She caught me at it. “You don’t miss much, do you.” She flexed that finger away from the others. “My husband’s still in Browning. Tends bar there, chases women on the side. We made a great pair.”
She shrugged as if the next didn’t matter, although even I knew it was the kind of thing that always does. “We split. He was jealous. There was this one trucker, Harv, I got a little involved with. Harv’s some piece of work,” she grinned a way that said more than she was saying. “The strong silent type straight out of the movies, you know? Doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s right on the money.” The grin humorously tucked in on itself. “Even looks a little like Gregory Peck if you close one eye a little.” Then her face clouded. “Trouble is, he’s sort of hard to keep up with because he’s on the road so much, trucking here and there. But when he’s around”—her voice dropped to a confidential level—“sparks fly.”
“Holy wow,” I said, as if I knew anything about such matters. “He sounds like a real boyfriend.”
“Real as they come.” She blew a smoke ring as I drifted along on the romantic mood. “We’re more or less engaged, or will be when that husband of mine gets it through his thick head to agree to a divorce.” Dabbing the ash off her cigarette, she mused, “Haven’t seen Harv lately, though. Hated to do it, but I had to leave word for him at the Buster that I’d moved on to The Le Havre.” Then her grin sneaked back infectiously. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, truer words were never. Harv’s good at catching up on things.”
“I bet he is,” I endorsed him sight unseen, talented as he sounded in areas a little beyond me.
“Anyway, what’s done is done,” she said briskly. “You ought to have that in your book.” She mashed out the latest cigarette. “Hey, enough of the story of my life. How’s Dorie these days? Why isn’t she with you?”
“She’s got to have an operation.” I poured out everything, the cook shack and charity nuns and Wisconsin and all, my listener taking it in without saying anything.
When I finally ran down, Letty bit her lip again. “Jeez, that’s rough on both of you. Tough deal all around.” The bus changed speed as the driver shifted gears on a hill, bobbing us against our seatbacks, and when that stopped, Letty still rocked back and forth a little. “You know what? You need something else to think about.”
Reaching in her purse, she took out a compact and redid her lipstick, which surprised me because she’d already been wearing quite a gob. Working her lips together to even it out the way women do, when she was satisfied she snapped the compact shut and asked:
“Ever been kissed?”
“Well, sure,” I stammered. “Lots.”
“Besides nighty-night?”
“Uh, not really, I guess.”
“Scooch down a little like you’re showing me something real interesting in the book there, and turn this way, and we’ll do something about that.” She craned around to make sure no one was watching, and I really hoped the nun wasn’t.
Dazed, I did as she said. And she did what she said, bringing her warm lips to mine in a kiss I felt to the tips of my ears. She tasted like tobacco and lipstick, but a lot more than that, too, although I was too young to put a name to such things.
We broke apart, her first. “There you go, kiddo, that’s for luck.” Grinning broadly, she opened the compact again to show me myself plastered with the red imprint of her lips, as if I needed any evidence, before tenderly wiping away the lipstick with her hanky. “First of many smackeroos in your career,” she said huskily. “You’ll get good at it. Betsa bootsies you will. Now you better scoot back to your own seat, sugar, we’re just about there.” That was true of her and the pink tittytatting that pointed the way. I still was trying to catch up with the dizzying twists and turns of the day.
4.
“HAVRE, the Paris of the prairie,” the lanky driver called out in a mechanical way. “You may disembark if you so wish and stretch your legs. The Greyhound bus depot, proud to serve you, has full conveniences.”