Beauty and the Brain (12 page)

“You’ll get your skirt dusty,” Colin pointed
out, sounding grumpy, as if he considered women’s skirts idiotic
things:

She gave him a deliberate smile “Why, thank
you for thinking of my skirt, Colin. I believe I can keep it out of
the dust, though, and I’d like to walk. The air is so fresh and
delicious up here.”

He frowned heavily. “Very well.”

Brenda wasn’t sure, but she thought she
detected a hint of sulkiness in his voice. She hoped it was there,
because it would mean she’d affected him. Perhaps not in the way
she wanted eventually to affect him, but it was a start.

“Here, Brenda, please let me carry your
Bible.”

It was one of her group of attendant
admirers, and Brenda bestowed a gracious smile and her Bible upon
him. “Thank you, Henry. It’s very kind of you to offer.”

Henry blushed. Brenda shot a quick peek at
Colin and found him scowling and looking aggrieved, as if he didn’t
approve of Henry’s overt puppy love. The big putz. It would do
Colin Peters a world of good to be taken down a peg. What he needed
was to fall in love. And to have his love remain unrequited. That
would teach him.

Since Martin was in charge of the Peerless
setup here in the mountains, and since Brenda liked and trusted
him, she took his arm as the group set out to walk to church.

The Peerless crowd took up three whole pews
in the small church and garnered stares from the rest of the
congregation. Colin wasn’t enjoying himself one little bit and
couldn’t understand why he’d decided to join this party. He didn’t
care about attending church, and he didn’t like being the center of
attention. In fact, he hated it. Unless he was lecturing, of
course, but that was a different matter entirely.

He pushed his glasses up his nose and noted
with disapproval that Brenda accepted the stares and amazed looks
as if they were nothing out of the way. And, for her, they
weren’t.

He’d feel better if she’d preen or bask in
the admiration of the masses or do something else that would
indicate her vanity, dash it. But she didn’t. She didn’t even
studiously ignore the rest of the congregation. It would have been
ludicrous to have done so, but Colin didn’t want to allow her even
that much astuteness. In fact, she handled her celebrity
brilliantly. In this instance, she offered a congenial smile to the
world at large and sat down with no fuss at all.

It really wasn’t fair of her to act like a
normal human being, and Colin didn’t like it. He also didn’t
believe it. All this grace and charm was only a pose; he knew it.
She’d forget herself one of these days and act like the
temperamental so-and-so she really was. He could hardly wait.

In the meantime, he sat next to her on the
bench. In order to do so, he had to scuttle in front of Henry, the
ridiculous, lovesick toady, knocking him slightly sideways and
sending him bumping into another pew. Henry frowned at him, and he
frowned back. Drat the silly puppy. Colin was doing him a favor, if
he only knew it.

“I beg your pardon, but would you please
hand Miss Fitzpatrick her Bible?” Henry’s voice was as cold as
Flagstaff in winter.

Colin turned to glare at him and realized he
had something in his hands. It was Brenda’s Bible. He took the
Bible. “Yes. I’ll be happy to.”

Henry gave a low growl, then said, “Thank
you,” as if he begrudged having to say the words politeness
dictated. Silly little twit.

“You’re welcome.” So much for Henry. Colin
sat and practically flung the Bible into Brenda’s lap. “Here. That
fellow wanted me to give this to you.” He heard “that fellow” growl
again.

Brenda gave a start and turned to stare at
him “Good heavens, Colin, I’m sure Henry didn’t mean to put you
out. Is my grandmother’s Bible
that
heavy a burden?” As
Colin seethed, she leaned forward on the pew and looked at Henry
with one of her glorious smiles; the ones that seemed to fade the
sun, blot out the moon and stars, and obscure everything else
around them. Colin shook himself internally and told himself to get
a grip. “Thank you, Henry. I appreciate your kindness.”

Henry, needless to say, blushed. Colin
wanted to throw something. A fit, maybe.

Colin only became aware that the
congregation had been buzzing like a hive of agitated bees when the
organist started playing and folks shut up. When he glanced around,
he saw that nearly every person in the place was still staring at
Brenda, but they’d evidently stopped talking about her.

