Free Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement by Grif Stockley

against me. Her face against my cheek is burning hot. Knowing I shouldn’t, I kiss her.
    For an unforgettable moment she begins to respond but almost immediately pulls back.
    “Will you leave now?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.
    “I need you to do that for me.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say, backing away from her. This isn’t the time to admit that I would like nothing more than to take her back to the bedroom she shared with her husband for almost thirty years.
    Yet, what would be so wrong about that? I cared for her once, and already I’ve begun to do so again.
    At this moment the phone in her kitchen rings.
    Watching me carefully as if I were a shoplifter about to walk out with a bag of cookies in a 7-Eleven, Angela picks up the phone, and her somber expression changes to a smile.
    “Hi, Mrs. Petty, how are you?”
     
    How can that woman still be alive? If it is the same person I think it is, she was an old woman when Hannah and I were children picking up acorns in her yard. Now she apparently lives across the street. I hear Angela ask her if she remembers me. I am in town and stopped by to see her. As Angela talks, I look out the window and wonder if the old snoop has been trying to spy on us.
    Small towns. I have forgotten what it was like.
    Every move I make here will be documented and recorded. After five minutes Angela shakes her head and more or less hangs up on her, explaining to me that she would be kept on the phone for hours. Of course, she remembers me. I was the Pages’ only son who went off and married that nigger woman from Haiti or someplace.
    “You know you can’t hide anything here,” Angela says, primly, not sitting down again. She still wants me to go.
    “I’m surprised that as soon as she noticed your car, she didn’t try to stumble over here on her walker. She can’t get up the porch, though.
    By the way I forgot to tell you she says she remembers you peeing in her backyard when you were five years old.”
    I laugh, not willing to leave just yet.
    “It must have been too regular an event for me to remember,” I say, marveling at Angela’s ability to kindle desire in me. Yet it shouldn’t surprise me, for it was always like this between us. I try to read her
    expression, but I can’t.
    “Would you like to go out sometime?” I ask, hoping I don’t sound too plaintive.
    “You need to go,” she says firmly, coming over to me and taking me by the arm.
    On her front porch with her yearbook under my arm I notice paint peeling above the door.
    The house could almost be considered shabby. I wonder if she’ll have to take out another mortgage if she intends to stay in it. I hug my suit coat to me against a brisk cold wind that has arisen since I’ve been inside.
    “So what happens now?” I ask, not willing to pretend there was no chemistry between us.
    Angela points with her chin past me.
    “I’ll be answering a lot of questions about you.”
    I turn and look across the street to see movement behind a curtain.
    “This place is creepy,” I say.
    “I can’t believe you stayed.” I wonder how many people know I was here for a couple of hours Thanksgiving weekend. Sarah and I didn’t see anyone other than a black octogenarian female who lived in public
    housing for the elderly. Angela hasn’t mentioned it, and with other things on my mind, I haven’t either. If I asked her, I’m sure she wouldn’t divulge the reason I was here.
    “I need to figure out what just happened,” she says dryly, “before I can begin to worry about the last thirty years.”
    “I know you do,” I say, wondering if she feels anything for me at all.
    Angela could continue mourning for Dwight for months or even longer.
    Given my history, I couldn’t complain if she did.
    “Obviously, I’d like to see you again,” I say awkwardly, trying to forget how hurt Amy would be to hear these words coming from my mouth.
    “But as friends, okay?” she says, warily, hugging herself in the cold.
    I