Read Hot Spot for Free Online Page A

itchy-kitchy-coo stuff makes me as sick as it probably makes them, so I just said, “How do you do?” Surprisingly, she stared back at me as gravely as her aunt and said, “How do you do?”
    Then I thought of the funny name. “Gloria Two?” I asked.
    Gloria Harper smiled. “They named her after me. And then when I came to live here it was a little confusing. Mostly we just call her ‘Honey.’”
    “Isn’t that confusing too?” I asked.
    She stopped smiling. “Why?”
    “Doesn’t anybody call you that?”
    “No.”
    “They should. It’s the colour of your hair.”
    She shook her head. “It’s just sunburned.”
    She took Gloria Two inside to put her to bed. When she came back I was admiring the watercolours on the walls in the living room. I recognized one of them as being the wooden bridge over the river, the one we’d crossed going out to the oil well.
    “They’re good,” I said. “Did you do them?”
    She nodded. “I don’t have much talent, but it’s fun.”
    “I like them.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    We went out and sat down on the porch with our feet on the steps. A cocker spaniel came around the corner, looked me over, and jumped into the porch swing. I handed Gloria a cigarette and we smoked, not saying much. The honeysuckle vines looked like patent leather in the moonlight and the night was heavy with their perfume.
    “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she asked quietly. “Sometimes when it’s quiet like this you can hear the whip-poor-wills.”
    We listened for them and it was very still now, but we didn’t hear any.
    “Well,” she said. “They’re kind of sad anyway.”
    “They’re an echo or something. I think the ones you hear have been dead for a thousand years or so.”
    She turned her head and looked at me. “Yes. I never thought of it before, but that’s the way they are.”
    Her eyes were large, and they looked black here in the shadows. “You’re very pretty,” I said.
    “Thank you. But it’s just the moonlight.”
    “No,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about the lighting.”
    She didn’t say anything. I snapped the cigarette and it sailed across the fence. “Look,” I said. “What’s with Sutton?”
    You could see her tighten up. She was there, and then she was going away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Well, I guess it isn’t any of my business.”
    “Please—” Her voice was strung out tight and she was unhappy and scared of something. “It’s— You’re just imagining things, Mr. Madox.”
    I started to say something, but just then a car pulled up in front of the gate and stopped. A boy in white slacks got out and came up the walk. He was about twenty-one and his name was Eddie Something and he was home from school for the summer. The three of us sat on the steps and talked for a while, about how hot it was and about school and about how many of them were going right into the Army.
    “What outfit were you in, Mr. Madox?” Eddie Something asked.
    “Navy. I got out on a medical and went into the merchant marines.” I thought of the “Mr. Madox” and the fact that we were talking about two armies ten years apart. What was I doing here, talking to these kids? Getting off the steps, I flipped the cigarette away and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”
    “You don’t have to go, do you?” Gloria asked.
    “Yeah,” I said. I went out and got in the car and rammed it towards the highway, full of a black restlessness and angry at everything. Driving around didn’t do any good. I drove out to the river and went swimming, and when I came back to town it was still only ten o’clock. The rooming house was thunderously silent. Even the old couple in the next room had gone somewhere. I mopped the sweat off my face and tried to sit still on the bed.
    Well? she said. She sat on the chair with her legs stretched out and the toes of the wedgies touching and stared at me, sulky-eyed, over ripe, and spoiling, and said, Well?
    Well?
    Everything