“I don’t know how you can stand being the
center of attention all the time,” he grumbled under his
breath.

“I’m used to it.” She shrugged. “It’s a
living.”

“I’m sure it feeds your ego considerably.”
It was snippy, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why
he’d said it. He wasn’t normally petty.

“I’m sure it would if I let it.” She
chuckled, a low, sweet sound that made gooseflesh rise on Colin’s
arm s and made him think of lush tropical forests and making love
on a mossy bank beside a waterfall. With birds chirping sweetly in
the trees. Surrounded by flowers; flowers that emitted the same
sweet fragrance he could smell now, very faintly, and which he’d
come to recognize as Brenda’s scent. His sex responded immediately
to the happy notion of making love with Brenda. Thank God nobody
could see. How embarrassing.

This
, he realized immediately, is why
he found Brenda Fitzpatrick so blasted bothersome. She had this
terrible effect on him. He hadn’t even been able to concentrate on
his reading this afternoon because he kept replaying their
conversations in his head. He had been totally engrossed in the
study of the socioeconomic conditions prevailing in the Belgian
Congo and the decline of the head-hunting and pygmy populations
therein. Fascinating subjects, both of them. Until he met Brenda.
She made him feel out of control. He hated the feeling with
something akin to passion.

“But you don’t let it go to your head?” He
manufactured a pretty good sneer to go along with his doubtful
tone.

She was still smiling at him and making him
feel sort of like a snotty schoolboy when she answered him. “What’s
the point? People are only intrigued by who they think I am. I’m
fortunate to be attractive, and a pretty face is nothing I attained
by my own efforts. It’s a gift from God. That’s all.”

That’s all? That’s
all
? This, from a
woman who earned more money in a week than Colin and a dozen
academicians like him could make in a year. She was shrugging off
the insanity of people who worshiped her as a goddess for doing
nothing but being pretty! And she was saying she wasn’t at fault;
that God had created her! Colin had a notion his sense of outrage
about the whole thing wasn’t rational, but it was there.

He said dryly, “How fortunate, then, that
God waved his magic wand over you.” That was probably blasphemous,
especially as he was at present sitting in a church, but he was too
angry to care.

She laughed again softly. Lord, he wished
she wouldn’t do that. Her laughter did strange things to his
senses. He pretended to become absorbed in the hymnal, which was
pretty much like any other hymnal he’d ever seen.

He jumped almost out of his skin when she
poked him in the ribs with her elbow. He swiveled his head and
glowered at her, incensed.

She grinned. “Get over it, Colin I can’t
help what I am any more than you can help what you are. I wish we
could be friends.”

“Friends?” The idea wouldn’t have occurred
to him a million years. Friends with Brenda Fitzpatrick, star of
comedy stage and celluloid? Absurd. Ridiculous.
He
was a
serious scholar.

“Sure. I’d love to learn more from you about
the Navajos. It must have been fascinating to have lived with the
on the reservation.”

Recalling the miserable conditions
prevailing on the reservation, Colin shuddered involuntarily. He
eyed her for a long moment, and, then an amusing thought struck him
“Very well, Brenda. I’ll tell you about life on the reservation.”
He smiled, thinking of, all the stories about starvation and
disease, filth, flies, and misery, he’d be able to impart. Little
did she know what was in store for her.

She beamed at him, making him feel only a
bit guilty.

“Thank you, Colin. I really appreciate
it.”

He doubted she would for long. This would
bring her down, though; he was sure of it. This would teach her
to—to—to— To what?

As the minister started speaking, Colin
couldn’t remember why he was trying to teach Brenda Fitzpatrick
anything at all, much less a severe lesson in the tragedies of
history. He began to experience a vague and unsettling notion that
his attitude about Brenda owed more to emotion than to reason. He’d
never allowed his emotions to dictate to him before. This was very
irksome.

He blamed Brenda.

The next morning Brenda approached Martin
and Colin somewhat tentatively. She didn’t want to get barked at
before breakfast. They were discussing last evening’s sermon, much
to her surprise. She greeted the two men and then stood by,
silently listening to them talk until her excitement overcame her
and she had to join in.

