the way to acquiring a sexual education.

  For the first time, she took an interest in her supper companions, wondering if they did or had done the things she had been reading about. Somehow she didn’t think Louvenia’s pursed and wrinkled lips belonged to a woman who had frolicked in bed with a man, but Barbara Sanders, who clerked at the local movie house and whose skirt hems brushed her knees, was definitely suspect. Did Percy Lucas, a truck driver about fifty-five years old or so, wear his pants tight and walk with a swagger because he could make women scream in bed? And was that the reason why Ronald Barnes, the fishnet maker, always winked at her? Was he telling her something?”

  She finished her dessert as quickly as she could, though she barely tasted it, said good-night and rushed back up to her room and to her reading. As she opened the book, furor blazed up in her. Emma Tilman hadn’t told her one thing about sex, only ranted against men, turning her daughter into a eunuchoid, a sexually deficient woman. A woman without even the urge to have sex, who didn’t know what it was or what it was supposed to mean.

  “You must have wanted it at least once,” she said aloud as if her mother were there with her, “or you wouldn’t have had me. I’m entitled, and I’m not passing up anything that’s supposed to be this great.”

  At nine-thirty the next morning, Richard walked with Judd up the steps of Pike Hill High School. “You sure we aren’t too early?” he asked Judd.

  “I was a businessman for over fifty years, and I know that when I want to see somebody important, I should make an appointment.”

  If he had paid attention to Judd’s navy blue suit, white shirt and red tie, he’d have spared himself that reprimand. “I stand corrected, sir,” he said.

  “And well you should.”

  They passed security and were escorted to the office of the assistant principal, who informed them that the principal was in Annapolis at a meeting. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Walker,” she said. “I was planning to call you about taking some of our honor students on another expedition next fall. I think the last one you offered was our most popular project ever.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Marin. Mr. Peterson here is a citizen of the world, used to be an ambassador and executive director of an important nongovernmental organization and all that. He’s looking for something to keep him busy, and I told him that you could use a volunteer of his class.”

  She didn’t look him in the eye, and when he let her know that he appreciated her good looks, the blood heated her face. His antenna shot up. Better not get on the wrong side of this woman, his inner sense warned.

  Quickly, Richard cloaked himself in his most professional demeanor, banishing the womanizer he’d once been and leaving her to wonder if she had imagined his signal. “I’d be happy to run a career guidance clinic for you, or to give your seniors a series of workshops on international relations as a possible career. However you think I could best be of help.”

  She followed his lead, and if she reacted to him, she hid it. “Would it be an imposition to ask if you would do both?”

  “None whatever. I’m glad to help.”

  Her aplomb apparently restored, she leaned back in her chair, signaling that she was in command of the meeting. “It’s too late for career guidance this year, because school closes in a couple of weeks, but we could schedule the clinic for the beginning of the next term. We’ve needed this from someone who knows what isn’t in the textbooks, who has experienced success in his chosen field, and knows what kind of information our children need. Mr. Walker, you can’t know what a favor you’ve done us by introducing us to Mr. Peterson.”

  “He’s a good man, and that’s what we need around here. Well, we’d better be going. You can reach us over at the boarding house,” said Judd.

  She glanced at Richard as if to ask, “You too?” And he’d have given anything to know whether she wanted the information for personal or for business purposes. “Thank you so much, Mr. Peterson,” she said. “I look forward to working with you.”

  He extended his hand, and her reluctance to take it did not escape him. “I’m glad to have met you, Ms. Marin, or is it Dr. Marin?”

  “Dr. Marin,” she said and refused to let her gaze connect with his.

  “Let’s stop over here in the park for a spell,” Judd said as they left the school. “I love to sit here among the flowers and shrubs. My Enid loved flowers, and she kept our garden and our home filled with them. By the way, what kind of message were you sending Miss Marin? For a minute there, I thought you were hitting on her.”

  Richard stretched his long legs out in front of him, picked up a short stick and threw it into a bush. “I was only reacting to the look she gave me, but when I caught myself doing it, I nipped it in the bud. I’m not going to start something with a white woman in this tiny Southern town. She didn’t look that good.”

  Judd rubbed his chin a few times and then leaned forward. “I just figured out something about you, Richard. You’re a player. A natural born player. How’d you manage to go so far in life without getting into trouble? I mean serious trouble?”

  “Damned if I know. Luck. Maybe. But as I told you before: that’s behind me.”

  Judd nodded his head. “Maybe.”

