Free Impulse by Lass Small Page A

she would react to their knowing their son was— uh— shacked up with a stranger who was claiming to be kin.
    By then, the extended Cougars had begun to realize Amy wasn’t a visitor, she was “one of Trilby’s” offshoots. With their probing questions, it was about then that Amy began to understand about the Spanish Inquisition.
    The questioning was intense. “So? One of the Trilby’s?” That was said with a disbelieving stare.
    One who lies always keeps to the simplest replies. She responded, “I’m not sure. My grandmother’s name was Charity Winsome, but I have no idea about her mother’s name.” And Amy wished desperately that she’d never been tempted to begin this charade.
    However, about that time she saw Chas across the room, and she couldn’t regret his intimacy. Her first.
    Another relative observed in a critical drawl, “You don’t look like us.”
    Chas replied to that, “She has the Cougar dark hair.”
    “It’s different,” was the flat rejoinder. “Hers has a red glint, and ours is black.”
    “Connie’s blond,” Chas mentioned and he did try to keep his face somewhat serious. However, the lights in his eyes danced with his humor.
    “Connie isn’t a genuine Cougar,” was one old lady’s quite tart, dismissive reply.
    An older man decided, “Let’s claim Amy as one of us. As good-looking as she is, who cares? Come here, child, and give your old ‘cousin’ a kiss.”
    Amy did smile, but she pressed back against Chas, who intervened, “Now, now, Bart, remember all the older ladies are here and know you well. You need to behave yourself.”
    So while the younger ones had accepted Amy quite casually— although not with the enthusiasm of Bart— the older ones were suspicious. Amy avidly wished to God she’d never started the farce.
    But if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t now be sharing a suite with her “cousin” Chas. So how could she regret her foolish, impulsive intrusion into the Cougar gathering?
    * * *
    On the hotel’s sixth floor, there were pockets of busily visiting relatives, but there were always several who concentrated on Amy’s background.
    “Who are your parents?” they asked.
    “The Aaabbotts.” There were those extra A ‘s again. She had almost said Allen, her true last name.
    Especially older people tend to pin facts down. One asked, “Where do you live?” A simple question for a simple reply. It was an easy question for almost anyone. Except Amy. How was she to respond with telling everything.
    In her impulsive leap to an affair, Amy had never anticipated the grilling by Chas’s family. It was obvious she would have to attend to the concoction of some sort of background. She hedged her reply, “Well... Dad moves around.”
    “What does he do?” How routine that question is.
    But Amy responded lamely, “Uh...polls.”
    “You’re not very chatty, are you?” was the critical, adult observation.
    Again, Chas replied for her. Very kindly and openly, he told the quizzers, “That’s the way pollsters talk. Haven’t you ever been a victim of a pollster? They say, ‘Answer yes or no— Have you quit beating your wife?’”
    Chas waited for the usual groans that question always brought, then he went on quite loyally, “Pollsters all prefer one-word replies. It simplifies counting answers.”
    Then before the relative could ask any more questions, Chas said, “We have to go. We just stopped by to say hello, but we’re on our way.”
    “Good,” said Cousin Bart. “I’ll go with you.”
    “Not this time.” Chas smiled as he skillfully took Amy right on out of the busily chatting mob. “We’ll be back for the dinner tonight,” he said over his shoulder to those who tried to stop them, and the two escapees left.
    “I’ve always read about running gauntlets,” Amy walked on wobbly legs. “Was that one?”
    “Very similar,” Chas replied with amusement. “Instead of sharp sticks, they have sharp tongues. Some time you will see what they