Free Grave Concern by Judith Millar Page B

reading her mind.
    Kate began to shake. With love or fear, she couldn’t tell.
    â€œI’m shaking,” she said, and hearing herself only made it worse.
    J.P. stopped, took off his wool army coat and held it while she got in. He took her hand again, and they continued. Down to a jean jacket, J.P. stopped and shook himself violently, like a dog after a swim. Pulled a cigarette from somewhere and perched it on his lower lip. Tore a match from a matchbook. Suddenly, he ducked at a tree-stump by the curb and swiped the match on it. With a little grunt, he shook the match out again, removed the unlit cigarette from his mouth, and stuck it behind his ear.
    â€œWhat was that all about?”
    No response. Kate continued to shake, and now she knew why: the gravitational pull of J.P.’s body. She was close to breaking point.
    J.P. began to talk about his little brother, a whiz with numbers who had made his math teacher’s life so miserable, he’d called it quits mid-year, quit the priesthood and moved to Maui. “He’s a professional surfer now. Even plays the ukulele.”
    Kate noticed J.P.’s knuckles: red. The one cheek she could see was mottled with cold. “I never knew surfers got paid,” she said, amazed.
    â€œDamn right,” J.P. said. “As many pineapples as they can eat. Oh, and Speedo bathing suits. Plus, as an extra bonus, they get free baby oil rubbed all over them daily by a gorgeous broa — uh, girl, wearing nothing but a lei. So they get a good tan.”
    â€œThe surfers or the girls?”
    â€œBoth.”
    Kate laughed. Who cared that he was making it all up? She could walk along listening to him make up stuff for hours.
    â€œSpeaking of girls, you ever see my sisters? Tennis nerds. No shit, they’re lopsided.” He slumped over sideways and began crookedly stumping along, one arm swinging limp. “Got one gigantic arm and shoulder, one spaghetti-arm. Both of them, no kidding — like, uh, who’s that guy in Phantom of the Opera?”
    â€œQuasimodo.”
    â€œYeah, him.”
    â€œThey got humpbacks, too?” Kate said now, getting into the spirit.
    â€œNah. Well, sort of.”
    â€œSo they’re more like quasi -Quasimodos.”
    J.P. pulled back and looked her over like a coach sizing her up for a team. “Heh, yeah. I guess you could say that. Quasi -Quasimodos. That’s good.”
    Kate got braver. “Okay, so what do your sisters haunt? No opera around here.”
    â€œNo kidding. No, I’ll tell you what they haunt. What they haunt is the ‘All-Ontario Youth Blackfly Open Circuit.’ ”
    â€œRight, that’s a good one.” Kate was hoping to sound sophisticatedly skeptical.
    â€œNo shit. That’s really what it’s called.”
    They walked on. Kate was glad for the coat and pulled it tighter.
    J.P. began talking again, still on the tennis-sisters theme. “You should see them practising after school with Sisters Lucy and Marguerite, running around the court in their black habits. It’s fuckin’ Phantom meets giant mutant bats.”
    Picturing this, Kate began to laugh. And laugh. Just when she seemed laughed out, the image would return to set her off again.
    â€œDid I mention the nuns?” J.P. said, smiling. “I finally figured out how they decide which ones to hire. So the thing is, they specifically hire every nun for two things.”
    Weak with laughter, Kate declined to ask what.
    â€œWhat, you ask?” J.P. said. “Hey, since you’re so cute,” he winked, “I’ll fill you in. So first they bring them in from some nun factory on a trial basis to find out how much they hate kids. They hire whoever comes up to ten on the scale, that’s the highest. And then, the other thing they check” — here J.P. slipped his arm around Kate’s shoulder, which set her aquiver — “the other thing is how ugly she is.