The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,22
it.”
I saw the light go out of her eyes. She studied my face and blinked and looked at the alleyway and the dust rising into the sky. “Come in.”
“What for? I just wanted to tell you I didn’t burn his car.”
She pulled me inside and latched the screen. She bolted the inside door and looked through the window at the alley again. I could hear her breathing. “Say all that again.”
“I hit him and then I couldn’t stop. I’ve never felt that way before.”
“I’ll talk to him. I know his brother, too. We have to do something and do it now.”
“You said he wasn’t a hood, just a neighborhood guy.”
“You can’t come into the Heights and beat up somebody and walk away.”
“That’s what I just did. He asked for it, too.”
“What you did was insane.”
“You think you know these guys, Valerie, but you don’t. They’re mean to the bone.”
“I grew up here, a Jew in a neighborhood where people like me are called Christ killers. Don’t tell me what they’re like. Sit down.”
“What for?”
“You have a cut in your scalp. I don’t believe you beat up Loren. Or you’re exaggerating about it.”
“Tell him that. I feel sick. I hurt Saber’s feelings. Saber says I’m the only family he has.”
“We’ll call him up. We can go out together. We can play miniature golf.”
I think in that moment I fell in love with Valerie Epstein all over again, and this time I knew I loved her more than life itself.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
A wood-bladed fan spun above us, its shadows breaking across her face. Her gaze fixed on mine; she didn’t speak.
“You’re the only person in the world I want to be with,” I said. “I care about you more than my parents, more than Saber, more than anyone I’ve ever known. I’d do anything for you.”
She was looking at me in a different way now. She placed her hand on my forehead as though I had a fever. “You’re such a strange boy. You want to believe bad things about yourself. That’s wrong, did you know that?”
“Would you run off with me?”
“Don’t talk foolish,” she said, taking her hand away. “I’ll fix coffee for you. We can make sandwiches.”
“I don’t want any.” I stood up. We were almost the same height, her face inches from mine. I could feel her eyes go inside me. “I want to be with you forever, Valerie. We could go to Louisiana. I could work in the oil field. I know everything about horses and cattle, too.”
I took her wrist and placed her hand on my heart.
“Aaron,” she said.
“You’re stuck with me. For me, there’ll never be another girl. I don’t care if Loren Nichols and his friends kill me.”
“Aaron, please.”
I put my arms around her and spread my fingers over her back and smelled her hair and the heat in her skin. Her head was framed against the window, the late sun lighting the skein of auburn and gold strands in her hair, the shadows from the fan spinning like a vortex around us.
Then I felt her step on top of my feet and mold herself against me. My entire body felt as though it were being lowered into warm water, my phallus rising, my fingers biting into her back. I walked with her on top of my feet into the living room, as though we were dancing. Then she stepped away from me, and I felt my head reel as if I were floating away on the wind, alone, like a balloon with a broken string.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not,” she said. She took my hand and led me up the stairs to her bedroom. The window curtains were open, and I could see the top of the pecan tree in her backyard and clouds that were like streaks of blood in the western sky. We were both trembling as we undressed. My words clotted in my throat, and I can’t remember what I said to her when I saw her naked. I had never seen a woman undress, and I had never been to a burlesque club, and I had never done more with a girl than kiss her, and that was at the drive-in movie.
She pulled back the covers and lay down and waited, her arms at her sides, her fingers curling and uncurling with anxiety. I kissed her on the mouth and eyes and breasts and stomach, my head hammering,