A Congregation of Jackals by S. Craig Zahler

Author:S. Craig Zahler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Western
ISBN: 9781428511101
Publisher: DP
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-three

Spilling the Future

Wilfreda paraded an ambulatory melody before the denizens of the dancehall. Dicky pulled Tara Taylor close to him; he allowed his breath to warm the side of her neck while they danced a simple three-step pattern.

“My goodness,” the redheaded woman said, a scarlet blush illuminating her cheeks, nose and forehead.

Dicky placed the palm of his hand upon the satin that covered her left hip.

He asked, “May I?”

“You are.”

“I am,” Dicky said, nodding. He applied a little more pressure to the fleshy curve of her hip; she swallowed dryly. His sensitive fingertips were able to divine the stitching of the underwear beneath her dress. He did not look away from her.

Whenever the handsome New Yorker engaged a timid woman (Tara Taylor was one, though she was not as mousy as Godfrey’s girl), he always behaved as he had this evening—making a small physical advance and afterward asking if what he had done was acceptable. It was harder for a shy woman like Tara to deny his hand upon her hip when she already felt the warmth and strength and suggestion of it there. Dicky (greatly) enjoyed convincing women to do things they ordinarily would not do, but he did not at all enjoy copulating with a remorseful woman. By the time he entered his companion, she should feel as if she were receiving a rare gift of great value.

He leaned forward. Tara’s footing lagged momentarily behind the music.

With warm, moist air that he summoned from the depths of his lungs, Dicky whispered into the woman’s small ear, “You are a lovely dancer.” He let his clean-shaven cheek glance across hers as he drew away. The fleeting contact thrilled her.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“James told me that the women of Trailspur were something to behold.” He looked at her in such a way that he did not need to complete his statement with words. A blush rose to her cheeks for the thirty-seventh time during the last two hours.

Wilfreda augmented her chords; the air thickened with cigar smoke; Dicky drew closer to Tara. She looked away, cogitating. She wanted to say something to him, something she had almost said twice earlier. From the effort it took her to produce the words, Dicky knew that it was something he did not want to hear.

“My cousin went with a man from the East. From Boston.”

“Did she?”

“She did. He was an Italian. He looked a little bit like you. Talked like you talk and was . . . he was confident like you are.”

Clearly, she wanted him to ask how the affair had gone, but he did not make the prompted inquiry. He knew from the way she spoke of this Italian that things had not gone well.

“He told her a lot of things, made her some promises and then just disappeared.”

“I am not Italian. And I am from New York, not Boston.”

“I just wanted to tell you about that. In case you wonder why my mother’s been lookin’ over here with the raven eye.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.