Free The Last Girls by Lee Smith

delicious. It’s fun to cook for Gene because he likes food so much. (Hawk, on the other hand, always carries a pocket counter for fat grams.) That particular afternoon (Was it only two months ago? God, it seems like years) Courtney had fixed lamb chops and new potatoes with mint from Gene’s herb garden right outside his kitchen door. She’d left the door wide open, letting the spring sunlight and Gene’s cats, Stan and John, into the dingy old fifties kitchen. She’d set two places at the red and gray plastic dinette table. She knew he’d bring her some flowers for lunch, which he did, five blue irises in a slim yellow vase.
    â€œBeautiful,” she said.
    â€œYou certainly are.” Gene Minor kissed her, always an unsettling experience. Well, thrilling. Always a thrilling experience. Gene perused his pantry, chose a bottle of wine, and opened it with a grand flourish. “Ah!” he said, swirling the red Bordeaux around and around dangerously close to the lip of the wineglass, a parody of the connoisseur. He inhaled deeply. “An impertinent little red,” he pronounced. “Good body, though. Nice ass.” Courtney giggled. He winked broadly at her, behind his thick glasses. Gene Minor was legally blind, which might be the reason he thought she was beautiful. Or maybe he thought she was beautiful because he’d thought so in high school, and he was stuck fast in time. Whatever! Courtney didn’t care. The fact was that when he took his glasses off to make love to her, his eyes were as round and blue and unfocused as baby-doll eyes, as plates. When he turned them toward her, she could see herself there as that hopeful girl, that cheerleader she used to be long before she grew up and got so old and so responsible.
    Time stood still in Gene’s house. Even the jeweled kittycat clock in his bedroom ticked along two hours and twenty minutes late, so that if you ever wanted to know what time it was, you had to add two hours and twenty minutes to whatever it said. The first time she camehere, years ago, Courtney had been amazed by this system. She’d said, “Why in the world don’t you get it fixed? Or just get a clock that tells time?”
    But then she got to know him.
    Gene is a big man, close to three hundred pounds. Courtney loves to lie in bed with her arms around him feeling that thick layer of fat. Gene Minor is like a seal, like a warm fur coat. He turns Courtney on and comforts her, both at the same time. Yet she’s never able to fall asleep the way he can on those Wednesday afternoons after making love, instantly as a baby. In fact, Courtney never naps, she’s always too keyed up. She’s lucky to get four or five hours of sleep a night, often lying awake for hours as lists run through her mind.
    Here, at Gene’s house, she had finally learned to leave the dirty dishes on the table when they went to bed, but still she couldn’t sleep. And today she was really on edge, she didn’t even know why. Finally she had gotten up and put on one of Gene’s huge shirts and walked into the kitchen. It was an army-green work shirt she’d never seen before, with BOBBY stitched onto the pocket. Gene had probably bought it at the Twice As Nice store—he loved old clothes, costumes, and dressing up. To be as smart as he was, Gene was an almost childish man. Courtney smiled, remembering the time he had appeared for lunch in a pink silk kimono, to her horror. But it was hysterical, she had to admit. Stan and John were on the dinette table, gnawing at the lamb bones. They didn’t even look up when she came in.
    On impulse, Courtney had crossed the kitchen and called her home answering service. There was a message from Anne Weaver changing the date of the upcoming Friends of the Library meeting and a message from Ellen Henley, Hawk’s secretary, saying that so-and-so was still waiting for him but would have to leave by noon, and