  There was a time, as recently as six months earlier, that when a woman showed as much interest in him, and especially extemporaneously, as Dr. Marin did, his libido heated up, and he didn’t rest until he got her. With one exception, getting the woman had neither taxed his imagination nor his energy. That exception was Estelle Mitchell. He had thought that his interest in her was of no greater moment than what he’d experienced for any of the dozen or so other women he’d slept with and forgotten. But Miss Mitchell had let him know that she required substance in a relationship and found it in the person of John Lucas, a man he had dismissed as unworthy of consideration as his competition. Too late, he discovered that the man had won Estelle’s heart.

  He pulled himself out of his reminiscence, back from the past that still pained and depressed him. He meant to get a handle on it, and he’d start by making himself busy and keeping his penis in his pants.

  “I see you don’t believe me,” he said to Judd, “but somehow I don’t have an urge to convince you. Is there a library here in Pike Hill?” He had to do something while he waited for school to open, and writing his memoirs hadn’t yet engaged his interest sufficiently to make him knuckle down and do it.

  “Library’s on M. L. King Jr. Avenue, facing the Baptist church.”

  “Th
anks.” He opened his cell phone and called Fannie. “I won’t be in for lunch today.”

  To his disgust, the library had only one old and outmoded computer. He’d have to buy his own, although he didn’t want to encumber himself with possessions, for he didn’t know how long he would remain in Pike Hill.

  “That library doesn’t even have a modern computer,” he told Fannie at dinner.

  “Well, tell ’em they need one, and help ’em get it,” she said, as if it could be done with little more than the snap of his fingers. “Mr. Barnes is going to be leaving us, so if you know a good person for his room, please tell ’em about Thank the Lord Boarding House. ’Course, I’m not worried. The Lord always looks after me.”

  “My circle of friends is very small, Fannie.”

  “Yeah, but it would be a lot bigger if you’d quit looking down your nose at people. Judd and I are the only people you ever talk with in this house, and you been here going on two months. Doesn’t that tell you anything? Look at poor Jolene over there. She doesn’t even know how to relate to people. Talk to her sometime.”

  He sipped the espresso coffee that he suspected Marilyn had made just for him, and tried to figure out the best way to rid Fannie of that idea. “She went out with Joe Tucker’s brother, which means she knows how to relate to the kind of man who interests her.”

  Fannie gaped at him, her coffee cup suspended between the table and her mouth. “She what?” He repeated it. “Well, I’ll be . . . that explains a few things. Another woman who doesn’t know the difference between a strong wind and a little breeze.”

  Richard didn’t see the tragedy of it if, indeed, there was one. “No point in worrying about it. If a man’s got the music that makes a woman dance, she’ll move to his beat. Period. Common sense has nothing to do with it.”

  Fannie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Haven’t you paid any attention to Jolene? She doesn’t even know that people dance. She’s got every mark of a sheltered, over-protected woman. Well, I did my best.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to her as long as she stays here,” he said. “Nothing good and nothing bad. And while she’s marking time, she’ll probably learn something about life.”

  Fannie reached over and patted his hand. “Right. And I hope you have the same good fortune.”

  He stared at her. How could she say that to him, a man of the world? “Are you insulting me?”

  When he tried to extract his hand from hers, she held on to it. “No, I’m not, Richard. I’m trying to tell you that, for all your accomplishments, until you open yourself to people and give yourself to them, you won’t understand life any better than Jolene does.”

  Half-standing and half-sitting now, he glared at her but, unfazed, she smiled, though the smile came slowly. “Okay. That’s my last lecture.” She got up, as if to leave the table, and bumped into Marilyn, the cook.

  “How’d you like your espresso tonight?” Marilyn asked Richard, ignoring Fannie. “You’re a man of taste, and I know you’re used to having things just right.” She patted his shoulder and then slid an arm across it. “Y’all have a nice, pleasant evening. You hear?”

  He watched Marilyn swish out of the dining room toward the kitchen, then glanced back at Fannie. “What does she want from me?”

  Fannie’s eyebrows shot up, and she appeared to stifle a laugh. “If I thought that was a serious question, I’d answer it. But I will say this: When Marilyn decides she wants something, she goes after it like a wolf after fresh meat. So you watch out.”

  He threw up his hands. “Can’t you say something to her? Call her off?”

  A grin spread over her face. “Wouldn’t do a bit of good. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. Put a new lock on your door.” When he closed his bedroom door that night, he secured it with a chair. As hot as he suspected Marilyn would be, he definitely was not going there.

  Fannie couldn’t wait for the service to end that Sunday morning. Her mind hadn’t been on the sermon, but on what could have happened between Jolene and Gregory. He had been incensed at her place the Saturday afternoon when Jolene stood him up. She didn’t meddle in the affairs of her houseguests and prided herself on that fact, but she was always happy to help if she could. And Jolene had been acting strangely lately, walking around with her head in a paperback book and her mouth covered with rouge.

