Page 74 of The Hangman's Rope
“Thirty-nine old enough for you?” I asked.
She snored and laughed shaking her head.
“You’re not as ancient as you’re making yourself out to sound,” she said and I smiled.
“Sometimes I feel every bit my age and then some,” I told her.
“Sometimes I feel old and wise beyond my years,” she said softly. “Especially now.”
I nodded slowly, “I think you’ve always been an old soul after a fashion,” I said.
She laughed at that.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“The way you handle yourself,” I said laconically.
She stared at me, eyes glittering in the dark.
“Yeah?” she asked softly.
“Yeah,” I said evenly.
I expected her to ask me to expound on my observation, but she didn’t. She just sat, quietly, watching the fireflies light up among the monuments and graves that stretched out under the hanging Spanish Moss.
I took a deep breath and let it out slow, half expecting to wake up and this entire bizarre conversation being only some kind of a dream.
“You’d really kill for me, wouldn’t you?” she asked some time into the silence stretching between us.
“I told you; I’d already planned on it. Just need to find the fuckers.”
“Do you think that was his real name?” she asked and I shook my head.
“No record of anyone by that name in the area.”
She looked a mix of surprised and vaguely disappointed.
“You’ve really looked into all of this?” she asked finally.
I nodded. “Damn right.”
“Why does that both chill me and comfort me?” she asked.
“Because you’re a lot of things, Lorelai. Beautiful, smart, sweet, gentle, kind, but one thing you will never be is stupid.”
She smiled faintly at that and said, “You’ve no need to flatter me so.”
I chuckled at how formal and old-timey she sounded. Mostly at how she didn’t even realize that she did it.
“You’re right, I don’t need to,” I said picking up her hand and bringing it to my lips. “I like to, though. You’re pretty when you blush.”
She giggled and blushed a brilliant pink that was turned to a shadow beneath her skin by the moonlight and the faint warm electrical light coming through the windows behind us.
I smiled to myself while taking another drink from my beer.
Things had gotten heavy; I was glad I could fuck around and lighten them up a little.
Lorelai sighed beside me a bit later as we listened to the cicadas and other myriads of insect and frog song on the night breeze, heavy with the scent of green and growing things with its underpinning of sweet magnolia blossom and night blooming jasmine.
