Two Shades of Morning Read Online Free

in the hypnotic beat of rain on his jacket, and we kissed without once breaking stride.
    “Let’s don’t go,” he whispered.
    “We got to.” I squeezed him, his stocky body fleshy-warm.
    “Ain’t no law says so.” He lifted me so that my feet cleared a puddle.
    “P.W., don’t!” I squealed. “We’re almost at the door.”
    “We can turn around right now if I say so.”
    We might have too. P.W. was like that; he never did what he was supposed to and I never cared. I would have followed him home, just as I followed him duck hunting and to see his mama and daddy, even though I hated going. He went to church with me on Sundays and I knew he liked to sleep late.
    #
    Robert Dale opened the door and Sibyl’s easy-listening music ghosted around his lanky body. He looked odd against that backdrop of white and glass, like a deer tipping in a whatnot shop. He smiled, his lips patchy-pale, and I thought about him smiling like that at our Beta Club convention in Atlanta. Not really putting on, but stiff because the occasion called for formal. Was he nervous about whether Sibyl would like us? I hated to think of him that uptight all the time. He hugged me, pumped P.W.’s hand, all of us saying what we always said—just tripe—but guarded, definitely guarded tripe. Naturally, he’d be worried about us accepting Sibyl—who could blame him? She was as different as hot from cold, as day from night—I could come up with a thousand opposites.
    “What you been up to?” Robert Dale said to P.W.
    P.W. beamed, his blue eyes stretched, and I could tell he was just as impressed and confused about the house as I’d been yesterday. Then they became strangers, trying out grown-men talk. The scent of roses came first into the room, then the augering timbre of Sibyl’s voice. I’d always thought of rose perfumes as cheap but powerful, quickly growing stale, and decided to test the fact on her.
    “I thought I heard y’all come in.” She clipped on a great gold earring and tossed her head, her neck-length gold hair separating in strands of unset waves, as if she’d shampooed and let it dry naturally. Another mark against her.
    “You’ve met my wife, haven’t you, Earlene?” Robert Dale turned to the stereo console and started reading the cover of a record album. You had to know him as P.W. and I did to know he needed a break from that wearing-down smile and that shopping-mall music.
    “We met yesterday,” I said.
    “Well, don’t you look precious!” said Sibyl and tugged my left sleeve. Then she smiled at P.W., dismissing me. “Isn’t anybody gone introduce me?” she said, and laughter glimmered in the room where rain was only wetness on our clothes. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my husband, P.W.” And while she stepped up her act, I checked her again for signs of cancer: her eyes were a bit drowsy, but her snappy mannerisms concealed any weakness.
    “Did you offer everybody a drink?” she asked Robert Dale.
    “Not yet,” he mumbled, still with his back to us.
    “You’ll just have to overlook Robert Dale’s bad manners,” she said.
    “Anybody want one?” Robert Dale turned, grinning slyly—same grin as when we were children, smoking behind his house.
    Next to the console stereo was a blonde credenza with several bottles of liquor displayed. No wonder Robert Dale was so miserable! Men in our neck of the woods drank—lots of them drank a lot—but they didn’t keep it in the house, and they never offered it to their women.
    “Believe I’ll take a Bud,” P.W. said, sly too, daring me with a guilty grin. I shook my head at P.W.; his neck looked shrunk. Mama would have died if she’d known either had asked me.
    “I’ll have white wine,” Sibyl said, unfazed as she would be in snow.
    Baptist or not, I wished I drank.
    #
    During supper, little things kept popping up to tick Sibyl off with Robert Dale. With each new episode—say, him slouching in his chair, or setting his water glass down