Heat of Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

hot in one half-second, worse than some kid on his first date. But worse than seeing her like this was the thought of the mortal sin he had committed. He had run away, he had not done it but in his heart he had done it, wildly and frantically and exultantly he had had her in his heart. He had sinned and his mind was a painful, festering sore. He wished that things people said would not remind him of Ruby. He wished he would not think about Ruby.
    The blood stopped throbbing in his temples. It was bad, like the storm brewing far across the Gulf, casting its shadow far ahead over the shallow bay. He realized that Alberto was speaking to him.
    “Who is this guy?” Al said. Juan sighed, relieved that the subject had shifted.
    “Is this Malcolm Hollister,” Big Juan said.
    “Hollister? The contractor?” Al sat down on the edge of a chair. He stared at his parents, thinking they were kidding. “Why, that guy’s got a million dollars. He could buy dolls like Dolores by the dozen — ”
    “Then why don’t he do it?” Rosa said. “Some other girls, some other dozen?”
    “What would he want with a kid like Dolores?” Al still wasn’t convinced.
    “I don’t know,” Big Juan said. “But he has the date with her. Tonight. Every night. She works for him. He drives her home from work. They sit out in his car until past two in the morning. You ask that girl what they talk about? She laughs. She says, who talks? And laughs again. What are we then to think? They are out there in his car, a car plush like a Pullman. A car such as I have never seen up close. They are out there but they are not talking. She admits this. What are we to think?”
    For the first time, Bea relaxed. She sat back in the divan, sighing. “Why, Mal Hollister is a gentleman. You ought to be glad Dolores has a crush on him.”
    “Shu. A crush. This is all right. To have a crush,” Rosa said. She remembered her own passionate desiring after the young parish priest so many years ago. Nothing came of it, not even the young priest ever suspected but he was the only man beside Big Juan she had loved, and it seemed to her no other passion ever held the same terrible bitter-sweet as that thwarted, secret longing. She shook the memory from her mind. “But this is not the same as a crush. Dolores is running after this Señor Hollister. Shameless. She is crazy for him. She thinks nothing else. Talks nothing else. Eh? What good can come of such a thing?”
    “He’s a perfectly wonderful man,” Bea said. “My father knows him.”
    “Shu. You father knows him. Dolores’ father knows him. But Dolores is a baby.”
    “Look, Bea.” Al’s voice shook. “Hollister might be a wonderful man. A gentleman, you called him. But that’s among people of his own kind. I can tell you, when he’s with a crazy kid like Dolores, he’s after just one thing, and he’s not governed by any rules of conduct that he lives by among his own friends.”
    “What do you know about it?” Bea taunted him.
    “I know this. I know what I’m married to. My God, some of the people we know. I know what they think of me.”
    “Al, you’re a fool.”
    “Am I? I get drunk so I can stand some of your friends, so I can live with your mother, good sweet Mother Cunningham. Christ in heaven.” He laughed in an empty, bitter way. “Lord, take just the other night. I came home from a hard day at that damned office. I’d had a few drinks, I was feeling pretty good. I flopped down out in a yard chair. I fell asleep. I woke up, and what do I see? Your mother is sitting straight and rigid in the chair beside me, staring at me with her mouth set and cold. I tell you I almost yelled out loud. I thought I was having some kind of nightmare. And the old woman spends the rest of the evening telling you how can you expect any different when you married somebody like me, and what will the neighbors think, me lolling drunk in the yard chairs. Well, if that’s the way Mother Cunningham feels about