The Crossroads Read Online Free PDF Page B

creature.”
    “Debauched you. Sure. When?”
    She put her hands lightly on his shoulders, looked up into his eyes. “Isn’t that up to you, sire?”
    “Tomorrow night. I’ve got to go into town for a meeting. I’ll get away early. She’ll be stoned by then. I’ll stop on the way back. About ten.”
    “Tennish anyone?” she said with gamin grin.
    As she stood there, her hands on his shoulders, he put his hands against her sides, against the graceful rib cage above her waist, then moved his thumbs up to brush the tips of her breasts, back and forth. He saw her eyes come unfocused and her mouth soften into slackness, her knees give slightly. She pushed herself back away from him. “God, Chip! God!” she whispered hoarsely. “What’s happening to me?”
    “Love.”
    “So easy to say. Little bitty short word. Park the carbeyond the shopping center. Walk two blocks. Tap on my door. And I bound up, palpitating. Christ, Chip! Is it love?” Tears smeared her eyes. “Do we have to be such h-horrible sneaks?”
    “Jeana. Jeana baby.”
    “It’s dirty, Chip. A lot of it.”
    “Tomorrow night.”
    She lifted her shoulders, dropped them. “Oh, sure. Sure.” The bell jingled. She patted her hair, glanced down at him, gave him a sharp vixen grin and whispered, “You aren’t quite ready to meet the public, darling.” She walked out, exaggerating the swing of her hips until she was within sight of the customer.
    “For a little girl?” he heard her say. “Let me think … how about …”
    Drovek walked over to a pile of cartons in the corner of the storeroom, tested their firmness with the heel of his hand, sat gingerly on them, lighted a cigarette, and tried to think consecutively about those emotional quandaries which do not lend themselves to any assault of logic. He had married Clara sixteen years ago. It was difficult to remember how he had felt toward her then. She was a Walterburg girl and had been hired as dining-room hostess in the old Motor Hotel Restaurant, the one they had torn down ten years ago. She had been quiet, composed, efficient, with a nice, somewhat shy smile. She walked well, wore clothes well, and remembered people’s names.
    He guessed that it had all happened because he felt ready to be married, and had decided on Clara Dellen, and set about convincing both of them that it was love. Clara’s emotional immaturity was no armor against this determined sentimental assault. He was twenty-five and she was twenty-one. She was an only child, an orphan, and had lived for the past ten years in an old house in Walterburg with a great-aunt and -uncle whose only two sons were grown, married, and, like their father, had become Methodist ministers. From the age of eleven she had been brought up in an atmosphere of righteous poverty,prayer, and the muted social activities of the church. She was told to believe that she was very fortunate. Her father, during one of his prolonged benders, had jumped out the sixth-floor window of a cheap hotel in Atlanta in an effort to avoid the imaginary monsters who sat tall around his bed, staring at him.
    She had been one of those girls who leave very little mark or memory with their contemporaries. She was considered pretty and mannerly and sweet. The rules about dates and hours were so strict that the few boys who became interested in her soon gave up, swerving toward more accessible pastures. At her high-school graduation the students were permitted to arrange whom they would walk with. The leftovers were assigned partners by lot. Clara was toward the end of the line, marching to “Pomp and Circumstance” with a boy so squat, pimpled and myopic as to be the class grotesque.
    For three years following her graduation she had worked for her great-uncle, typing his sermons, keeping up his scrapbook, reminding him of his social, religious and medical appointments. And she had kept to her familiar routine of acting as an assistant hostess to her great-aunt.
    Taking