A Bone to Pick Page 0,15

mailing in my bill instead of taking it by, like I used to." Lizanne was the receptionist at the utility company. Lizanne was beautiful and agreeable, slow-witted but sure, like honey making its inexorable progress across a buttered pancake. Her parents had died the year before, and for a while that had put a crease across the perfect forehead and tear marks down the magnolia white cheeks, but gradually Lizanne's precious routine had encompassed this terrible change in her life and she had willed herself to forget the awfulness of it. She had sold her parents' house, bought herself one just like it with the proceeds, and resumed breaking hearts. Bubba Sewell must have been an optimist and a man who worshiped beauty to date the notoriously untouchable Lizanne. I wouldn't have thought it of him. "So maybe he and Lizanne have broken up, he wants to take you out?" Lillian always got back on the track eventually.

"No, I'm going out with Aubrey Scott tonight," I said, having thought of this evasion during her recital of Bubba Sewell's marital woes. "The Episcopal priest. We met at my mother's wedding."

It worked, and Lillian's high pleasure at knowing this exclusive fact put her in a good humor the rest of the afternoon. I didn't realize how many Episcopalians there were in Lawrenceton until I went out with their priest. Waiting in line for the movies I met at least five members of Aubrey's congregation. I tried to radiate respectability and wholesomeness, and kept wishing my wavy bunch of hair had been more cooperative when I'd tried to tame it before he picked me up. It flew in a warm cloud around my head, and for the hundredth time I thought of having it all cut off. At least my navy slacks and bright yellow shirt were neat and new, and my plain gold chain and earrings were good but - plain. Aubrey was in mufti, which definitely helped me to relax. He was disconcertingly attractive in his jeans and shirt; I had some definitely secular thoughts.

The movie we picked was a comedy, and we laughed at the same places, which was heartening. Our compatibility extended through dinner, where a mention of my mother's wedding prompted some reminiscences from Aubrey about weddings that had gone disastrously wrong. "And the flower girl threw up at my own wedding," he concluded.

"You've been married?" I said brilliantly. But he'd brought it up on purpose, of course, so I was doing the right thing.

"I'm a widower. She died three years ago of cancer," he said simply.

I looked at my plate real hard.

"I haven't dated too much since then," he went on. "I feel like I'm pretty - inept at it."

"You're doing fine so far," I told him.

He smiled, and it was a very attractive smile.

"From what the teenagers in my congregation tell me, dating's changed a lot in the last twenty years, since last I went out on a date. I don't want - I just want to clear the air. You seem a little nervous from time to time about being out with a minister."

"Well-yes."

"Okay. I'm not perfect, and I don't expect you to be perfect. Everyone has attitudes and opinions that are not exactly toeing the line spiritually; we're all trying, and it'll take our whole lives to get there. That's what I believe. I also don't believe in premarital sex; I'm waiting for something to change my mind on that issue, but so far it hasn't happened. Did you want to know any of that?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. That's just about exactly what I did want to know." What surprised me was the amount of relief I felt at the certainty that Aubrey would not try to get me to go to bed with him. Most dates I'd had in the past ten years, I'd spent half the time worried about what would happen when the guy took me home. Especially now, after my passionate involvement with Arthur, it was a load off my mind that Aubrey wouldn't expect me to make a decision about whether or not to go to bed with him. I brightened up and really began to enjoy myself. He didn't discuss his wife again, and I knew I would not introduce the subject.

Aubrey's ban on premarital sex did not include a ban on premarital kissing, I discovered when he walked me to my back door.

"Maybe we can go out again?"

"Give me a call," I said with