Hoodwinked

“Let’s go.”

He put her in the pickup truck, noticing that she didn’t complain about the torn seats and the cracked dash. She smiled at him as if he’d put her in the front seat of a Rolls-Royce, and he felt a twinge of conscience. He knew for a fact that none of the women in his world would have smiled if he’d asked them to go on a date in this ancient, clattering iron rattrap. But Maureen looked as if she were actually enjoying it, and her smile wasn’t a suffering one at all.

“You don’t mind the pickup?” he fished.

She laughed. “Oh, not at all! My dad used to have one. Of course, it was in a lot worse shape than this one. We went on fishing trips in it and threw our tackle in the boot with the ice chest.” Her eyes were dreamy. “I remember so many lazy summer days on the bayous with him and my mother. We didn’t have much money when I was a child, but it never seemed to matter because we had so much fun together. Both my parents were educators,” she explained belatedly. “That should give you an idea of their combined incomes.”

“Yes.” He put his almost finished cigarette to his lips. “Ironic, isn’t it, that we pay garbagemen in the city more than we pay the people who educate our children and shape the future. Football players are paid millions to kick a pigskin ball around a stadium, but teachers are still being paid like glorified babysitters.”

“You don’t sound like a football fan,” she said.

“I like ice hockey,” he mused. “And soccer.”

“You’re built like a football player,” she murmured shyly.

He flashed her a smile. “Believe it or not, the school I attended didn’t have a football team. My father refused to let me participate in what he saw as an educational wasteland.”

“You didn’t participate in sports at all?” she persisted.

“I did join the wrestling team,” he said with a grin. “I was school champion two years running and graduated undefeated.”

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