A Slant of Light by Jeffrey Lent

Author:Jeffrey Lent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

Nine

He’d arrived early on a summer morning made foggy from the night’s passing rain and found her waiting before the store, watching him and then greeting him.

He stepped down from the wagon, looked her boldly in the eye, and said, “The peach man, am I?”

Then turned and lifted the first basket out and set it on the boardwalk before Harold Pinnieo’s store, where the bins were otherwise full. He lifted another basket from the wagon bed but when he turned she’d stepped close, filling the space where he would place the basket. He held it against his chest. He could smell her, a fringe of lye soap, the bruised petals of roses, her breath of chewed licorice root.

She nodded and said, “What would it cost me? To eat a peach?”

He almost told her he sold by the bushel and Pinnieo by the each when she reached into the basket still clutched to his chest, lifted a peach and tore out a bite, chewing as juice dripped down her chin, her lips wet, teeth white and shining, the flesh of the fruit working yellow and red atop her bright pink tongue, her eyes never leaving his.

He lowered the basket from his chest, not to the planks but to cover his midsection, where he’d sprung tight against his trousers. He said, “I think it shall cost you dearly.”

“Indeed? I’m breathless to learn how.” She lifted the peach back to her mouth and tore free another chunk. Her eyes full and wide upon his, both gone into the other, both knowing this.

“You’ll learn soon enough. Go eat your boughten peach while I conduct my business. Meanwhile I’ll ponder the price.”

She didn’t move but to eat the peach down to the stone. Her chin moist with juice. Then she tossed the stone into the mire of the street and said, “What peach?”

“All right. That was clever.”

She said, “I had one man over me all my life. I don’t intend another.” Then she reached and plucked up another peach. “Go to your business,” she said. “I’ll be about. Unless I change my mind.”

He watched her walk away. Surely she knew he was watching; but did not look back, striding tightly forward, no sashay about her, no warble or tilt of hips, nothing of the tease. He’d seen plenty of that. But nothing, he knew, of someone like this, a woman like this. In short moments his entire idea of what a woman was changed even as a goodly part of his thinking urged toward her in the way there’d be no return from. For either of them.

At the same time he felt it would be enough to hear her voice again. Her last words rang their threat in his ears. Perhaps not even a threat but a bald fact: Whatever had caused her to seek him out had been ruptured in their first few moments of meeting. She’d looked and found him lacking. This seemed not only entirely possible but reasonable the more he considered his clumsy responses to her sharp wit, as if she were testing him even as she greeted him.

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