Read A Person of Interest for Free Online

comb through her hair, without vanity; he winced when he saw her yank hard on a tangle. For an instant the combing exposed shell-like ears and large metal triangular earrings that set off the finely sculpted planes of A P E R S O N O F I N T E R E S T 23
    her face. They struck Lee as an admirably brazen choice for a church gathering. Aileen thrust her comb back in her purse, removed a lipstick, and retraced her mouth quickly in red. Lee realized he was staring, from a distance of inches. Ruth had climbed out of the car without waiting for Gaither, who was standing at the driver’s side with the seat pulled forward, in readiness for his wife.
    “You can get out now,” Ruth told Lee. “The car’s stopped.” As the four of them crossed the parking lot toward the pavilion in the waning twilight, Lee might have been afraid of Gaither’s making him conspicuous, of Gaither with a proprietary arm around his shoulders, gently but firmly propelling him toward introductions, telegraph-ing Lee’s vulnerable foreign godlessness to this church brother and that. But in the same way that Lee’s preoccupations had altered radically once he’d climbed into the car, Gaither’s manner toward Lee now was very different from what Lee had expected. As Gaither and Ruth encountered one group of comrades after another, their formation on foot, which had begun with Gaither and Aileen side by side, quickly reshuffled itself so that they were walking the same way they’d sat in the car. Gaither introduced Aileen to those church members she’d never met, let her exchange her wan greetings with those that she knew, but with the formality past she dropped slightly behind and gazed off at the distant horizon; and of course Ruth shared devout fellowship with each one of the people Aileen quietly snubbed. Soon Aileen and Lee had fallen so many paces behind that Gaither did not even attempt to include Aileen in his conversations; and the farther they penetrated the crowd, the less he seemed to recall she was there.
    Lee also had weathered an early round of brief introductions and also felt himself, to his relief, increasingly forgotten. Ahead of them Gaither seemed ever taller and lighter of step, while beside him stern, humorless Ruth also clasped hands and nodded intently and then spoke with great feeling, about what, Lee was too far to hear. By the time they had reached the pavilion, where, they now perceived, a little band was sawing away on banjo and fiddle without amplification, Lee almost dared to believe that Gaither had brought him not as fodder for proselytizers but to squire Aileen. Then suddenly Gaither was with them again, a large palm flat on each of their shoulders. “I hope you’re both meeting people,” he effused. “Are you hungry? Aileen?” 24 S U S A N C H O I
    “I’m all right,” Aileen said.
    “Lee?”
    “I’d take something,” Lee said cautiously.
    “Good! Come on over here. Where those lanterns are hanging there’s a whole barbecue, with soft drinks and salads and pie. Our church is the nearest to here, so we’re hosts for this evening. I can promise that the food committee will amaze with their efforts. We’re hosting church members tonight from all over the region. There are even folks here from Ohio. Later on there will be just a few prayers and talks, and then we’ll have some square dancing. Oh, come on now”—with a smile at Aileen—“it’s not such an ordeal. George and Shirley are around here somewhere, you like dancing with them. Aileen claims she hates dancing,” Gaither told Lee in tones of amazement.
    “I don’t do it either,” Lee said.
    They finally lost Gaither for good near the barbecue grills. There was, as promised, a tantalizing array of fruit and three-bean and potato salads, and pyramids of charred little burgers taken fresh off the coals and blown immediately cold by the late-April wind. Lee discovered he was ravenous, perhaps as ravenous as he’d been in his life.
    Forgetting