And Les was a good-looking young man.
Some little high school girl with a crush slipped a note into his car.
That’s all it is. She didn’t even dare leave it on the dashboard where he would see i’t right away.
“He wouldn’t mind if I opened it,” Sally said aloud, and tore off the end of the envelope in a neat strip which she put in the ashtray where no cigarette had ever been parked. “We’ll have a good laugh about it tonight.”
She tilted the envelope, and a Kodak print fell out into her hand.
She saw it, and her heart stuttered to a stop for a moment.
Then she gasped. Bright red suffused her cheeks, and her hand covered her mouth, which had pursed itself into a small, shocked O of dismay.
Sally had never been in The Mellow Tiger and so she didn’t know that was the background, but she wasn’t a total innocent; she had watched enough TV and been to enough movies to know a bar when she saw one. The photo showed a man and a woman sitting at a table in what appeared to be one corner (a cozy corner, her mind insisted on calling it) of a large room. There was a pitcher of beer and two Pilsner glasses on the table. Other people were sitting at other tables behind and around them. In the background was a dance-floor.
The man and the woman were kissing.
She was wearing a sparkly sweater top which left her midriff exposed and a skirt of what appeared to be white linen. A very short skirt. One of the man’s hands pressed familiarly against the skin of her waist. The other was actually under her skirt, pushing it up even further. Sally could see the blur of the woman’s panties.
That little chippie, Sally thought with angry dismay.
The man’s back was to the photographer; Sally could make out only his chin and one ear. But she could see that he was very muscular, and that his black hair was mown into a rigorously short crewcut. He was wearing a blue tee-shirt-what the schoolkids called a muscle-shirt-and blue sweatpants with a white stripe on the side.
Lester.
Lester exploring the landscape under that chippies skirt.
No! her mind proclaimed in panicky denial. It can’t be him!
Lester doesn’t go out to bars! He doesn’t even drink! And he’d never kiss another woman, because he loves me! I know he does, because…
“Because he says so.” Her voice, dull and listless, was shocking to her own ears. She wanted to crumple the picture up and throw it out of the car, but she couldn’t do that-someone might find it if she did, and what would that someone think?
She bent over the photograph again, studying it with jealous, intent eyes.
The man’s face blocked most of the woman’s, but Sally could see the line of her brow, the corner of one eye, her left cheek, and the line of her jaw. More important, she could see how the woman’s dark hair was cut-in a shag, with bangs feathered across the forehead.
Judy Libby had dark hair. And Judy Libby had it cut in a shag, with bangs feathered across the forehead.
You’re wrong. No, worse than that-you’re crazy. Les broke up with Judy when she left the church. And then she went away.
To Portland or Boston or someplace like that. This is someone’s twisted, mean idea of a joke. You know Les would neverBut did she know? Did she really?
All of her former complacency now rose up to mock her, and a voice which she had never heard before today suddenly spoke up from some deep chamber of her heart: The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.
It didn’t have to be Judy, though; it didn’t have to be Lester, either. After all, you couldn’t really tell who people were when they were kissing, could you? You couldn’t even tell for sure at the movies if you came in late, not even if they were two famous stars.
You had to wait until they stopped and looked at the camera again.
This was no movie, the new voice assured her. This was real life.
And if it isn’t them, what was that envelope doing in this car?
3
Now her eyes fixed upon the woman’s right hand, which was pressed lightly against (Lester’s) her boyfriend’s neck. She had long, shaped nails, painted with some dark polish. Judy Libby had had nails like that. Sally remembered that she hadn’t been at all surprised when Judy stopped coming to church. A girl with fingernails like that, she remembered thinking, has got a lot more than the Lord of Hosts on her mind.
All right, so it’s probably Judy Libby. That doesn’t mean it’s Lester with her. This could just be her nasty way of getting back at both of us because Lester dropped her when he finally realized she was about as Christian as Judas Iscariot. After all, lots of men have crewcuts, and any man can put on a blue tee-shirt and a pair of pants with white coach-stripes running up the sides.
Then her eye happened upon something else, and her heart suddenly seemed to fill up with lead shot. The man was wearing a wristwatch-the digital kind. She recognized it even though it wasn’t in perfect focus. She ought to have recognized it; hadn’t she given it to Lester herself, for his birthday last month?
It could be a coincidence, her mind insisted feebly. It was only a Seiko, that was all I could afford. Anyone could have a watch like that. But the new voice laughed raucously, despairingly. The new voice wanted to know who she thought she was kidding. And there was more. She couldn’t see the hand under the girl’s skirt (thank God for small favors!), but she could see the arm to which it was attached.
There were two large moles on that arm, just below the elbow. They almost touched, making a shape like a figure-eight.
How often had she run her finger lovingly over those very same moles as she and Lester sat on the porch swing? How often had she kissed them lovingly as he caressed her breasts (armored in a heavy J.
C. Penney bra carefully selected for just such conflicts of love on the back porch) and panted terms of endearment and promises of unflagging loyalty in her ear?
It was Lester, all right. A watch could be put on and taken off, but moles couldn’t be… A snatch of an old disco song occurred to her: “Bad girls… toot-toot… beep-beep… “Chippie, chippie, chippie!” she hissed at the picture in a sudden vicious undertone.
How could he have gone back to her? How?
Maybe, the voice said, because she lets him do what you won’t.
Her breast rose sharply; a hissy little gasp of dismay tore over her teeth and down her throat.
But they’re in a bar! Lester doesn’tThen she realized that was very much a secondary consideration.
If Lester was seeing Judy, if he was lying about that, a lie about whether or not he drank beer wasn’t very important, was it?
Sally put the photograph aside with a shaking hand and pawed out of the envelope the folded note which accompanied it. It was on a single sheet of peach-colored stationery with a deckle edge.
Some light smell, dusty and sweet, came from it when she took it out. Sally held it to her nose and inhaled deeply.
“Chippie!” she cried in a hoarse, agonized undertone. If Judy Libby had appeared in front of her at that moment, Sally would have attacked her with her own nails, sensibly short though they were. She wished Judy were. She wished Lester were, too. It would be awhile before he played any more touch football after she got through with him. Quite awhile.
She unfolded the note. It was short, the words written in the rolling Palmer Method hand of a schoolgirl.
Darling Les, Felicia took this when we were at the Tiger the other night. She said she ought to use it to blackmail us! But she was only teasing. She gave it to me, and I am giving it to you as a souvenier of our BIG NIGHT. It was TERRIBLY NAUGHTY Of yoU to pUt your hand under my skirt like that “ight out in public,” but ’ me SO r it got HOT. Besides, you are SO STRONG. The more I looked at it the more “hot” it started to make me. If you look close, you can see my underwear! It’s a good thing Felicia wasn’t around later, when I wasn’t wearing any!!! I will see you soon. In the meantime, keep this picture “in remembrance of me.” I will be thinking of you and your BIG THING. I better stop now before I get any hotter or I’ll have to do something naughty. And please stop worrying about YOU KNOW WHO. She is two busy going steady with Jesus to worry about us.