Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons Page B

with sweat. Her hair and clothes were sopping with it.
    â€œIt’s always been that way,” she said, not looking at me. “I guess it has something to do with the accident. I don’t know why; I can’t remember it. But it’s the only explanation I can think of.”
    After that I did not tax her with it. The fear had been a terrible thing to see.
    â€œSorry,” I said, on that blistering day. “It’s just been so damned hot, and it won’t let up, and I think dressing for this meeting is the silliest…”
    â€œLook out!” Cecie cried, and I wrenched the car to the left and a short, thick figure scuttled back onto the curb. I slammed on brakes and pulled up at the first of Randolph’s two traffic lights and glared at my victim. My heart was pounding, and my ears rang.
    â€œSorry,” the girl sang out, and smiled gaily. “That’s a pretty car. I wouldn’t mind being hit by that car.”
    Cecie and I simply stared at her. The street corner was momentarily empty. In the merciless white light of afternoon she was grotesque, there was no other word for it. She was very short,almost as short as Cecie, but massive and square. Her head was large and appeared larger because of an appalling permanent that looked as though she had fashioned for herself a helmet of well-worn Brillo; it slid into her shoulders with only a passing nod to a neck. Her face was large and her eyes, behind quarter-inch-thick pink harlequin glasses, swam like a bug’s. All her features sat in the middle of her face as though drawn there by a first-grader. Her nose was pugged far past pertness, and her eyebrows almost met over her eyes. She wore, incredibly, a ruffled, off-the-shoulder red peasant blouse and a flowered, ankle-length skirt over many crinolines, and her non-waist was cinched in with a red elastic belt. She wore red high-heeled pumps on feet that, Cecie said later, looked like Alley Oop’s, and red earrings that dangled from her lobes to her shoulders. She resembled nothing so much as a dwarf peering out of a heap of clothing tossed on the sidewalk by a Gypsy. Her voice was an affected trill. Looking at her was like looking at something both comic and sad, as clowns have always seemed to me. I wanted to avert my eyes.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I muttered. “I was going too fast.”
    â€œNo, it was all my fault, really,” she shrilled merrily. “I’m such a silly. It would serve me right if you had hit me.”
    I could think of nothing to say to that, and felt my heart swell with gratitude when the light changed. I gunned the MG away from there.
    â€œBye,” I heard the crystal tinkle. “I hope we run into each other again!”
    Her hooting laughter followed us like a demented terrier.
    â€œLordy, I hope not,” Cecie breathed. “Did you see that outfit? With my luck she’s probably going to be in every class I have from here on out.”
    â€œNot a chance,” I said, looking uneasily in the mirror. The squat heap of red flowers was still there on the curb, looking after us. “It’s predestined that she’ll be my lab partner.”
    â€œDon’t let the sun set on yuh head in Randolph, pahdnuh,”Cecie drawled. “This here town ain’t big enough for all of us.”
    The chapter meeting was just as bad as it had promised to be, and lasted just as long. Heat and fatigue and pre-rush jitters made us all whiny and picky and contentious, and we fought over every bid we tendered, and over the costumes for most of the skits, and the refreshments for all the parties, and the allotment of duties. We finished with the preferred bids and started on the legacies. Fortunately there were not many that season; our president, Trish Farr, had only a handful of recommendations and photographs to pass around, and discussion of each was perfunctory. Even the objectors could not work up a full head of