“He’s dating Lizanne?” I said in some surprise. “I haven’t seen her in quite a while. I’ve been mailing in my bill instead of taking it by, like I used to.”

Lizanne was the receptionist at the utility company. Lizanne was beautiful and agreeable, slow-witted but sure, like honey making its inexorable progress across a buttered pancake. Her parents had died the year before, and for a while that had put a crease across the perfect forehead and tear marks down the magnolia white cheeks, but gradually Lizanne’s precious routine had encompassed this terrible change in her life and she had willed herself to forget the awfulness of it. She had sold her parents’ house, bought herself one just like it with the proceeds, and resumed breaking hearts.

Bubba Sewell must have been an optimist and a man who worshiped beauty to date the notoriously untouchable Lizanne. I wouldn’t have thought it of him.

“So maybe he and Lizanne have broken up, he wants to take you out?” Lillian always got back on the track eventually.

“No, I’m going out with Aubrey Scott tonight,” I said, having thought of this evasion during her recital of Bubba Sewell’s marital woes. “The Episcopal priest. We met at my mother’s wedding.”

It worked, and Lillian’s high pleasure at knowing this exclusive fact put her in a good humor the rest of the afternoon. I didn’t realize how many Episcopalians there were in Lawrenceton until I went out with their priest.

Waiting in line for the movies I met at least five members of Aubrey’s congregation. I tried to radiate respectability and wholesomeness, and kept wishing my wavy bunch of hair had been more cooperative when I’d tried to tame it before he picked me up. It flew in a warm cloud around my head, and for the hundredth time I thought of having it all cut off. At least my navy slacks and bright yellow shirt were neat and new, and my plain gold chain and earrings were good but-plain. Aubrey was in mufti, which definitely helped me to relax. He was disconcertingly attractive in his jeans and shirt; I had some definitely secular thoughts.