u gonna wave back?”
“She’s busy right now,” I said.
He frowned and squinted into space. Then he waved again, as though he could make up for our not doing so.
I turned on the bench and looked back at the dance pavilion. Peggy Jean was standing with her husband by the punch table now, but her gaze fell directly on my face. Her expression was disjointed, as though I had failed and wounded her without even having the grace to explain why. Her lips seemed to part in anticipation, forming words that she wished to draw from my mouth.
I turned back toward the river and looked out through the electric haze over the gardens and the goldfish rising in the pond for the bread crumbs a child was throwing at them.
“I think I’ll take Pete for a cold drink,” Temple said.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“That’s all right. Why don’t you just take care of business here,” Temple said, and walked back up through the trees to the concession area.
“Temple?” I said. But she and Pete had already disappeared up the path into the shadows.
I pulled the last strand of cotton candy off the paper cone it was wrapped on and threw the cone into a trash barrel. I tried to scrub the stickiness off my hands with a paper napkin, then I gave it up and threw it in the trash, too.
I heard light footsteps on the gravel behind me, then smelled Peggy Jean’s perfume.
“Do you know what it feels like to have someone stare at you, then turn away when you try to wave at them?” Peggy Jean said.
“How are you?” I said.
“What gives you the right to snub me in public? Can you tell me what it is I’ve done to you?”
“You’re married. I didn’t want to recognize that fact. The fault is mine.”
“We shared a great deal when we were young.” Her eyes held mine. “I’m not talking about just one afternoon. We were true friends. Are you just going to step across a line and pretend we don’t know each other? That’s sick, if you ask me.”
I leaned forward on my elbows and turned my hat in my hands and bounced the brim on the tip of my boot. Then the words I should not have spoken had their way.
“What happened to you, Peggy Jean? You used to be one of us. Why’d you go off with a guy like Earl? Was it the money?” I said.
In the corner of my eye I could see her hand clenching and unclenching against her organdy dress, hear the fractured breathing that was about to crest into tears.
“I’m sorry I said that,” I said.
But it was too late. She strode back toward the pavilion, her hair swinging on her shoulders. I don’t know what her face looked like, whether it was tear-streaked or angry or bloodless with humiliation or numb and distraught with personal loss, but Earl and Jeff Deitrich had disengaged from their friends and were both staring at her, then at me, their eyes blazing, like men who had witnessed another man commit a cowardly and brutal act against a woman or child.
“You want to get Earl Deitrich before he gets you?” a voice next to me said.
Cholo Ramirez wore gray slacks and a shiny black dress shirt with a pomegranate-red print tie. His left eye was taped over with a square of white gauze. Ronnie Cruise stood behind him in the shadows, a Popsicle stick in the corner of his mouth.
“Ask him about killing himself in the Red Pine Lodge. Ask him what happened to his friends in that water-bed skeet club between Houston and Conroe,” Cholo said.
“What’s he talking about?” I said to Ronnie.
“You’re a religious guy, right, worrying about stuff like people wearing rosaries around their necks? Listen to Cholo, maybe discover how we dress ain’t the big problem in your town,” Ronnie replied. His dark eyes that seemed impervious to whatever degree of joy the world could offer him wandered over the strollers on the gravel paths and the aerial fireworks popping in pink and white showers above the river. “Does this shithole ever get tired of itself?” he said.
Cholo’s skin was glazed with sweat when he came into my office at noon the next day. He hooked a finger over the neck of his T-shirt and pulled it out from his chest and smelled himself.
“That sidewalk will burn through the bottom of your shoes,” I said.
“I picked up a sheriff’s tail south of town. The guy stayed with me all the way to your office,” he said. He chewed on a hangnail.
“They don’t see many cars like yours. I wouldn’t worry about it.”