The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,32

enthusiasm disarmed her so much that when he asked her what they were reading for book club that month, well, she couldn’t help it: she invited him to join.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

June 1993

CHAPTER 9

May had spun faster and faster, racing toward the finish line of school being out, and final exams, and report cards, and Korey was always studying at someone’s house, getting picked up, dropped off, sleeping over, and Patricia had to fix snacks for Blue’s homeroom end-of-the-year party, and teacher evaluations were due, and library fines had to be paid before report cards would be issued, and then on May 28 it all slammed to a stop. The kids were given summer reading lists, Albemarle Academy locked its doors, and June settled over the Old Village.

The days dawned noonday hot, and gas tanks hissed when you took off their caps. The sunlight fell hard and sharp, and insects roared in the bushes, only taking a break in the dead hour between three and four in the morning. Windows came down and doors shut tight. Every house became a hermetically sealed space station, central air hovering around a chilly sixty-eight, the ice maker rattling all day until around seven o’clock in the evening when it started making a grinding sound and just spat a few chips of watery ice into glasses, and physical exertion seemed like too much effort, and even thinking hard became exhausting.

Patricia really and truly meant to tell the book club that she’d invited James Harris to their next meeting, but the heat sucked the determination from her bones, and by the time the sun went down every day she barely had enough willpower left to cook supper, and she kept putting it off and putting it off, and finally it was the day of book club and she thought, Well, maybe it’s better this way.

Everyone settled into her living room with their glasses of wine, and water, and iced tea, blotting the backs of their necks with Kleenex, fanning their faces, slowly reviving in the air conditioning, and Patricia thought this would be the perfect time to say something.

“Are you all right?” Grace asked. “You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”

“I just remembered the cheese tray,” Patricia said, and went to the kitchen.

Mrs. Greene stood by the sink washing Miss Mary’s supper dishes.

“I’m going to give Miss Mary a bath before bed,” she said. “Just to cool her down some.”

“Of course,” Patricia said, taking her cheese tray out of the fridge and stripping the Saran Wrap from it. She balled it up and then stopped, wondering if she could use it again. She decided she could and left it beside the sink.

She took the cheese tray back into the living room and had just set it down on the wooden crate they used as a coffee table when the doorbell rang.

“Oh,” Patricia said in the tone of someone who’d forgotten to buy half-and-half. “I forgot to mention that James Harris wanted to stop by and join us tonight. I hope no one minds.”

“Who?” Grace asked, sitting bolt upright, neck stiff.

“He’s here?” Kitty asked, flailing to sit up straighter.

“Great,” Maryellen moaned. “Another man with his opinions.”

Slick looked around wildly at everyone, trying to figure out how she should feel as Patricia scurried from the room.

“I’m so glad you could come,” she said to James Harris, opening the front door.

He wore a plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a braided leather belt. She wished he hadn’t worn tennis shoes. It would bother Grace.

“Thank you so much for the invitation,” he said, then stepped over her threshold and stopped. He made his voice so low she barely heard it over the screaming insects behind him in the yard. “I have over half in the bank. A little each week. Thank you.”

It was more than she could bear to hear him talk about their shared secret with people right in the next room. Her arms prickled with goose bumps and her head felt light. She hadn’t even deposited the two thousand three hundred and fifty dollars he’d given her into