Shakespeares Champion Page 0,26

wasn't happy about it, any more than I was.

"I wish we hadn't started talking about this," I said, knowing it was futile to say. "If you're really worried about the future of your police department, thinking it'll rest on my testimony... I can't change or shade what I saw. You may not want to be around me." This wasn't the right place. I said it too bluntly. And I felt a funny pang when the words left my mouth.

"Is that what you want?" Claude said. His voice was very quiet.

Truth time. "I want to see you if you're going to be my friend, but I don't see us becoming lovers. I don't think that's right for us."

"And if I do?" I could see the distance growing in his eyes.

"Claude, I feel comfortable when I'm in your company, but if we have sex that'll be ruined. I don't think we can carry this to another dimension."

"Lily, I'll always like you," he said after a long pause. "But I'm at the age and disposition where I'm thinking, I can't be in law enforcement forever. I want a wife, and a home, and someone to go camping with, someone to decorate the Christmas tree with. That was what I was thinking might happen with you. As I hear it, you're telling me it's not gonna."

God, I hated explaining my emotions.

"I can't see my way to that, Claude. I just can't make that leap with you. And if I use up your time trying, you might miss something better."

"Nothing can be better, Lily. I may find something different, something good. But nothing better."

"So," I said quietly. "Here we are in Montrose, have to drive home, have to be with each other. We should have done this in Shakespeare, huh? Then you could go over to your apartment and I could lock my door and we could lick our wounds."

"I wish I could believe that you have wounds to lick, Lily," he said. "Let's go look at some books."

Of course after the restaurant discussion, the bookstore wasn't much fun.

I read biographies, mostly; maybe I'm hoping I'll find the key to making my life lighter by finding out how someone else managed. Or maybe I loved company in my miserable past; I could always find a tougher life than mine. But not tonight.

I found myself thinking not about Claude and myself, but about Darnell Glass.

I glanced at the true crime books, which I cannot stomach any more than I can watch the news on television.

No one would ever write a book about Darnell Glass.

A beating death in Arkansas, especially the beating death of a black male, was not newsworthy, unless whoever'd killed Darnell got arrested and generated some lurid publicity - if the murderer was one of the local ministers maybe, or if Darnell's death was the first escapade of a flamboyant serial killer.

I had managed to make my way through the newspaper account. The Shakespeare paper did its best to defuse tense situations, but even its brief references to the young man's long list of injuries made my stomach lurch.

Darnell Glass had suffered a broken jaw, five broken ribs, multiple arm fractures, and the blow that had mercifully killed him, a crushing strike to the skull. He had suffered massive internal injuries consistent with a determined beating.

He'd died surrounded by enemies - in rage, in terror, in disbelief - in an unremarkable clearing in the piney woods.

No one deserved that. Well, I had to amend that thought. I could think of a few people I wouldn't weep over if they met an identical end. But Darnell Glass, though no saint, was a very smart young man with no criminal record, whose worst crime (apparently) was a bad temper.

"Let's go," I said to Claude, and he looked surprised at the shortness of my tone.

All the way back home I kept silent, which Claude perhaps interpreted as regret. Or sulking. Anyway, he gave me a brusque cheek peck on the doorstep that had a sort of chilly finality to it. It seemed to me, watching his broad back retreat, that I'd never see him again. I went inside and looked at the flowers, still beautiful and sweet. I wondered if Claude regretted sending them now. I almost pulled them from the vase to throw away. But that would have been silly, wasteful.

As I prepared for bed, thankful to be alone, I wondered if Marshall's charge was true. Was I a cold woman?

I could never see myself as