Beautiful Darkness
Page 32

"This is Gatlin. There isn't al that much to see." I glanced in the rearview mirror. "Or just not that much I want you to see."
"What do you mean by that?"
"A good tour guide knows what to show and what to hide."
"I stand corrected. You're a terribly misguided tour guide." She pul ed a rubber band out of her pocket.
"So I'm more of a mis-guide?" It was a stupid joke, my trademark.
"And I take issue with both your punning and your tour-guiding philosophy, general y speaking." She was working her blond hair into two braids, her cheeks pink from the heat. She wasn't used to the South Carolina humidity.
"What do you want to see? You want me to take you to shoot cans behind the old cotton mil off Route 9? Flatten pennies on the train tracks? Fol ow the trail of flies into the eat-at-your-own-risk grease pit we cal the Dar-ee Keen?"
"Yes. Al of the above, particularly the last bit. I'm starving."
Liv dropped the last library receipt into one of two piles. "... seven, eight, nine. Which means I win, you lose, and get your hands off those chips. They belong to me now." She pul ed my chili fries over to her side of the red plastic table.
"You mean fries."
"I mean business." Her side of the table was already covered with onion rings, a cheeseburger, ketchup, mayonnaise, and my sweet tea. I knew whose side was whose because she had made a line between us, laying french fries end to end, like the Great Wal of China.
"'Good fences make good neighbors.' "
I remembered the poem from English class. "Walt Whitman."
She shook her head. "Robert Frost. Now keep your hands off my onion rings."
I should've known that one. How many times had Lena quoted Frost's poems or twisted them into one of her own?
We had stopped for lunch at the Dar-ee Keen, which was down the road from the last two deliveries we'd made -- Mrs. Ipswich ( Guide to Colon Cleanliness) and Mr. Harlow ( Classic Pinups of World War II ), which we had given to his wife because he wasn't home. For the first time, I understood the reason for the brown paper.
"I can't believe it." I wadded up my napkin. "Who would have figured Gatlin was so romantic?" I had bet on church books. Liv had bet on romance novels. I lost, eight to nine.
"Not only romantic, but romantic and righteous. It's a wonderful combination, so --"
"Hypocritical?"
"Not at al . I was going to say American. Did you notice we delivered It Takes a Bible and Divinely Delicious Delilah to the very same house?"
"I thought that was a cookbook."
"Not unless Delilah's cooking up something quite a bit hotter than these chili chips." She waved a fry in the air.
"Fries."
"Exactly."
I turned bright red, thinking about how flustered Mrs. Lincoln had looked when we dropped those books off at her door. I didn't point out to Liv that Delilah's devotee was the mother of my best friend, and the most ruthlessly righteous woman in town.
"So, you like the Dar-ee Keen?" I changed the subject.
"I'm mad about it." Liv took a bite of her cheeseburger, big enough to put Link to shame. I'd already seen her wolf down more than the average varsity basketbal player at lunch. She didn't seem to care what I thought about her one way or another, which was a relief. Especial y since everything I did around Lena lately was wrong.
"So what would we find in your brown paper package? Church books, romance novels, or both?"
"I don't know." I had more secrets than I knew what to do with, but I wasn't about to share any of them.
"Come on. Everyone has secrets."
"Not everyone," I lied.
"There's nothing at al beneath your paper?"
"Nope. Just more paper, I guess." In a way, I wished it was true.
"So you're rather like an onion?"
"More like a regular old potato."
She picked up a fry and examined it. "Ethan Wate is no regular old potato. You, sir, are a french fry." She popped it into her mouth, smiling.
I laughed and conceded. "Fine. I'm a french fry. But no brown paper, nothing to tel ."
Liv stirred her sweet tea with her straw. "That confirms it. You are definitely on the waiting list for Divinely Delicious Delilah."
"You caught me."
"I can't promise anything, but I wil tel you that I know the librarian. Rather wel , it turns out."
"So you'l hook me up?"
"I wil hook you up, dude." Liv started laughing, and I did, too. She was easy to be around, like I'd known her forever. I was having fun, which, by the time we stopped laughing, turned into feeling guilty. Explain that to me.
She returned to her fries. "I find al the secrecy sort of romantic, don't you?" I didn't know how to answer that, considering how deep the secrets went around here.
"In my town, the pub is on the same street as the church, and the congregation moves directly from one to the other. Sometimes we even eat Sunday dinner there."
I smiled. "Is it divinely delicious?"
"Nearly. Maybe not quite so hot. But the drinks are not quite so cold." She pointed at her sweet tea with a fry. "Ice, my friend, is something you find on the ground more often than in your glass."
"You have a problem with Gatlin County's famous sweet tea?"