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“Do you want to go to the game tonight?”
“Tonight? Who did you say was playing?”
She set her fork down on her plate. “You have to get your mind off it. The sheriff will find this guy,” she said.
My eyes avoided hers. I felt her gaze sharpen and fix on the side of my face.
“Right?” she said.
“Not necessarily.”
“Take the marbles out of your mouth, Streak.”
“The sheriff doesn’t know what to look for. I didn’t tell him everything.”
“Oh?”
“It was the man called Legion, the overseer from Poinciana Island. He put his tongue in my mouth. He called me his bitch.”
She was quiet a long time.
“That’s why you kept the sheriff in the dark?”
“This guy Legion is seventy-four years old. Nobody would believe my story. Legion knew that. He really pushed the hook in deep.”
Bootsie got up from her bench and walked around the table and put her fingers in my hair and brushed her nails back and forth on my scalp. Then she kissed the top of my head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.
“It wouldn’t change anything.”
“Come inside, soldier,” she said.
We went into the bedroom. She closed the curtains on the window that looked out on the front yard, then disconnected the telephone cord from the jack in the wall and removed her blouse.
“Unhook me, big guy,” she said, turning her back to me while she unbuttoned her blue jeans and let them drop to her ankles.
She put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth.
“You all right?” she said.
“Fine.”
“Then how about getting undressed?”
I took off my clothes and lay down gingerly on the bed. Bootsie slipped her fingers down inside the elastic of her panties and pushed them over her thighs and lay beside me, her head propped up on her elbow.
“You told Clete about all this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Before you told me?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t trust me? You believed I’d think less of you?”
“It wasn’t my proudest moment out there.”
