Free April North by Lawrence Block Page B

included Bill Piersall a few pews forward, Danny Duncan a little to her left, and Jim Bregger across the aisle on her right. She seemed to be surrounded by boys who either had gotten into her or who had tried. Bill, for one, qualified on both counts-he had taken his pleasure with her in the woods and he was ready for more.
    She did not want to look at them.
                       G-o-d bless A-m-e-r-i-c-a—
                       Our home, s-w-e-e-t ho-o-o-ome.
    God bless everything, she thought. She closed her hymnal and returned it to the rack where it belonged. She turned to kiss her mother and her father in turn, then followed them all out of the church. Sunday, she thought, should be abolished. What a God-awful way to spend a morning.
    She had never objected to church before. Previously she had even looked forward to it. It was uplifting, in a way, and after a morning spent sitting primly in a clean dress between her parents in the small church she had generally felt a great deal better. But the time she had spent with Craig had changed her feelings on the subject. Craig was almost violently anti-religious, and after being with him she felt the same way.
    She remembered an incident from the night before at his house. They were in bed together at the conclusion of their second bout of lovemaking—her “lesson”—and he looked at her suddenly and said, “You can go to hell now.”
    She didn’t get it at first. She stared at him, thinking that he was telling her to get out and never darken his doorway again, and she wondered what she had done wrong. But he explained soon enough.
    “You can go to hell,” he repeated. “You’ve committed a cardinal sin and you can burn eternally as punishment for it. Do you know what you’ve done?”
    “What?”
    “You’ve slept with a man without being married to him. You’ve parted your lily-white thighs without benefit of clergy. This makes you a sinner, April dear.”
    “I don’t feel like a sinner.”
    “You don’t look like a sinner. Even with your pretty nipples pointing at the ceiling, you somehow don’t resemble the popular stereotype of the sinner. Do you feel sinful, April?”
    “Not just now,” she joked. “Give me a minute to catch my breath, Craig.”
    “Do you know what the only sin is?”
    “What?”
    “Self-denial,” he said solemnly. “That’s the only sin in the world.”
    She closed her eyes briefly. Craig was right, she thought. He was living a good life, a life better by far than that of the sanctimonious hypocrites who cluttered up the world. You only live once, and the value of your life could be measured by the amount of pleasure you received in the course of that one lifetime of yours.
    Suppose I had stayed a virgin, she thought. And suppose I was walking along the road and a car hit me. And killed me. And suppose I died a virgin. She opened her eyes. Bill Piersall was standing in front of her, a determined look in his eyes, his hands planted firmly on his hips. He was wearing a dark blue suit. It was the only suit he owned, and he wore it once a week, to church and once or twice a year to a formal dance—these were the only times he wore a suit
    “I have to talk to you, April.”
    She wondered how many suits Craig owned. At least a dozen, she decided. And a dozen sports jackets and a dozen pairs of shoes, and he probably paid as much for his underwear as William Piersall paid for his whole precious blue suit.
    “You can’t keep on giving me the cold shoulder like this, April. It’s not right.”
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    “April—”
    “You don’t seem to understand,” she said haughtily. “I do not like you. I do not care for your company. You bore me and annoy me.”
    He drew a breath. “I know what it is,” he said.
    “Do you?”
    “I was reading,” he said. “In a book.”
    “I didn’t know you could read.”
    He went on doggedly while she wished he would simply give up and go