“Jail wasn’t so bad.”
“Really? Well, I suppose if you’re stuck inside a place like that for a whole month you learn to live with it. Maybe even make some friends, I suppose.”
“I made some friends I’ll never forget.”
“I’ll bet! Do you keep in touch with any of them?”
“Now and then.”
She slurped her lemonade thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “Listen, Fred, I’m... I’m really touched by what you’ve done.” I was touched, too: she was touching my knee. “I mean, it’s really something, you going to so much trouble to track me down so you could see me again.”
“It was nothing,” I said.
“Hey,” she said, “you know, it’s not necessary for me to hang around here, at this Founder’s Day thing. I mean, I’m done for the day. All I had to do was my majorette stuff when we marched in behind the governor’s car, and that’s it. I don’t have any part in the band concert, later on, there’s no part for a majorette in that, so... so how would you like to go over to my house, and try to think of something to do?”
I would like that fine. It was escape. Limited escape, perhaps. Illusionary, temporary escape, certainly. But escape.
Out of this Founder’s Day nightmare, for a while at least.
“What... what if your parents should come home?” I asked.
“Who says we’d be doing anything they wouldn’t approve of?” she asked, coyly. Then squeezed my knee again and said, “Besides, Mom’s out of town, tending her sick sister. And Dad was called out of town, too, on business, unexpectedly.”
“Your dad was what?”
“Called out of town on business, unexpectedly. He works right here.” And she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the building behind us.
At which point I realized for the first time we were sitting on the stoop in front of the bank.
When my heart started up again, I said, “Your... your father is the local banker?”
She nodded. “But don’t you worry about him coming home. He’s going to be tied up all day.”
Chapter 29
We walked to where she lived. It wasn’t far. In fact it was just around the corner from the bank, on a street as quiet, clean and residential as those I’d driven through coming into town this morning. These homes were newer, however, and there were fewer trees. Modern houses, ranch styles mostly, three-bedroom numbers, sitting on flat, well-tended lawns. Wynning’s two-and-a-half block housing addition.
Sue Ann Wynning, her mother and-father (Sue Ann was an only child, I quickly learned) lived in one of the nicest of these homes, a split level, with barnwood siding, a double garage and money written all over it.
“That’s some house,” I said, slightly awestruck, as we walked up the driveway toward it.
We were arm in arm. Sue Ann was snuggling in against me. Affectionate child. She said, “It’s okay. I liked our other house better.”
“Other house?”
“Daddy wanted something smaller, this time.”
“Smaller?”
We were walking up the front steps, now.
“Our other house, in Cedar Rapids, was one of those big old gothic places, with secret passages and a tower and everything. It was an estate, really.”
“No kidding?”
Sue Ann opened the front door. It was unlocked. She said, “See, Daddy’s sort of semi-retired. His family’s been in banking for years, and he used to be president of the big bank in Cedar Rapids, like his Daddy before him.”
“Is he old enough to be semi-retired?”
“Not really, but what with his heart condition and all, he doesn’t have much choice.”
“Heart condition?”
“Yes. He had a lot of stress in his work in Cedar Rapids, and the doctor told him to slow down, so he quit his president job and took this little branch office thing here in Wynning, four years ago.”
“How... how bad is his heart condition?”
“Why, Fred! You seem really upset. I think you’re trembling! What’s the matter?”
“Uh, it’s just, uh, there’s been some heart trouble in my family, too, and it’s something you really have to watch.”
And then she looked at me like she had never seen such compassion before, like I was a saint. “Fred, I feel like I’ve known you for years,” she said, breathlessly. Lips moist. Eyes hooded. “I feel I want to know you for years.”
I wondered how she’d feel if she knew she was entertaining Charles Manson, which is who I might as well have been. It would make a good headline for the cheap tabloids: SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH HER FATHER’S MURDERER! I pictured myself walking down that long corridor to the little room where the electric chair would be waiting, my Methodist minister father walking alongside me, Bible in his hands, asking me why I took off my clothes and streaked through the DeKalb Holiday Inn.
“How about a tour?” she asked.
“Tour?”
“Of the house, silly. Fred, you don’t take drugs, do you?”
“Uh, no. Of course not.”
“Because I’m a firm believer in maintaining a healthy body.”
“I can see that.”
“And well, I couldn’t go for a boy who took drugs. I like a good time like anybody else, but I’m anti-drug as heck.”
“Me too.”
“Then how come you look so strung out?”
“Oh. Do I? Well. I’m just, uh...”
“I know,” she said with a Mona Lisa smile. “I understand. Really I do.”
I was glad somebody did.
“You’re surprised,” she continued, coming over and sitting in my lap.
“I... I sure am.”
“I mean you’re surprised to find that I feel the same way about you as you do about me. You met me just for a moment, and yet I stayed in your thoughts. No, now don’t be shy. Don’t be modest. That’s how it was. Just like in the song.”
“The song?”
“‘Some Enchanted Evening’.”
She sang a few bars. She was a soprano.
“We did South Pacific in high school,” she explained. “I had the lead.”
“You really ought to go out for Founder’s Day Queen. You’d be a snap to win talent.”
“Don’t be so silly. That rinky-dink thing! Did you see that bunch of dogs they had this year? It’s a joke. Besides, I couldn’t be in it because I was already committed to be band majorette.”
“I see.”
“Where was I, Fred?”
“You were singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ in my lap.”
“Oh. Yes. Anyway, you saw me for just a moment, but that moment meant something to you. You remembered me. You came looking for me, like a detective or something. And you didn’t know it, but I felt the same way about you. Especially when I saw that picture of you in all the papers and everything. Did you know you were on the NBC news?”
“No I didn’t.”
“John Chancellor told about you streaking, and that you got thirty days for it. He smiled when he told about the streaking, and frowned when he told about the thirty days.”
“No kidding?”
“Now do you see why I felt famous just bumping into you that fateful night?” And she grinned and giggled after saying the phrase “fateful night” and then leaned up and gave me a big, wet, soulful kiss.
And hot. I left that out: hot. Maybe that was implied in soulful, but I want to get across to you just how powerful a kisser this girl was. She really put herself into it, and I appreciated the effort.
She kissed me a few more times, and when she was done, she said, “How about it?”
“How... how about what?” I said, drunkenly. Hopefully.
“How about that tour I promised you?” she said, hopping out of my lap, giving me a teasing grin, and then taking me by the hand again, hauling me out of the chair and leading me around the house.