interest, he’d reply, “Let me see. Yeah, but that’s out of our way. See? There’s a Council Bluff there. It’s an Indian meeting place.”
The sides of her mouth turned down as she retorted, “It seems to me those Indians did a lot of meeting.”
He nodded and agreed, “Probably trying to figure a way to get rid of us.”
With some interest, she asked, “Since you teach World History, how did Europeans manage to ‘discover’ all the virgin lands? I understand there were nine hundred tribes of Indians living just in TEXAS at the time the Spanish landed and ‘discovered’ this ‘uninhabited’ country.”
“It’s attitude,” he explained kindly. “It’s like your inability to see mice.”
She disagreed, “It was the traps I couldn’t empty.”
“You threw the trap away with the poor little, limp, dead body still trapped and you bought new traps.”
She observed, “You’re very knowledgeable. I hadn’t realized you were aware of that problem. When did you notice?”
“You kept a neat stack of receipts. They were fascinating reading.”
She slid a sideways look at him. “You were a snoop.”
As he drove along, he moved out his one arm in an entirely open communication of fact with no secrets. “I had to know how our money was being spent so quickly. It was mostly on mousetraps.”
Prissily, she retorted, “I bought an occasional lipstick.”
“A hussy.” He agreed with the label for her.
She tilted back her head and lifted her eyebrows. “I curled my own hair.”
He smiled.
She mentioned, “You’re a tightwad.”
He watched the road kindly. Since he’d lured her attention from the map, he continued his distraction. “In your checking account at home is something close to six thousand dollars, that’s with interest, which is the accumulation of your pin money.”
“Is that what’s paying for this car?”
He licked his smile. “No.”
She reminded him, “We are divorced. You have no responsibility toward me. The money is yours.”
He corrected her, “We’re not divorced, we’re just separated. You’ve had to have room to stretch, and you needed to be away from me to do that because I tend to control.” He elaborated in an aside, “The need to control is just part of being a teacher.”
“I hadn’t noticed control as much as absence.”
He chided her, “You sent my checks back.”
“For almost six years, you’d paid for my room and board, and it was because of your teaching position that I also have my master’s.”
He watched the road as he bit his lower lip in thought. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I thought of you as more than a bedmate. If I’d known you were lending me your body in exchange for your education, I’d have felt more—What are you doing? Stop that!” He grabbed her arm as he swerved the car on the isolated road and pulled to a stop. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
With the door half-open, furiously rigid, her eyes shooting sparks, she said at him over her shoulder, “I was your wife!”
“Aw, honey, I know that. I was teasing.”
“You lecher!”
“Well, yes. But I’m also your husband.” He smiled at the angry woman and soothed. “I was teasing. Honest.”
But she started to cry.
He was stunned. With the car stopped, he turned to her, gentled and concerned. “Did I hurt you?”
She gulped and her trembling voice retorted, “For years.”
He was silent for a while as she barely allowed him to hold her. Her softness was squashed by the smoothed planes of his male body. He rubbed his chest just a bit against her movable breasts, and he groaned.
Then he said in a rather foggy manner, “I hadn’t really understood how young you were.” He moved his face around on hers and his breathing became different. His hands were a little careless.
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