The Books of Fell Read Online Free Page B

intended to go with you at all!” my mother said.
    “Mom, Keats was all excited this morning when the orchid arrived. She bought me a purple silk bow tie.”
    “I’d like to give her a purple fat lip!” my mother said.
    “I’d like to give her a purple punch in the eye!” Jazzy said.
    “Do you want your omelet firm or runny?” I asked.
    “Runny,” my mother said.
    “Runny out the door and give Keats a purple kick in the pants,” said Jazzy.
    “Jazzy,
eat!”
my mother said. “So how did you find out that Quint Blade took Keats to the prom?” My mother sat with her elbows on the kitchen table, waiting for an answer.
    I began to tell her about my run-in with Woodrow Pingree and somewhere near the end of the story, speak of the devil, the telephone rang.
    “John Fell?” said Mr. Pingree. “What are you doing for dinner tomorrow night? Would you like to come here?”

chapter 5
    Sunday morning I took Jazzy to St. Luke’s, where she went to Sunday school and I went to church.
    When we got back, Mom was standing in the kitchen, holding the phone’s arm out with her left hand, muffling the receiver with her right. “It’s Herself!” Mom said. “She’s been calling you all morning.”
    We had our dinner at one o’clock on Sundays. I watched Mom pull a ham out of the oven while I spoke with Keats.
    “I have to tell you something, Fell.” “I already know.”
    “How can you already know when you don’t know what I’m going to say?”
    “You’re going to say you went to the prom with Quint Blade.”
    “God, I hate this town!” Keats said. “You can’t even turn around in this town without everyone talking about it!”
    “I’m going to be over your way tonight,” I said. “Why don’t we arrange a secret meeting on the beach?”
    Behind me, Mom said, “Don’t let her treat you like some backdoor Johnny.”
    “What did your mother just say?” Keats asked.
    “She said I was a backdoor Johnny.”
    “Oh, Fell! She’s mad at me, too, I suppose.”
    “Why don’t we meet clandestinely?” I asked. Keats once wrote a poem that began “Clandestine skies beckon me,” which kicked off a long harangue from her English teacher, who said skies couldn’t be clandestine.
    “A clandestine meeting,” she said, “under a clandestine sky. Shall we do something terribly clandestine?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I’m glad you’re not furious, Fell.” “I’m furious. I’m just holding it in.” “What do you mean you’re going to be over my way?”
    “I’ve got a date.”
    “You’re stabbing me right through the heart, Fell. Last night wasn’t my fault.”
    “Meet me down on the beach at nine o’clock.”
    Keats laughed. “That’s not a very big date if you can get away by nine.”
    “Meet me down near Beauregard,” I said.
    “I love you, Fell.”
    “We’ll talk about it.”
    When I hung up, Mom said she thought there was something fishy about that dinner invitation from Woodrow Pingree.
    “I think he thinks I’ll make a good companion for his son.”
    “What’s wrong with his son that he needs a companion?”
    “I think he’s this loner or something.”
    “So are you. That’s like the blind leading the blind,” she said. “What’s in it for you? Are you just going there so you can be within panting distance of Adieu?”
    “No,” I said. “I’m just curious.”
    “That killed the cat, and it killed your father, too.”
    “At least he was being paid for it.”
    “Paid to sit around, stand around, hang around — that was no life. Tell Jazzy she’s to set the table. How was the new minister’s sermon?”
    “Jazzy?” I shouted into the living room. “Set the table! The new minister is one of those guys who makes you feel good about something you shouldn’t feel good about,” I said.
    St. Luke’s had just tossed out Reverend Shorr. In his place they’d hired Jack Klinger. He was a new, dynamic, Yuppie preacher who’d given a sermon the week before in favor of