Speaking in Tongues

County.)
    Sentimental, a romantic. And accordingly, Sidney Poitier—rather than Samuel L. Jackson or Wesley Snipes—appealed to him.
    So, what would Mr. Tibbs do now?
    Okay, he was saying to himself, let’s analyze it. Step by step. Here’s a girl’s got a bad home life. None of that talk-show abuse, no, but it’s clearly a case of Daddy don’t care and Momma don’t care. So she drinks more than she ought and hangs with a bad crowd—until she meets LeFevre. And seems to get her act together though she falls off the normal wagon every once in a while. And then one night she climbs up to the top of a water tower (and why didn’t she call me, dammit, instead of guzzling a fifth of Comfort with Donna and Brittany, the Easy Sisters?). And once she’s up there she does a little dance on the scaffolding and the cops and fire department come to get her down.
    And she goes to see this shrink . . .
    Who tells her she’s got to break up with him.
    And so she does.
    “Why?” LeFevre had asked her a few weeks ago as they sat in his car, parked in front of her house, on what turned out to be their last date.
    “Why?”
    “It’s not the differences . . .” Meaning the age, meaning the race. It was . . . what the hell was it? He replayed Megan’s little speech.
    “It’s just that I’m not ready for the same kind of relationship you want.”
    And what kind is that? I don’t remember proposing. I don’t think we’ve even talked about our relationship. We just have fun together.
    “Oh, Josh, honey, don’t cry . . . I need to see things, do things. I feel, I don’t know, all tied down or something . . . Living with Bett’s like living witha roommate. You know, her date for Saturday’s the biggest deal in the world. All she worries about is her skin getting old.”
    Old skin? I like your mom. She’s pretty, smart, offbeat. I don’t get it. What’s her skin got to do with breaking up? LeFevre had been very confused as he sat in his tiny car beside the woman he loved.
    “Oh, honey, I just need to get away. I want to travel, see things. You know.”
    Travel? Where was this coming from? I’ve got a trust fund, Mom and Dad’re loaded. I’ve lived in Jeddah, Cyprus, London and Germany. I speak three languages. I can show you more of the world than the Cunard Line.
    “Okay. What it is is this therapist. Dr. Hanson? See, he thinks it’s not a good idea for me to be in a relationship with you right now.”
    Then we’ll back off a bit. See each other once a week or so. How’s that?
    “No, you don’t understand,” Megan had said brutally, pulling away from him as he tried to take the Southern Comfort bottle out of her hand. And she’d climbed out of the passenger seat and run into her house.
    Cruising down I-66 now, LeFevre leaned over and sniffed the headrest to see if he could smell her perfume. Heartbreakingly, he couldn’t. He pushed the accelerator harder, edging up on the gray Mercedes.
    “No, you don’t understand.”
    No, he sure as hell hadn’t.
    Joshua LeFevre had waited a tormented threeweeks then—this morning—woke up on autopilot. He hadn’t been able to take the girl’s silence and the suffocating frustration anymore. He’d driven to Hanson’s office around the time Megan’s appointment would be over. He’d parked up the street, waiting for her to come out. Josh LeFevre could bench-press 220 pounds, he could bicycle 150 miles a day. But he wasn’t going for intimidation. Oh no. He was going to Poitier the man, not Snipes him.
    Why, he was going to ask the doctor, did you talk her into breaking up with me? Isn’t that unethical? Let’s sit down together. The three of us. Josh had a dozen arguments all prepared. He believed he could talk his way back into her heart.
    “No, you don’t understand.”
    But now he did.
    God, I’m an idiot.
    The doctor had her break up because he wanted to fuck her.
    No psychobabble here. No inner child. Nope. The shrink wanted to play the two-backed beast with LeFevre’s girlfriend. Simple as a shot in the head.
    From where he’d been parked near the office he hadn’t been able to see clearly but suddenly, before the appointment was supposed to be over, Megan’s Tempo was pulling out of the lot—with the shrink himself driving, it seemed, and heading north.
    He’d followed the car to Manassas—to Megan’s dad’s farm—where LeFevre’d waited for about twenty minutes. Then, just when he’d been about to pull into the