idiot. Odette spent the evenings she was paired up with him cruelly mocking the stream of inane blather that poured out of him. And if Ramsey noticed her sharpening her claws on him, he was content to ignore it for the opportunity to spend a few hours ogling Odette’s breasts.
Odette didn’t appear to be bothered by James’s absence from date nights. She only asked Richmond once what had become of James, and that single inquiry was phrased as a question about the health of James’s mother. After Richmond told her that Mrs. Henry was no better or worse as far as he knew, Odette didn’t ask about James again.
Switching out James for Ramsey worked fine as far as Clarice was concerned. She and Richmond saw more of each other than they’d been able to for a long time. They stayed out later, usually meeting at Earl’s and then going for a ride or to a party or somewhere in Louisville when they had time. Ramsey had just enough sense not to make the potentially fatal mistake of copping a feel off Odette, and she seemed amused to have Ramsey around to insult. Everybody won.
After several late nights with Ramsey, Odette and Clarice showed up at the All-You-Can-Eat one Friday night in March assuming that Ramsey and Richmond would be waiting for them at the window table. Instead, James Henry sat in the chair to Richmond’s left.
Clarice walked over to the table and said hello. Then she took Richmond aside to express her disapproval. She said, “What is he doing here?”
Richmond said, “It’ll be all right, I swear.” In response to her raised eyebrow, he added, “The thing is, James really likes her. He found out I’d been bringing Ramsey along for Odette and he got so mad I was scared he was gonna take a swing at me.”
He was exaggerating just a bit. Richmond hadn’t really worried that he’d be attacked when James barged into Richmond’s dorm room the night before. Either of Richmond’s biceps was nearly as big around as James’s waist, so even if James had violence on his mind, Richmond knew any danger posed by him was minimal. Still, Richmond had been amazed to see James that agitated. It wasn’t James’s way.
James had worked like a grown man to help support himself and his mother since he was thirteen years old. In high school, when Richmond and the other guys were playing sports or sharing a bottle of rotgut whiskey in the woods, James was likely to be at home cooking and cleaning. And James never showed any sign of being justifiably pissed off about any of it or even seemed to notice that he was being cheated, not that Richmond saw, at least. But there James had been, jabbing his bony finger into Richmond’s chest and yelling about Odette Jackson, of all things. Richmond had wanted to laugh, but instead he promised James he would help him.
Richmond put his big hands on Clarice’s arms and slowly slid them from her shoulders to her elbows and back again, trying to massage away her anger.
He said, “It’ll be good, really. I told James exactly what to say to her. I gave him some great lines to use. And I filled him up with coffee before we got here. It’s going to work. Trust me.”
When they got back to the table, James was saying, “So tell your mother she should put herbs in her perennial border to keep pests down.” Then James sat back and began silently studying Odette the way he always did after he had run out of gardening talk, as if he were a scientist and she was something rare he’d spotted growing in a petri dish. Odette stared back at James, her mouth set in a scowl. If he had tried any of those good lines Richmond claimed to have given him, Clarice assumed that they must not have worked.
As they sipped pop and ate chicken wings, Richmond and Clarice tried to keep some sort of conversation going. But neither Odette nor James talked. James just watched Odette with a mixture of affection and curiosity while she squinted back at him with an expression that approached fury.
Richmond talked about maybe driving down to Louisville and checking out a dance club he had heard about. Clarice suggested that they stop by a secluded place by the river on the way back.
The plans for the evening were just about finalized when Odette blew up. “What the hell