The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

He liked to look at her, too, for she had curly brown hair, expressive brown eyes, and trim ankles and slim hips and a beckoning softness about the rest of her. She was good company, as well, with a subtle wit that emerged as he got to know her better, and which proved a fine antidote to his irony and brittle skepticism. Charlie, who enjoyed an enduring reputation as a curmudgeon, actually started to enjoy being something else for a change, especially when their pleasant evenings together began to end with a few sweetly clinging kisses that promised even sweeter intimacies to come.

But while Fannie may have had some modern ideas about hats and women in business, she was very much a lady of the old school when it came to certain intimacies. She always knew where to draw the line and did it deftly and with grace and good humor—although it did seem to Charlie that the kisses got longer and the line got a little less clearly defined each time they approached it.

And so, by the time Charlie at last recognized that their pleasant evenings and sweetly promising kisses had become a habit (and a slyly, subtly dangerous one, at that, like cigarettes or alcohol, which could sneak up on you and hook you before you were aware that you were caught), it was already far too late. The Darling gossip mill had been turning industriously for weeks and folks had already pegged them as a couple.

Charlie should not have been shocked by this, but he was. And he was even more shocked—exactly as if he had unscrewed a light bulb and put his finger in the empty socket and turned on the switch—when he heard (at Bob’s Barbershop) that Fannie had been overheard to say (at Beulah’s Beauty Bower) that she was expecting a proposal of marriage. Whether she had actually said such a thing, he had no way of knowing. What he knew was that, as far as Darling was concerned, Miss Fannie Champaign and Mr. Charles Dickens were as good as engaged. All that remained was the formal announcement of their wedding plans, which would surely appear on the front page of the Darling Dispatch any day now. And everyone was looking forward to it. Darling loved a roses-and-romance wedding more than almost anything else in the world—except, perhaps, a divorce as juicy as a blood orange.

Poor Charlie. He was in an alarming predicament and he had no idea how to deal with it. He couldn’t stop seeing Fannie without a good reason (he had none, for she was beyond reproach), and without breaking her heart. And even worse (oh, yes, much, much worse!) he couldn’t break up with her without humiliating her in the eyes of the people of Darling. All he could do was berate himself for letting this happen. And of course, he was the one who was at fault here: he should have seen the cliff ahead. He should have stopped them before they got close enough to the edge to look over and see the rocks below.

But Charlie Dickens was not fool enough to be pushed into taking that ultimate step over the cliff, either by Fannie or anyone else. Oh, no! He reminded himself sternly that he had neither the temperament nor the means for marriage. He could barely support himself on what little money the Dispatch brought in over expenses. How in the Sam Hill could he support a wife? And since he had gotten along thus far in his life without one—and very handily, at that—he could see no special advantage to getting married at this late date.

But these arguments were generated by another, more powerful force that Charlie Dickens would not allow himself to recognize. It was fear that kept him from taking that ultimate step: fear of being confined—no, trapped was a better word—in a situation from which he could not escape. This subterranean fear had pushed him out of every relationship that had ever engaged his interest—including his brief and unsatisfying intimacy with Lily Dare (who was every bit as afraid of confinement as he was). It pushed him now to search for a way out of his relationship with Fannie Champaign, some kind of strategy that would deflect any blame from the blameless Fannie and cast it all on himself. Charlie was just enough aware of his feelings to recognize this as a noble impulse and to begin to think seriously about finding that strategy.

And that was where he was when the Texas Star agreed to bring her Dare Devil air show to Darling. This circumstance gave him an idea for a way to deal with what he now thought of as the “Fannie problem.”

He didn’t at all like this idea when it first occurred to him and he kept on not liking it as the idea grew into a plan. To tell the truth, the plan was pretty scummy and he wished he could think of something a little less hurtful for Fannie and not quite so damaging to his own reputation. But while it certainly was not a pretty plan, he told himself that it sprang from the right motive and was the best he could come up with under the circumstances. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to. And the time to do it was now.