Free The Loves of Ruby Dee by Curtiss Ann Matlock Page A

but he’s not so old.” Her brown eyes rested on him, and Lonnie wondered what she meant, but he didn’t want to ask and look stupid. Old was old, wasn’t it? Eighty-five was old...the old man was old...what was she thinking?
    “Your resumesays you’re thirty,” he said. “You don’t hardly look it.”
    “I didn’t lie.”
    “Oh, I didn’t think you did. I didn’t mean it like that. You just seem awfully young to be doin’ this kind of work—takin’ care of old people.”
    She kind of smiled and shot him a glance, but she didn’t say anything to that.
    He wanted to kiss her, but he imagined she would take offense. He sure didn’t want to run her off.
    Abruptly she closed her notebook and rose to put away the medicine. “It’s time for me to take a bath and get to bed. I’m an early-to-bed person.” She picked up the notebook and headed out of the room, but then she turned. “If there isn’t anything else you need,” she added, a questioning look on her face.
    Lonnie could have told her about a lot of things he needed—erotic pictures flashed across his mind. And he thought that she could read his mind.
    He shook his head and said no, he was fine. And then he watched her leave, with the dog trailing after her.
    With a confusing disappointment settling heavily on him, he got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. On his way up to his room, he glanced in at the old man, who had fallen asleep—or else was pretending to be. In his room, in the dark, he tugged off his boots, stretched out on the bed, propped against his pillow and leisurely drank his beer. He could look right through his doorway and across the dark hall to the bathroom door. Light shone through the crack beneath it, and he could hear the splashing of water as Ruby Dee D’Angelo dribbled it over her body— a bath, not a shower.
    He imagined her in the tub, her auburn hair curling around her pale face. Her skin milky white all over. His groin warmed pleasurably, and he elaborated on the mental images. He waited to see her when she came out of the bathroom, and fantasized about her appearing in nothing but a towel.
    But he fell asleep before she came out.
    * * * *
    When Hardy opened his eyes, he saw Jooney standing in the doorway. “Jooney?” Good Lord, he was glad to see her! His leg was hurting near to killing him, and she would make it better. Then Jooney came forward, and with keen disappointment he saw it wasn’t Jooney, but that hussy gal.
    “It’s me, Mr. Starr—Ruby Dee.”
    “I can see that! You caught me half-asleep.” It could happen to anyone, coming out of a dream, but everybody thought he was losing his mind. Everybody was stupid.
    He’d been dreaming about Jooney. And as he righted his glasses it startled him to realize how much like Jooney the hussy gal looked. He had noticed it before but passed it off. Now he looked more closely.
    Jooney’s hair had been that same reddish color, though longer. It had fallen in waves all the way down her back. The gal’s eyes were very much the same, though, dark like coffee beans, and her skin was pale as buttermilk. And, by God, she was wearing a gown like Jooney would wear—a white gown that covered her from her neck to her toes, which were bare and peeking out beneath the bottom stretch of lace. He could see the dark shadows of her breasts through the fabric.
    Jooney’s laugh came to him. She would laugh and tease him when he’d gone to feeling her breasts.
    He blinked. It irritated him, that this girl could look so much like Jooney. Jooney had been special.
    “What do you want?” he demanded.
    “I heard you moanin’ and talking. Is your ankle hurtin’, Mr. Starr?”
    “Aw, everythin’ on me hurts. I’m eighty-five.”
    His leg, that blamed bum knee and that blamed ankle, ached like the dickens. That was why he was dreaming so silly, about Jooney. Dreaming of the accident that had ruined his leg forever, back that time he and Jooney had been riding the river, and