11/22/63 полностью

My thoughts returned to her that night as I got ready for bed. She filled a large amount of space in a very nice way, and my eye hadn’t been the only one following the pleasant sway of her progress in the print dress, but really, that was it. What more could there be? I’d read a book called A Reliable Wife not too long before leaving on the world’s strangest trip, and as I climbed into bed, a line from the novel crossed my mind: “He had lost the habit of romance.”

That’s me, I thought as I turned out the light. Totally out of the habit. And then, as the crickets sang me to sleep: But it wasn’t just the breast that was nice. It was the weight of her. The weight of her in my arms.

As it turned out, I hadn’t lost the habit of romance at all.

August in Jodie was an oven, with temperatures at least in the nineties every day and often breaking a hundred. The air-conditioning in my rented house on Mesa Lane was good, but not good enough to withstand that sort of sustained assault. Sometimes — if there was a cooling shower — the nights were a little better, but not by much.

I was at my desk on the morning of August 27, working away at The Murder Place in a pair of basketball shorts and nothing else, when the doorbell rang. I frowned. It was Sunday, I’d heard the sound of competing church bells not too long previous, and most of the people I knew attended one of the town’s four or five places of worship.

I pulled on a tee-shirt, and went to the door. Coach Borman was standing there with Ellen Dockerty, the former head of the Home Ec Department and DCHS’s acting principal for the coming year; to no one’s surprise, Deke had tendered his resignation on the same day Mimi tendered hers. Coach was stuffed into a dark blue suit and a loud tie that looked like it was strangling his plug of a neck. Ellen was wearing a prim gray outfit relieved by a spray of lace at her throat. They looked solemn. My first thought, as persuasive as it was wild: They know. Somehow they know who I am and where I came from. They’re here to tell me.

Coach Borman’s lips were trembling, and although Ellen didn’t sob, tears filled her eyes. Then I knew.

“Is it Mimi?”

Coach nodded. “Deke called me. I got Ellie — I usually take her to church — and we’re letting people know. The ones she liked the best first.”

“I’m sorry to hear,” I said. “How’s Deke?”

“He seems to be bearing up,” Ellen said, then glanced at Coach with some asperity. “According to him, at least.”

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Coach said. “Broken up, accourse.”

“Sure he is,” I said.

“He’s going to have her cremated.” Ellen’s lips thinned in disapproval. “Said it was what she wanted.”

I thought about it. “We should have some sort of special assembly once school’s back in. Can we do that? People can speak. Maybe we could put together a slide show? People must have lots of pictures of her.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Ellen said. “Could you organize it, George?”

“I’d be happy to try.”

“Get Miss Dunhill to help you.” And before the suspicion of more matchmaking could even begin to cross my mind, she added: “I think it will help the boys and girls who loved Meems to know her hand-picked replacement helped plan the memorial assembly. It will help Sadie, too.”

Of course it would. As a newcomer, she could use a little banked goodwill to start the year with.

“Okay, I’ll talk to her. Thank you both. Are you going to be okay?”

“Sure,” Coach said stoutly, but his lips were still trembling. I liked him for that. They went slowly down to his car, which was parked at the curb. Coach had his hand on Ellen’s elbow. I liked him for that, too.

I closed the door, sat down on the bench in the little dab of front hall, and thought about Mimi saying she would be bereft if I didn’t take over the junior-senior play. And if I didn’t sign on to teach full-time for at least a year. Also if I didn’t come to her wedding party. Mimi, who thought Catcher in the Rye belonged in the school library, and who wasn’t averse to a nice boink on Saturday night. She was one of those faculty members the kids remember long after graduation, and sometimes come back to visit when they are no longer kids. The kind who sometimes shows up in a troubled student’s life at a critical moment and makes a critical difference.

Who can find a virtuous woman? the proverb asks. For her price is above rubies. She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchants’ ships, that bringeth food from afar.