Colin said, “It was Paul who did it. Peter
wanted the church’s headquarters to stay in Jerusalem. For the
first fifty years or so, Christianity was only another sect of
Judaism, and that would have made sense.”

“Is that so?” Martin took a bite out of his
apple and squinted into the distance where the cameramen were
setting up to film the first sequence of
Indian Love
Song
.

Colin nodded. “Sure. Haven’t you ever
wondered why the Christian center ended up in Rome, even though the
Romans used to take sport in persecuting the Christians?” He seemed
to be interested in the proceedings, too.

Brenda wished she could snag him, lead him
off into the woods, and pick his brain about the history of
Christianity. All of this stuff was so interesting. “I didn’t know
that, although it makes sense. About being a sect of Judaism, I
mean, and the headquarters being in Jerusalem. After all, Jesus was
a Jew.”

Martin laughed, evidently finding Brenda’s
assessment somewhat outlandish. Colin nodded, but it seemed like an
approving nod. Unless Brenda was imagining things.

“Right,” he said. “Most people seem to
overlook that salient point when studying their religions. There
were huge arguments over whether or not Gentiles—Greeks and Romans,
for instance—needed to convert to Judaism before they could call
themselves Christians.”

“Oh, my! My goodness, I never knew that.”
She wished she dared ask how in heck he knew all this stuff but
knew he’d only sneer if she did.

Colin made some kind of noise that she
interpreted as signifying his lack of amazement at her ignorance.
She chose not to get upset.

“The earliest Christians were divided as to
whether they still had to follow Jewish law, or if they could
safely abandon it without being damned. The laws were extensive and
governed all aspects of life, from circumcision to what kinds of
foods one could eat.”

Circumcision? Brenda blinked at him,
wondering if he was trying to embarrass her No. He was still
studying the set construction crew casually, as if he talked about
such things every day. Which he well might, for all she knew.

“It was Paul who introduced the concept of
spirituality’s ascendance over works, deeds, and rules, so to
speak.”

“What do you mean?” This was so fascinating.
Brenda almost wished she could chuck making the picture and simply
hang out with Colin for a couple of months. Or years. Or
lifetimes.

He twitched his shoulders, as if he were
slightly peeved to have to be telling her these things. “He
eschewed following the Jewish laws and preached simple belief and
faith in the man he’d come to consider the Messiah. He’s the first
one who told people they needed only believe that Jesus was the
risen Christ in order to be saved and given eternal life. So to
speak. I imagine he considered the legend about the temple curtain
tearing when Jesus died as signifying the removal of intermediaries
interceding between God and man. His concept of the faith was
direct, from man to God.”

“My goodness.” Now this, thought Brenda, was
keen stuff. She wished she could pick his brains some more, but
Martin started talking, and she decided to give it a rest for the
time being. She’d get him later.

“This is going to be a great picture,”
Martin announced with enthusiasm.

Martin was always enthusiastic. It was one
of the things Brenda liked about him. He shared her appreciation
for the good things life had sent him. Unlike her, Martin was apt
to get upset and depressed when things didn’t go his way, but other
than that they were a lot alike. Brenda figured his tendency to
become distraught was because he hadn’t faced enough real hardships
in his life. Long ago Brenda had figured out that worry didn’t
change anything.

As for Colin . . . Well, she just didn’t
know about Colin.

She was glad he seemed less hostile this
morning than he had yesterday evening. She couldn’t figure him out.
At the moment, he was standing in his shirtsleeves with his arms
crossed over his chest. He looked grouchy. He always looked
grouchy.

“You know, Martin, this is all wrong,” he
said at last, as if he couldn’t keep silent another moment longer.
“Those structures aren’t the kinds built by the Hunkpapa. The
Hunkpapas’ tipis are totally different.”

Martin heaved a sigh. “They aren’t supposed
to be Hunkpapas. They’re supposed to be Apaches.”

“But they aren’t right for Apaches, either,
whether you’re talking Mescalero or Chiricahua or any other
variety. In fact, I can’t imagine any self-respecting Indian
building something that nonsensical for his family to live in.
Canvas! And flowers! My God.”