The next night I had off, and the temperature dropped. It was a Friday, and suddenly I was tired of being alone. I decided to go to the high school football game. This is a townwide pastime in Bon Temps, and the games are discussed thoroughly on Monday morning in every store in town. The film of the game is shown twice on a local-access channel, and boys who show promise with pigskin are minor royalty, more's the pity.
You don't show up at the game all disheveled.
I pulled my hair back from my forehead in an elastic band and used my curling iron on the rest, so I had thick curls hanging around my shoulders. My bruises were gone. I put on complete makeup, down to the lip liner. I put on black knit slacks and a black-and-red sweater. I wore my black leather boots, and my gold hoop earrings, and I pinned a red-and-black bow to hide the elastic band in my hair. (Guess what our school colors are.)
"Pretty good," I said, viewing the result in my mirror. "Pretty damn good." I gathered up my black jacket and my purse and drove into town.
The stands were full of people I knew. A dozen voices called to me, a dozen people told me how cute I looked, and the problem was . . . I was miserable. As soon as I realized this, I pasted a smile on my face and searched for someone to sit with.
"Sookie! Sookie!" Tara Thornton, one of my few good high school friends, was calling me from high up in the stands. She made a frantic beckoning gesture, and I smiled back and began to hike up, speaking to more people along the way. Mike Spencer, the funeral home director, was there, in his favorite western regalia, and my grandmother's good friend Maxine Fortenberry, and her grandson Hoyt, who was a buddy of Jason's. I saw Sid Matt Lancaster, the ancient lawyer, bundled up beside his wife.
Tara was sitting with her fiancé, Benedict Tallie, who was inevitably and regrettably called "Eggs." With them was Benedict's best friend, JB du Rone. When I saw JB, my spirits began to rise, and so did my repressed libido. JB could have been on the cover of a romance novel, he was so lovely. Unfortunately, he didn't have a brain in his head, as I'd discovered on our handful of dates. I'd often thought I'd hardly have to put up any mental shield to be with JB, because he had no thoughts to read.
"Hey, how ya'll doing?"
"We're great!" Tara said, with her party-girl face on. "How about you? I haven't seen you in a coon's age!" Her dark hair was cut in a short pageboy, and her lipstick could have lit a fire, it was so hot. She was wearing off-white and black with a red scarf to show her team spirit, and she and Eggs were sharing a drink in one of the paper cups sold in the stadium. It was spiked; I could smell the bourbon from where I stood. "Move over, JB, and let me sit with you," I said with an answering smile.
"Sure, Sookie," he said, looking very happy to see me. That was one of JB's charms. The others included white perfect teeth, an absolutely straight nose, a face so masculine yet so handsome that it made you want to reach out and stroke his cheeks, and a broad chest and trim waist. Maybe not quite as trim as it used to be, but then, JB was human, and that was a Good Thing. I settled in between Eggs and JB, and Eggs turned to me with a sloppy smile.
"Want a drink, Sookie?"
I am kind of spare on drinking, since I see its results every day. "No, thank you," I said. "How you been doing, Eggs?"
"Good," he said, after considering. He'd had more to drink than Tara. He'd had too much to drink.
We talked about mutual friends and acquaintances until the kickoff, after which the game was the sole topic of conversation. The Game, broadly, because every game for the past fifty years lay in the collective memory of Bon Temps, and this game was compared to all other games, these players to all others. I could actually enjoy this occasion a little, since I had developed my mental shielding to such an extent I could pretend people were exactly what they said, since I was absolutely not listening in.
JB snuggled closer and closer, after a shower of compliments on my hair and my figure. JB's mother had taught him early on that appreciated women are happy women, and it was a simple philosophy that had kept JB's head above water for some time.
"You remember that doctor at that hospital, Sookie?" he asked me suddenly, during the second quarter.
"Yes. Dr. Sonntag. Widow." She'd been young to be a widow, and younger to be a doctor. I'd introduced her to JB.
"We dated for a while. Me and a doctor," he said wonderingly.
"Hey, that's great." I'd hoped as much. It had seemed to me that Dr. Sonntag could sure use what JB had to offer, and JB needed . . . well, he needed someone to take care of him.
"But then she got rotated back to Baton Rouge," he told me. He looked a little stricken. "I guess I miss her." A health care system had bought our little hospital, and the emergency room doctors were brought in for four months at a stretch. His arm tightened around my shoulders. "But it's awful good to see you," he reassured me.
Bless his heart. "JB, you could go to Baton Rouge to see her," I suggested. "Why don't you?"
"She's a doctor. She doesn't have much time off."
"She'd make time off for you."
"Do you think so?"
"Unless she's an absolute idiot," I told him.
"I might do that. I did talk to her on the phone the other night. She did say she wished I was there."
"That was a pretty big hint, JB."
"You think?"
"I sure do."
He looked perkier. "Then I'm fixing to drive to Baton Rouge tomorrow," he said again. He kissed my cheek. "You make me feel good, Sookie."
"Well, JB, right back at you." I gave him a peck on the lips, just a quick one.
Then I saw Bill staring a hole in me.
He and Portia were in the next section of seats, close to the bottom. He had twisted around and was looking up at me.
If I'd planned it, it couldn't have worked out better. This was a magnificent Screw-him moment.
And it was ruined.
I just wanted him.
I turned my eyes away and smiled at JB, and all the time what I wanted was to meet with Bill under the stands and have sex with him right then and there. I wanted him to pull down my pants and get behind me. I wanted him to make me moan.
I was so shocked at myself I didn't know what to do. I could feel my face turning a dull red. I could not even pretend to smile.
After a minute, I could appreciate that this was almost funny. I had been brought up as conventionally as possible, given my unusual disability. Naturally, I'd learned the facts of life pretty early since I could read minds (and, as a child, had no control over what I absorbed). And I'd always thought the idea of sex was pretty interesting, though the same disability that had led to me learning so much about it theoretically had kept me from putting that theory into practice. After all, it's hard to get really involved in sex when you know your partner is wishing you were Tara Thornton instead (for example), or when he's hoping you remembered to bring a condom, or when he's criticizing your body parts. For successful sex, you have to keep your concentration fixed on what your partner's doing, so you can't get distracted by what he's thinking.
With Bill, I couldn't hear a single thing. And he was so experienced, so smooth, so absolutely dedicated to getting it right. It appeared I was as much a junkie as Hugo.
I sat through the rest of the game, smiling and nodding when it seemed indicated, trying not to look down and to my left, and finding after the halftime show was over that I hadn't heard a single song the band had played. Nor had I noticed Tara's cousin's twirling solo. As the crowd moved slowly to the parking lot after the Bon Temps Hawks had won, 28-18, I agreed to drive JB home. Eggs had sobered some by then, so I was pretty sure he and Tara would be okay; but I was relieved to see Tara take the wheel.