Free Indigo by Richard Wiley Page A

serious calm; it was a professional face, but Jerry was incredulous.
    â€œNot really,” he said, but without answering him Pamela went over and turned the lock on the door.
    Jerry Neal was a dignified man, the principal of the school, and if anyone had suggested that he would allow a strange woman to lock his door and order him up on top of his desk, he’d have been shocked. It was during school hours. “On my stomach or on my back?” he wanted to know.
    Pamela said that for the moment she wanted him on his side, and as close to the desk’s edge as he could get. She then pulled his top leg, the left one, out toward her, making it bend at the knee. “Relax now,” she said. She touched his back and when the muscles there began to loosen she actually fell on top of him, pushing his entire torso toward his chair, away from the natural bend of his upper knee. Jerry heard a line of bones crack, like the tumblers in the school safe. “Hey,” he said.
    Pamela had him roll over to the desk’s other side, and when he was situated properly again she repeated the procedure. After that she popped his neck, cradling his head against her bosom, the softness there nearly making him swoon. Then she pulled on all his fingers and toes. “Easy,” she kept saying. “This won’t do you any harm.”
    And Jerry did feel easy. He paid attention to what she was doing, and it felt good and he told himself such a thing was not at all untoward in a widowed man’s life.
    â€œThat’s enough for now,” Pamela said.
    Jerry looked up at her. It wasn’t enough, he wanted to say, how could anyone think that it was? But when she said, “Well, stand up, walk around,” he propped himself onto one elbow and tried to give her a smile.
    Pamela helped him off the desk and watched him as he walked toward the door. He felt marvelous—better anyway than he had before—and when he said so Pamela laughed. “You see,” she said. “Marge was right and you were wrong.” And then she said, “You really should be seeing someone regularly. At least until these trying times are over.”
    â€œYes,” said Jerry, “I will. What about lunch?”
    It was a ridiculous thing to admit, but Jerry had not been smitten since the day he’d met Charlotte, thirty-five years before. Pamela, however, was businesslike. “I don’t eat lunch,” she said, “and I really do need to get on with my day.” There was a knock on the door that prevented him from saying more, and when he opened it his secretary was there with news that Lawrence Biko would be out of town through the weekend.
    When the secretary left again, Pamela slipped back into her shoes. “It’s been lovely,” she said. “Would you like me to call again?”
    â€œOf course,” Jerry said. “I mean, yes, I would.”
    They shook hands, and Jerry said that he hoped she’d be back soon.
    â€œI am quite busy,” said Pamela. “But yes, sometime soon. We can catch up on everything that’s happened. I mean, of course, everything that’s happened to Marge.”
    Pamela left quickly then, and soon after that Jerry did too. He went home and took another shower and sat alone at the end of his dining table and slowly ate the food that Jules had prepared, washing it all down with wine. Now he was back on track. It had taken time, but he was over the fear he’d felt and ready to face whatever he had to face, ready to clear his name and to get on with the running of his school.
    When he finished his meal Jerry took the wine bottle over to his reading chair and went to the bedroom for his dictionary and his copy of Madame Bovary , in the original French. Reading this book was a project he’d started in Abidjan but had discontinued nearly a year before. Perhaps meeting Pamela had brought it back to mind, perhaps it had been the English