Cold Tea On A Hot Day. Curtiss Matlock Ann

of that wall, looking away from it, and behind, where E.G.’s august portrait had hung, was an enormous black-and-white photograph of Marilyn Monroe in the famous shot with her dress blowing up.

      After eyeing that for a startled moment, Marilee’s gaze moved on to the clusters of photographs already hung—the ones of Tate Holloway with Reba and President Nixon, and ones of him receiving awards, and with soldiers, and a curious one of a boy plowing with a mule. She stepped closer for a better look at that one. Next to the faded snapshot of the boy and the mule was one of a lovely blond woman in the front yard of an old house, her arms around two boys.

      “That’s my mother,” Tate told her, coming up behind her. “With me and my brother, Hollis. I’m the older, skinnier one.”

      “And that’s you, plowing with a mule?”

      “Yep. Farmin’ in East Texas in the fifties. My mother took that picture. Mama liked to take pictures.”

      He had come to stand very close behind her. Close enough for his breath to tickle her hair.

      “This is Mama in front of the house me and Hollis bought her.” His arm brushed her shoulder as he pointed at another photograph. “And this is how my daddy wound up.”

      He tapped a photograph of a mangled black car stuck to the front end of a Santa Fe Railroad engine.

      “I like to see where I’ve come from and how far I’ve journeyed and remind myself where I don’t want to go,” he said with practicality. Then, the next second, “You smell awfully good, Miss Marilee.”

      That comment jerked her mind away from the horror of the mangled car. She turned, and her shoulder bumped his chest, because he didn’t move but stood there gazing at her with a light in his clear, twinkling blue eyes that just about took every faithful breath out of her lungs.

      His gaze flickered downward, and hers followed to stop and linger on his lips.

      The next instant she stepped quickly away from him and said as casually as possible, “And just what does that picture mean in your journey?” She gestured at the photograph of Marilyn Monroe.

      “Well—” he sauntered to the desk and laid down the hammer “—I like the touch Marilyn gives the place.”

      “What touch are you going for, exactly?”

      “Oh…I think a photograph like that sets people off balance, for one thing.” He folded his arms, and his strong shoulders stretched his shirt. “And it is lively. I might come in here feelin’ a little too serious about myself and things in general, and I’ll look up there at that beautiful woman—” he looked up at the picture and grinned “—with a laugh like that and those legs goin’ to heaven, and it makes me remember the true secret of life.” He gave a little wink.

      Marilee took that in and took hold of the solid walnut back of the visitor chair, feeling the need to have the chair between herself and Tate Holloway.

      She looked at him, and he looked at her in the manner of a man who was intent on having what he wanted. It was both flattering and unsettling.

      Breaking the gaze, she said, “I need to discuss my job here.”

      His eyebrows went up, “Well, you go ahead, Miss Marilee…as long as you aren’t about to tell me you’re gonna quit.”

      Marilee reacted to this with a mixture of gratification and annoyance. There was something very commanding in the way he spoke, as if he would not allow her to quit.

      “Do you want a raise?” he asked before she could speak. “I can spare twenty more a week—okay…I’ll go to thirty.”

      “I don’t want a raise…but I’ll take it.”

      “I won’t force it on you, if you don’t want it.”

      “I want it. I only meant that a raise wasn’t what I was going to discuss, but now that you’ve offered, I will take it.”

      “Well, since it isn’t a question of a raise, there’s no sense in talkin’ about it.”

      “But we are talking about it now, and I’ll take it. My workload has greatly increased since Harlan and Jewel left.”

      “Okay, twenty dollars a week it is.”

      “You said thirty.”

      He cocked his head to the side and regarded her. “What was it you wanted to discuss about your job, Miss Marilee?”

      Keeping her hands pressed to the chair back, she told him of her decision to remove her children from the final weeks of school and therefore her need to work from home. That she had been so bold as to take the raise before explaining this, and the glint in his eye that showed admiration, gave her courage.

      She explained that until this year, when she had enrolled Willie Lee in school, her arrangement with Ms. Porter allowed her to often work from home, and she had managed very well.

      “I have made arrangements with a high school girl to help me in the summer,” she told him, “but until school ends, I will only have her occasionally in the evening hours.”

      “Well now, I don’t see any problem at all with you workin’ from home,” said her new boss and publisher. “I already have laptop computers coming for everyone, and we’ll be installing a networking system so that any of us can work from anywhere in town, or in the nation, if need be.”

      Marilee thought that The Valentine Voice was suddenly on a rocket, being blasted into the twenty-first century.

      Moving purposefully, her boss went to stand behind his desk, placed his hands on it and leaned forward. “I want you to keep this to yourself for a few days. I’ll tell everyone shortly, but for now, I’m just telling you.” He paused. “We’re going to have to cut the paper to a twice weekly.”

      She took that in.

      He said, “I don’t imagine that comes as any shock to you.”

      “No…it doesn’t.” It saddened her, but it was no surprise. Everyone knew that Ms. Porter had been subsidizing the paper for years, and Marilee, having taken over for Ms. Porter, had consulted a number of times with Zona and knew the great extent to which that subsidizing had run.

      Tate Holloway eyed her with purpose so strong that he leaned even farther forward. “It is my intention to get this paper to be payin’ for itself. I’m out to build somthin’ here, Miss Marilee. And I’m going to need your help to do it.”

      “I’ll do what I can.”

      “I’m countin’ on that, Miss Marilee…. I sure am.”

      Gazing into his twinkling baby-blue eyes, Marilee kept tight hold on the chair back, as if holding to an anchor in the face of a rising, rolling sea.

      Six

      Maybe She’s Human

      Marilee came out of Tate Holloway’s office and closed the door firmly, then held on to the doorknob for some seconds. Behind her, through the door, the low tones of music began—Charlie Rich singing from Tate Holloway’s stereo.

      Pushing away from the door, Marilee wrestled with high annoyance at her new boss. Tate Holloway was way too full of himself.

      The next instant Reggie was sticking a pen in front of her face, saying, “Tell us the news, Ms. James. Are we all goin’ to be swept out to make way for new employees to go with the new publisher?”

      This had been a major worry of Reggie and Leo’s, both being employed at the same place. Mainly it appeared to be a great worry of Reggie’s, since Leo wasn’t given to worrying over steady employment. Before coming to work at The Valentine Voice, he had held various positions in automobile sales, insurance, cattle brokering, photography, trucking and a half-dozen others, several for no more than a week or two before either quitting or being fired. While Reggie defended her husband as trying to