The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield

Author:Sophie Littlefield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

LATER, AFTER MARIS had had a second cocktail and five chicken wings, and washed the orange sauce from her hands, as well as the hem of her shorts, in the bar’s diminutive ladies’ room, she came back to find that George had moved their chairs slightly away from the others.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said sheepishly. “I guess I could try to convince you that I just wanted to show you the art.”

He pointed to the wall above him, where a large painting of the Last Supper hung under a Budweiser clock.

“That reminds me of paint-by-number kits our neighbor used to do back in Kansas,” Maris said, hoping she wasn’t slurring her words and trying to hide the illicit thrill it gave her to be talking to a nice-looking man who was apparently interested in her. Or was he? The last hour had been filled with raucous laughter and the five friends—joined occasionally by Pet, when things slowed down behind the bar—talking over each other, competing for her attention.

“That’s exactly what it is, doll.”

“Really?” Thinking: do people really still say doll?—and that she kind of liked it.

“Yup. A few of them were my mom’s. I took ’em after she passed. More for . . . I don’t know, for the memory of it, if that makes sense, than for the actual paintings. She used to sit at our kitchen table chain smoking and working on her ‘pictures,’ is what she called them, while me and my brothers raised hell all over the house. Man, she loved those.”

“Which were hers?”

George didn’t answer for a moment. He picked up his beer, staring at her over the top, then set it down again without taking a sip. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you a tour.”

She allowed him to help her up, giggling as he picked up her purse and slid it over her arm. She was a little unsteady, but only a little. The bar had emptied out quite a bit. Maris wondered how late it was, as George paused under a small painting of two kittens batting at a bright orange butterfly.

“No,” Maris said, widening her eyes. “Really? It’s exquisite!”

George laughed, and she congratulated herself on amusing him, and then worried that she’d gone too far. This was what she was like when she drank, and the reason that she rarely did—alcohol made her both more loquacious and, later, mortified when she sobered up.

“Yup. That was one of her earlier works. Over here we’ve got a triptych, what I like to call the Three Ladies of Spain.”

And that was, indeed, what hung over the pool tables: two black-haired beauties in swirling flamenco skirts framing a demure young woman peeping over a fan. Maris laughed and sipped her drink, surprised to find it was nearly gone.

Pet had finished up behind the bar and was sitting on a stool, casting them smug glances. George looked at his watch.

“Your ride looks like she’s getting impatient. Guess we better wrap up the tour

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