Palmetto Moon by Kim Boykin Page B

pond to death. She peers out onto the moonlit lake until she sees the massive gator impersonating a log, and then she draws her knees up to her chest like a little girl.
    “Vada?” She nuzzles closer to him. “Can I kiss you?”
    She turns her face up to his, and her smile dissolves into yearning as they move toward each other. His lips graze against hers, nuzzling them so that when she runs her tongue across her lips it touches his. He can’t help but be tentative, like she’s breakable, like what they have is breakable, but the kiss deepens. Her breathing quickens, and Frank is sure he can feel her heart beating against his.
    Floodlights come on, blinding them, and the old woman who took their ticket hollers that the dance is over and everybody has to clear out. Frank’s forehead is still pressed against Vada’s. He’s afraid to move, afraid the spell will be broken. He helps her up, and she looks up at him and smiles. “Frank?” There’s something monstrous and wrong about this night ending, about taking her back to the boardinghouse. Frank wants to take her away from here, but he doesn’t think she’s ready for happily ever after with him, at least not yet. She puts her hands on his face and runs her thumbs across his stubble. “Thank you. This was the most perfect evening ever.”
    They walk back to the car, hand in hand, looking at each other like lovers. He wants to be her lover, wants to be what she wants, what she needs. He opens the door for her; she slides in and over to the middle of the bench seat. He drives with his arm around her and doesn’t give a rat’s ass if Miss Mamie is watching when he pulls up to the house. He doesn’t ask for permission to kiss her. He doesn’t have to. She presses into him, and he feels that same current pass between them as when he first shook her hand, multiplied by a thousand.
    “I have to go.” She presses her forehead against his.
    He gets out and opens the door for her, taking her hand, easing her out of the car without taking his eyes off of hers. She looks at the house and then gives him a little wave. “Thank you again, Frank, for a wonderful evening.” She starts up the walkway ahead of him, her way of asking him not to walk her to the doorstep, not to kiss her good night in front of God and everybody.
    “Vada?” She turns and takes his breath away. The familiar figure at the lace curtains raps on the window, making the panes rattle ominously. At the most, he is a few feet from her, but it feels like more. “What do you want from me?” The question didn’t come out at all like Frank meant it to, or maybe it did. “Whatever it is, I meant what I said. I’ll do it.”
    “After I tell you, you might change your mind.”
    “Never.”
    “Do you have to work Wednesday night?” Frank shakes his head and says the diner’s not open in the evenings, and only for breakfast that day, like the majority of Christian businesses that close early for midweek prayer services. “Pick me up for church around 5:45. We’ll talk after that.”
    The porch light comes on, and the front door opens. Miss Mamie comes out onto the stoop with her hands on her barn-size hips, giving Frank her best burn-in-hell look, and he just might for what he’s thinking about doing if she gets between him and his girl. He nods his head at Vada and gets back in the Plymouth, knowing he won’t sleep a wink tonight.

    “You better watch yourself, missy. You being a schoolteacher and all. Staying out until eleven o’clock? I told you when you rented the room I wouldn’t stand for any cavorting.”
    My body is still flush from Frank’s good-bye, but I’d burn every last pair of shoes I own before I give this busybody the satisfaction of thinking she’s shamed me. “Miss Mamie, I was not, as you say, cavorting. I was on a proper date with Frank Darling, who, by the way, is a perfect gentleman.”
    My tone is giving the old bat the vapors. “Furthermore, I overheard you on the