  “You looking fine this morning, Mr. Hicks. Didn’t Rev. preach this morning! Hallelujah.”

  “How are you, Miss Fannie? Yes. He was up to his usual high standards.”

  She could see that he didn’t plan to ask her about Jolene, and she didn’t know how to bring up the subject, so she stalled. “Supposed to be a scorcher today, Mr. Hicks. I guess everybody will be heading for the beach. Jolene told me once that she can’t swim.”

  “That so? Well, have a blessed day. Good-bye.”

  She felt like a fool. He knew she was fishing for information about their relationship, and he didn’t intend to discuss it. Well, she was going to ask Jolene. She’d done the woman a favor, and she deserved an explanation.

  When she got home, she found Jolene sitting on a side porch with her face buried in a paperback book. “Rev. sure did preach this morning, Jolene. You should have heard him. What you reading?”

  Jolene closed the book and dropped it in her tote bag. “A novel. I was just going inside away from this heat.”

  “Spent a few minutes with Mr. Hicks at church, and I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t ask about you. Have you spoken with him since that Saturday he came here and you’d forgotten you had a date with him? Surely he isn’t still mad about that. The Bible says forgive and forget.”

  “That’s easier said than done. By the way, I’m going to Salisbury Monday morning to check on a job. It sounds like something I can do.”

  “Well, I gave you a good reference.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “Not a peep out of her either. Some men don’t hold still for two-timing, and looks like that’s what she did,” Fannie murmured to herself as Jolene hurried up the stairs to her room.

  “Four hundred and twenty-five a week is all I’m paying for somebody who never held a job,” the man said to Jolene. “It’s good pay. If your work’s satisfactory, you should get a raise in about six months.”

  What choice did she have? She hadn’t heard from any of her other applications. “Do I get paid for overtime?”

  “Yeah. But you have to do something about your hair and the way you look. This is a beauty spa, and the women who work here have to look great. I’ll give you a hair cut and style, and one of the operators will give you a facial and a make-up job. That’s free.” His gaze swept over her. “You wear a size fourteen?”

  She nodded, though she wore anything from twelve to sixteen depending on how much of a bargain it was. He opened what looked like a storage closet and handed her a uniform. “Women operators wear pink uniforms, and the men wear pink shirts and black pants. You ready to go to work?”

  “Yes, sir.” He took her to the front of the shop. “You answer the phone real cheerful so people will want to come in here. You work the cash register, and you keep the operators’ accounts straight. I’ll spend today working with you as soon as we fix up your hair and your face. I don’t want to catch you reading. The gal who had this job couldn’t do her work for reading books.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll do my job.”

  Three hours later, Jolene hardly recognized herself, although she attributed the change she saw to the pink uniform. She didn’t have one bright color in her closet, and maybe she should buy something pink.

  Joe Tucker’s long sharp whistle when Jolene sat down beside him at dinner got the attention of everyone in the dining room. “If I didn’t know it was you, I’d swear I was seeing things,” he said. “You sure do look great.” After determining the reason for Joe’s exclamation, the other boarders returned to their food and their conversations.

  Jolene thanked Joe for the compli
ment, though her heart wasn’t in it. After the hottest lovemaking she had read about so far, Blake Edmond Hunter had nonetheless walked away from Melinda Rodgers, and she just couldn’t see how he would do such a thing. The way Melinda had made him feel, you’d think he’d keep himself glued to her. In her disappointment, she had been tempted to toss Scarlet Woman into the wastebasket without finishing it. For the first time in her memory she had released a string of expletives, and she’d aimed them at the author of that book.

  She caught the seven-thirty bus to Salisbury the next morning and finished Scarlet Woman during the trip, greatly relieved that Blake went back to Melinda and made love to her again. She read the love scene over and over until she finally substituted herself for Melinda. She would have to buy some more books, but at six dollars each and at the speed with which she consumed them, she had to find a second-hand bookstore or a library that carried them. She didn’t feel so alone, now that she had the books.

  “Hmmm. This place is looking up,” said a deep male voice that sounded as if it were but a few inches from her ear.

  She glanced up to find a young, handsome man cataloging her assets, something she hadn’t previously observed. However, she pretended not to understand that he was making a pass at her. “Did you want to make an appointment with one of our operators?” She asked him.

  “Hardly. I’ve got a load of stuff on the truck from Kemi Laboratories and Pink. You want to sign for it?”

  She wasn’t certain that she had the authority to sign for anything, and she told him as much. “Trust me, babe, anything you got’s good in my book.”

  “We’re talking about my signature.”

  “How about going to a movie with me one night? Where do you live?”