Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend Read Online Free PDF

into the trees, stumbling around, falling down, the
     dean tooting on his whistle. He looked to see if the hospital emergency unit was standing by.
    “Wanna teeter, Tillman-Michael?” Jellie was coming across the grass toward him, smiling. He’d seen her earlier from a distance.
     Anytime he was in the same physical area as Jellie his radar kicked in, and he was aware of her location at all times. She
     and Jim had arrived an hour earlier. Michael had come alone on the Black Shadow, goosing it a little as he passed the dean’s
     car on his way into the park and waving to Carolyn when he went by. No
Deanette
T-shirt this year, and he felt bad for her. That’s why he had a bookstore make him up a T-shirt reading
Possible Dean
and was wearing it.
    “No, I have the totter end. You’ll have to teeter. That’s the easy part, anyway, and it’s what I do during the week.” He stood
     up a bit, lowering the other end of the seesaw. He outweighed her by about sixty pounds and scooted up the board to balance
     things out, then tossed her a beer out of the little six-pack cooler by his feet.
    “How does Jim feel about his wife sharing an unsanded plank with another man?”
    “Mostly he doesn’t pay any attention to that sort of thing, but he can be jealous in a petulant way sometimes. And for no
     good reason, I might add. But he likes you and knows we’re friends, so that’s different. Anyway, he’s totally focused on pounding
     the marketing department to smithereens in the next round of wretchedness over there.”
    She was luminous in the soft, slanting light of an autumn afternoon. Her breasts rose and fell pleasantly beneath her cotton
     blouse as they teetered and tottered. Her jeans stretched tight across her hips and thighs where she straddled the board.
     Did the Absolute build in this much torment as a last delicious bit of private entertainment for Him or Her or Whatever? Michael
     Tillman wondered.
    “No volleyball, Michael? You look like you’re in good shape, and judging by the pathetic little war going on over there at
     the net, you’d be a dominant force.”
    He glanced toward the net and saw James Lee Braden III in his horn-rims, sweatshirt, and floppy khakis doing side-straddle
     hops as he warmed up for a second run at the marketeers. Braden HI went into the dirt when he tripped over Dr. Patricia Sanchez’s
     foot. Then he realized he hadn’t answered Jellie’s question and she was watching him watch her. He took a hit of beer and
     said, “Nope. I did my four miles on the road this morning at dawn. That’s enough for one day. Besides, I might fall into Kipperman-the-accountant’s
     stomach and not find my way out by class time Tuesday.”
    Jellie Braden laughed, and they went up and down on a September afternoon in Iowa.

Four
    I n the countryside west of Madurai the morning was sweet and clear, in the way India feels before the heat and dust come up.
     Especially sweet and clear, because if it all worked out, Jellie was four hours ahead in the high country of the Western Ghats.
     Maybe tomorrow wouldn’t be as sweet and clear. Maybe he had no business doing this, following her. The old doubts again, bothering
     him for this whole trip. Forget it, push on. Jellie had her problems, whatever they were, and Michael had his —forty-three,
     sinking toward a time when it would be too late for this kind of thunder in his brain and body. If it came to war, it could
     be sorted out in the hills of India, as good a place as any. She could send him away, and he’d be no worse off than he was
     sitting back in Cedar Bend listening to gossip about Jimmy Braden’s wife running off on some existential quest.
    *    *    *
    At Thanksgiving their first year in Cedar Bend, the Bradens invited Michael for dinner. They’d only been in town for three
     months, but Jimmy was set on having what he called “a major
do.”
Jellie protested, saying they didn’t know many people and somehow Thanksgiving