A Beauty Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t you know it’s the name of a famous author?”
    “Is it?” she said. Mr. Gustafson was known for being a reader of the kinds of books others didn’t have time for. Some people mocked him – behind his back, of course – for growing a beard to look like Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman was a famous author; they’d had his poems in their school readers. Aggie had never memorized any of his; some of them seemed just nonsense. She had heard of this Agatha. People told her about her every chance they got, as if the idea of them having the same name would impress her and she’d give up living and take up writing books instead. She’d learned it was more flattering to a man if he thought he was original, though, so she didn’t let on he wasn’t the first to mention it. “There’s no movie stars with the name,” she said. And for good reason, she was thinking, because it has a throat-clearing kind of sound.
Agatha
.
    “I have several of her books,” he said, hot in her ear.
    “You don’t say?”
    He squeezed her waist and let his hand drift down to graze her bum. A thrill went through her and she thought: You old goat, what are you up to? He’d always looked to her as if he’d been caught in the act of teaching Sunday School and had just said something nice about Jesus to the children. But she kept the politelook on her face, and in the meantime they were stomping away at the dance floor as much as he ever did with his wife.
    “Say, how be I bring you one sometime and you can have a read of it, yeah?” He panted into her ear. “They’re detective stories, you know. Light reading.” He ran his hand down her spine, all the way to the bottom, though he didn’t linger there. Right away he put it back where it belonged, and Aggie had to wish she had the guts to ask him to do it again. But the dance was over. He gave her a push on the waist as they trotted off that she figured was meant to be a reminder, in case she had liked the stroking and wished for more.
    “I’d like to read one of those books,” she said with a bold look into his eyes before they parted. It felt as if she was practising. An old fellow like him – as old as her father – he’d be safe to practise on. Safe but exciting, too, in a way that was too dirty to think about. She leaned against the wall again and bent to pick up her
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. It should have been on the floor among the shoes that had been kicked off, but it was nowhere to be seen. She scanned the hall for a sight of Doris – she was sure Doris stole things – and saw Henrik (she thought she’d call him that, now) over by the door. She tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look her way again, and then he was asking Doris to dance. She remembered the odd expression she’d caught on Doris’s face earlier. That was a guilty look if she’d ever seen one. Doris had probably hidden the magazine away somewhere safe where she could retrieve it later. She’d never admit it, though. That
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was gone for good.
    The whole time Doris danced with Henrik, Aggie leaned against the wall, watching. After a while she recalled what he’d said about Elena Huhtala at the last church social. If she told the girls they’d laugh and laugh. But she wasn’t going to tell them.“A face to launch ships,” he’d said. And him a thousand miles from any ocean.

    Ten minutes out of Trevna the children fell asleep on the wagon floor, and before long Maria’s head was nodding. Henrik half-dozed, too, until Bess and Basket picked up their pace, knowing they were nearing home, and then he sat up, blinking, in time to see the black shapes of the Huhtala farm pass by, the swing barely visible, hanging lifeless. No sign of the Lincoln roadster. He figured she’d sent the fellow packing and was sleeping as they passed, safe in her bed. But perhaps no longer a virgin.
    They creaked and clopped along. The night was beautiful with stars and cool air and grassy smells. No one whistled. A breeze