A Special Relationship by Yvonne Thomas Page B

beside her anyway.
      Carrie felt a sudden jolt of excitement when Robert’s large body sat beside her.   She began talking, rambling even, anything to keep her sense of awkwardness from becoming too apparent. Why this man was affecting her this way was a mystery to her, but it was undeniable.   “That water tasted great,” she said.   “It’s not from the tap, is it?   It’s like that spring water, that bottled water you can buy at the Pigly Wigly?”
      Robert almost smiled.   “I’m not sure, but I believe so,” he said.
      Carrie looked back at him.   She was sitting on the edge of her seat, but he had leaned back in a slouched position, his legs crossed, his eyes seeming to stare right through her.   “You aren’t sure?” she asked him.   “You mean to tell me you don’t know where your own water comes from?”
      “It’s always here is what I mean,” he said.   Carrie, however, still stared at him.   Not because, as Robert thought, she didn’t understand him, but because she couldn’t take her eyes off of him.   “I don’t go out and buy it,” he added.   That still didn’t stop Carrie’s stare.   “You’ll have to ask my secretary.   I’m not in charge of the water.”   He finally said this when it was obvious to him that nothing he said was going to satisfy that curious look on her face.
      “What are you in charge of?” she willed herself to ask.  
      Robert smiled.   “Too much,” he said.
      “Is this your office?”
      “Yup.”
      Carrie looked around.   “It’s very nice.   It’s certainly a lot for one person.”
      “Agreed.   But in my line of work you have to impress or you may not seal the deal.   It’s the art of the deal, that’s all.”
      “That’s stupid.”
      Robert smiled.   “Is it?”
      “Of course it is.   If I want to make a deal with somebody I wouldn’t give a flip nickel what their office looked like.   I would be more concerned about their competence and what all they could do for me.   Know what I’m saying?”   She asked this and looked back at him.   Those eyes of hers seemed to stun him again and he blinked.
      “I know exactly what you’re saying,” he said.   “And I agree with you.”
      “But you keep up appearances anyway?”
      “That’s right.”
      “Why?   You aren’t the boss?”
      “Yes, I’m the boss.”
      “Just not the boss of yourself?”
      Robert smiled.   Sometimes he wondered.   “I think I am,” he said.  
      Carrie shook her head aggressively.   “That’s the difference between you and me,” she said.   “I know I am.   I used to give my mama fits about it too.   She said I was more stubborn than a Peeping Tom in a girls locker room.”   Robert laughed.   “But I didn’t care what she or anybody else said about that.   You have to know what you believe in and stick to it, no matter what.”
      “Yeah, well, Carrie, you keep on living.   Life has a way of tossing all kinds of twists and turns into that straight line of beliefs you talk about.”
      “I’m sure it does.   But God will see you through.”
      Robert didn’t respond.   He used to believe that too, believed it with every fiber of his being.   Now he didn’t know what he believed.   “What was that all about with Willie Charles?” he asked her.
      “Willie Charles?”
      Robert didn’t respond.
      “Nothing really.   He just. . . He just got on my nerves, that’s all.   It was nothing.”   She knew Willie Charles’ behavior deserved to be uncovered, but there was something about telling a black man’s faults to a white man that didn’t sit right with her.   She just couldn’t do it.  
      “Why were you so terrified if nothing had happened?” he asked her.
      “Terrified?   Me?”
      Robert nodded.   “Okay,” he said, deciding right then and there to forget about it.   She wasn’t about to rat out Willie Charles and he was going to