It was a story of two kids who were in love, I glanced through the volume, then I became interested and started to read.
It opened up as a darned sweet story. Then a woman who was a shrewd, unscrupulous bitch entered the picture. The man became all confused. She was taking a green kid who didn’t know too much about life and rubbing all the new off his soul. The thing he had felt for the other girl was something so much deeper than sex it wasn’t even funny. The book had been read until the binding was limber. The cover had been wrapped in cellophane. You’d have thought it was the kid sister’s Bible.
I moistened my lips, felt uncomfortable for a minute and couldn’t realise what it was. Then I knew that it was the taste of Lucille’s lipstick that somehow still clung to my lips.
I got my handkerchief and scrubbed hard and then I went back to the book.
I was vaguely conscious that time was passing. I thought Lucille was taking a long time getting her clothes on. Suddenly it occurred to me that she might have gone out through the french doors into the patio. I didn’t know what good it would do her. I’d found her now and knew who she was. Her kid sister was sitting in the front room, reading a novel — all I had to do was walk out there, introduce myself, or I could go back the other way, out through the bedroom..
The door was open. Someone was standing there.
“Well, it’s about time,” I said.
I heard a choking scream, and looked up.
It wasn’t Lucille who stood in the doorway, but the brunette, the kid sister.
Looking at her startled, white face, the big black eyes, the hollow cheeks, I could see from the family resemblance that she was Lucille’s sister. She was younger than Lucille, and she was fragile and sensitive. There was a soulful quality in her eyes, and she was getting ready to scream again.