lose his mind. She suited him as no other woman had.
He fell over on the bed, but sat up quickly when the musty odor of their lovemaking aroused him. “What do I do now?” he asked aloud. “She couldn’t get away fast enough. This prosthesis turned her off, and she was in such a hurry to leave that she didn’t even take the pains to hide that from me.” He knew he wouldn’t sleep, so he showered, changed the bedding to remove that reminder, went to his den and turned on the television. On the coffee table sat the two glasses he had placed there earlier, hers empty and his untouched.
“It’s a lesson I won’t forget,” he said. “Neither Ruby nor any other woman who’s likely to interest me will settle for a man with one leg. I might as well accept that and get on with my life.” He went into the kitchen to make coffee, turned on the tap and stopped with his hand suspended in the air. “Maybe it wasn’t my leg. Maybe I was mistaken. I thought I gave her all that a woman could ever want, but maybe I was so carried away with what was happening to me that I got it wrong. Yeah, that’s it. My prosthesis doesn’t look that bad. Oh, I don’t know. I’ll learn to live without…Oh, hell!”
In his semidark living room, Luther sat in the early-morning quiet, thinking of his life, of the woman he loved and had possessed but couldn’t have, of the family he wanted so badly. He had to fight back the threatening depression. He couldn’t let it sink him. And why should he? His mind brought back to him the story of Derek LaChapelle, who had won eight varsity letters at Northbridge High in Northbridge, Massachusetts, while playing with a prosthetic left leg. Derek had lived with it from childhood, Luther said to himself. At least he’d grown up with both legs, and nobody who didn’t know would guess he had a prosthesis.
He punched the sofa pillow and said to himself, “Heck, I’m going back to bed.”
Several afternoons later, while sorting out a problem in her office, Ruby answered a telephone call from Pearl.
“Paige and I are going to paint our bathroom and kitchen,” her sister said. “This yellow on the walls now was Opal’s suggestion. She loves yellow, but I’ve gotten to the place where I can hardly stand it. D’marcus will see so much yellow in his place that he’ll think he’s got jaundice. Say, why don’t you come over and help us?”
“Okay. I can leave here around five-thirty, but I’ll have to run home and change.”
“Good. Paige bought some frozen quiches, and we can make a salad. See you later.”
Ruby hadn’t been in the apartment Pearl shared with Paige more than half an hour when Luther walked in with containers of paint, two rollers and some paintbrushes. She stared at her sister. “Why didn’t you tell me he’d be here?”
Her face the picture of innocence, Pearl merely shrugged. “He who? You can’t be talking about Luther. Anything wrong with you two?”
“Of course not,” Ruby said, so quickly that Paige’s eyebrows shot up. “I mean, what could possibly be wrong with Luther and me?”
“Nothing,” Paige said. “The two of you left Opal’s reception when it was still going strong, and my tongue almost dropped out. Arm in arm is what I saw with my own two eyes.”
“You’re imagining things,” Ruby said.
“Maybe she was, but I wasn’t,” Pearl said. “I also didn’t imagine all that champagne you drank. I know you were happy for Opal, but you didn’t have to drown yourself in it.”
“Now, look here. I—Oh, hello, Luther.”
Pearl and Paige stared at Ruby. “Did you two have a fight?” Pearl asked without looking directly at either of them.
“If we did, I don’t remember it,” Luther said, his gaze piercing Ruby with an unmistakable and unspoken accusation. “Why do you ask?”
“’Cause you’re acting like you just met,” Paige said.
“Where do you want me to put this stuff?” Luther asked Pearl. “If I’d known you planned to paint this evening, I’d have worn something appropriate. If you can hold off till Saturday, I could do most of it myself.”
He went to the refrigerator, opened it and poured a glass of orange juice. “I love orange juice,” he said. “If I thought I could tolerate the local politics, I’d move to Florida.”
“Thank God you can’t tolerate them,” Pearl said. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“You’d manage,” he said. Suddenly, Ruby realized that both Pearl and Paige were staring at her. Wasn’t she the Lockhart who was closest to Luther? Yet she hadn’t reacted to his suggestion that he preferred Florida to Detroit. Her second slipup. The first was not hugging him when he walked in.
Luther seemed preoccupied and in a hurry. “I’ll just set this stuff in the pantry, Pearl. If you need me to help you with it, give me a ring.”
“You going?” Pearl asked him, obviously astonished.
“Yeah. Call me if you need me.”
“Something’s gone wrong,” Pearl said to Ruby after Luther left. “You two are always like two peas in a pod. Did he give you a hard time about drinking all that champagne and playing up to him at Opal’s reception?”
“I didn’t play up to him,” Ruby said.
Paige rolled her eyes. “Girl, if you think you didn’t, then you really did have too much to drink.”
“Right,” Pearl said. “And if you don’t ever get kissed again, he sure laid one on you when you led him out to that little anteroom. Darned if I would have thought he had it in him.”
A frown distorted Ruby’s face. “I don’t believe a word of that, and if you two don’t stop putting me on, I’m going home.”
“My advice to you is lay off the drinks,” Paige said. “If you don’t remember that, you don’t know what you did after you left there.”
“Your imagination is getting out of hand, Pearl,” Ruby said, wondering why she hadn’t stayed home. She didn’t even like quiche. “Get off my case, or I’m leaving.”
“I haven’t said a thing,” Paige said. “It didn’t used to be so easy to yank your chain, Ruby.”
“Leave her alone,” Pearl said. “When I wake up tomorrow, I don’t want to see anything yellow. Let’s get started.”
Ruby wrapped her hair in a hand towel, grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, a roller and a can of paint, and went to the bathroom to begin painting. Luther had hardly acknowledged her presence. Would a man be so cool if he thought you were good in bed? She doubted it. And especially not Luther who, for almost as long as she could remember, had encouraged her in everything she did. Maybe she hadn’t satisfied him. She couldn’t remember how he’d reacted in the end. She only knew that he’d made love to her as if she were the queen of his heart, and she had seemed to float on a cloud, and then go higher and higher until she exploded in relief.
A tear fell on her hand. How could I do that? I’m so ashamed. He doesn’t want to be around me. I drank so much champagne I don’t know what I did to…Why did Luther make love to me?
“What
