Shakespeares Champion Page 0,66

hit me in the face. It would have done me good to go to karate, blow off some tension. But I was so miserable I couldn't bring myself to dress for it. Waves of black depression rolled over me as I sat at my bare kitchen table. I thought I'd left death behind me when I'd found this little town, picked it off the map because it was called Shakespeare and my name was Bard - as good a reason as any to settle somewhere, I'd figured at the time. I'd tried so many places after I'd gotten out of the hospital: from my parents' home to Jackson, Mississippi, to Waverly, Tennessee... waitressed, cleaned, washed hair in a salon, anything I could leave behind me when I walked out the door at the end of the workday.

Then I'd found Shakespeare, and Shakespeare needed a maid.

When Pardon Albee had died, it had been a small thing, an individual thing. But this that was happening now, this craziness ... it was generated by a pack mentality, something particularly terrifying and enraging to me. I'd experienced men in packs.

I thought of Jack Leeds, who would never be part of any pack. He'd get over being mad at me ... or he wouldn't. It was out of my hands. I would not go to him, no matter how many grieved girlfriends and widows passed through my mind. Sometimes I hated chemistry, which could play such tricks with your good sense, your promises to yourself.

When the knock came at the front door, I glanced at the clock on the wall. I'd been sitting and staring for an hour. My injured hip hurt when I rose, having been in the same position for so long.

I looked through the peephole. Bobo was on my doorstep, and he looked anxious. I let him in. He was wearing a brown coat over his gi.

"Hey, how are you?" he asked. "I missed you at karate. Marshall did, too." He added that hastily, as though I would accuse him of hogging all the missing that was going around.

If it had been anyone but Bobo, I wouldn't have opened the door. I'd known him since he was just beginning to shave; he'd sometimes been arrogant, sometimes too big for his britches, but he had always been sweet. I wondered how this boy had gotten to be my friend.

"Have you been crying, Lily?" he asked now.

I reached up to touch my cheek. Yes, I had been.

"It doesn't matter," I said, wanting him to not notice, to drop it.

"Yes, it does," he said. "You're always beating yourself up, Lily. It does matter." Amazingly, Bobo pulled a clean handkerchief from his coat pocket, and wiped my cheeks with gentle fingers.

This was not the way conversations with Bobo usually went. Usually he told me how his classes were going, or we talked about a new throw Marshall had taught us, or the boy Amber Jean was dating.

"Bobo," I began uneasily, puzzled. I was trying to think how to proceed when Bobo acted instead, decisively. He gathered me up and kissed me hard, with an unnerving degree of expertise. For a few shocked seconds I stood quietly accepting this intimacy, feeling the warmth of his mouth against mine, the hard pressure of his body, before my internal alarm system went off. I slid my hands up and pressed gently against his chest. He instantly released me. I looked into his face, and saw a man who desired me.

"I'm so sorry, Bobo," I said. "I hope I'm always your friend." It was a dreary thing to say, but I meant it.

Not that pushing him away was effortless: It was all too easy to envision welcoming Bobo - young, vigorous, strong, handsome, endearing - into my bed. I'd been hoping to wipe out bad memories with good ones; Bobo and I could certainly give each other a few. Even now I felt the pull of temptation, as I saw his face close around the pain.

"I - have someone else," I told him. And I hated the fact that what I said was true.

"Marshall?" he breathed.

"No. It's not important who it is, Bobo." I made another effort. "You have no idea how tempted and flattered I am." The unevenness of my voice gave witness to that. I saw the pride return to his face as he heard the truth in what I was saying.

"I've cared about you for a long time," he said.

"Thank you." I never meant anything as much.