Re: Outside: Clementine & Rudy
For Clementine, covering up sweet wasn't inclination. Covering up sweet was birthright, and it was the way she'd been reared. Covering up sweet, it was just like breathing or Sunday callers, just like her daddy standing broad and quiet in her doorway. You covered up things that weren't right, and that was just the way in the South. Wasn't no different in England, during them country summers, and no one said a thing that was bad or ugly. Life, when you were real wealthy, it was 'bout appearances. Clementine, her entire life was 'bout appearances.
Wasn't real surprising that her death was more of the same.
As for that stinger, it wasn't hid real deliberate. Clementine, ever since she was real small, wanted someone to see. Thing was, no one ever did see, and now there wasn't a thing to be done, but sting.
Or run.
Running was what she did now, under the surly man's arm, and then back out into the Repose night. She didn't stray past the bar's porch, and she just leaned on back against a beam there, glass to her lips and that bourbon on her lips. Funny, but everything tasted wrong lately, like she was tasting through memory.
She waited for him to join her, and she pointed her glass toward the bar doors. "My husband. Ex-husband. Weren't married for real. All arranged by our families, neatlike, until he took off a month ago. Man just came back, thinking there wasn't a thing wrong with disappearing weeks at a time." She focused hazel eyes on him direct. "You been married, sugar? Can't tell if you seem the type. You're real quiet and strong, and womenfolk are real fond of men like you. Bet you'd be a real adoring husband, one of them all quiet and protective types. The kind drawn on romance novels they sell in Rite Aid."