Lamb Read Free Page B

darkening hotel room smeared. “Oh, stop it. That’s not true. Linnie. I swear, okay? God’s honest truth.” He spoke very quietly. A man and woman passed outside his hotel room door. “Listen,” he said, “I’m lying here naked on the bed.” He gathered himself in his hand and asked her if she’d talk to him. Five or six minutes. And he promised her they’d have another weekend soon. Yes, Cathy would be going out of town, he’d get them a room somewhere, and he turned his head sideways to rest the phone against his shoulder and he took himself in both hands.
    After he hung up he turned on the TV, then off, and sat up with his towel in his lap. It was dark outside the windows now and he watched his naked reflection in the glass as he dressed. He went alone into the mauve and beige bar downstairs, for a drink. He had three. He couldn’t get the kid out of his head. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her. He hadn’texactly been thinking clearly. But he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He was not that kind of man.
•  •  •  •  •
    In the middle of the workday at the small firm where he’d worked with Wilson for the last nineteen years, Lamb took his father’s ball cap from the empty chair by his office door and left. He drove through the city, through the warm and thickening haze, returning to the same dim parking lot where he had seen the girl twenty-four hours before. He set himself at the bus stop and was not surprised when he saw her coming down the gummy sidewalk minutes later, in long sleeves and pants despite the heat. Somehow—how?—he’d known she would come. He always knew everything. Nothing in the world ever surprised him anymore, ever. Imagine that. Feeling that.
    “Did you come back for cigarettes?” he asked. “Because I’ve quit since yesterday. I’m on a new plan.”
    No response. Arms crossed, mouth a thin puckered line.
    “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
    “I left.”
    “Was that a good idea?”
    “None of them even called me,” she said. “To see if you’d killed me or what.” Her words made the air tight around them.
    Lamb frowned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am.”
    She sat down on the bench, half an arm’s length away from him. “And after first period? Sid said hey, I heard about what you did with that guy yesterday. She said everybody was talking about it.” The girl looked over at him. “She meant you.”
    “How do you know she meant me? Did she describe me?”
    The girl rolled her eyes.
    “No,” he said. “I mean it. Did she get a really good look at me? Because in case you didn’t notice”—he turned his head this way, then that, so the girl could see his profile on each side—“I’m really old.”
    She almost smiled.
    “Listen,” he said. He scanned her up and down. “I’m glad to see you’ve covered yourself up.”
    She stared at him.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Tommie.”
    “Tommie?”
    “You want to make fun of my name too?”
    “It’s a beautiful name.”
    “No it isn’t.”
    “Sure it is.”
    She shrugged and hugged herself.
    “Listen, Tommie. I’m sorry if your friends are being nasty. It feels like I’m to blame, doesn’t it?”
    Nothing.
    “But look. Here we both are, right?”
    Nod.
    “Why did you come back here?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I thought about you yesterday,” he said. “I was worried I’d hurt you.”
    She stared at the curb.
    “Can I tell you something?”
    “What.”
    “I’ve never seen freckles like yours before. I apologize for staring.”
    “They’re fugly.” She glanced up at him.
    “Well. I don’t know what that means but I don’t like the sound of it. And I myself happen to think they’re striking. Stunning. And you know what else?”
    “What.”
    “I’m an expert on freckles.”
    She smiled. “Sounds like the kind of dumb thing my mom would say.”
    “Look at me. I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a liar, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “There’s precious little truth