“What?”
“Mr. Montana, I cannot be calm,” she translated, “because—”
“You’re not having any fun, are you?” he asked, his voice tight with irritation. “And you want to know why you’re not having any? Because you’re too busy being a genius. Quit using those obnoxious words that only you and a dictionary have ever heard of.”
“But if you would only listen—”
“Think it’s warm out here?”
“What? Yes, it is a sultry day, but I—”
“Why’s it so warm?” His eyes bored into hers while he waited for her answer.
She gave a delicate huff and glanced at the sky. “The sun is about ninety-three million miles away from earth, which is close enough to supply the earth with heat and light. The temperature of the sun’s surface is estimated at ten thousand eight hundred degrees, and—”
“Wrong.”
She blinked up at him. “Wrong, Mr. Montana?”
“It’s warm outside because it’s sunny. Sunshine means warmth. Period.”
“But that is what I said.”
“No, that’s not what you said. You don’t know how to say anything normal. I bet if I got you a piece of blueberry pie for dessert, you’d say to me, ‘Oh, Mr. Montana, isn’t this pie of blueberracocknoid simply delicious?’ You wouldn’t know how to just sit there and enjoy the damned pie. You’d have to tell me why it’s blue. Why it stains. Then you’d launch into the history of pie. Starting from the day the Father of Pie was born, you’d work your way through his life and finally tell me how old he was when he first got the brilliant idea of filling dough with fruit. Then—”
“What is blueberracocknoid?”
“I made it up to show you just how ridiculous all those scientific names are that you tag on to everything you see. It means blueberry.”
“A blueberry is of the genusVacciniumand is a member of the heath family.”
“Well, good for the blueberry!” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I mean it, Miss Worth. None of the scientific garbage today. Use normal words, do normal things, and think normal thoughts. Agreed?”
“Normal? But what—”
“See? You don’t even know what normal is!” More determined than ever to show her the meaning of fun, he dragged her to a nearby table, upon which sat a basket of eggs. Behind the table stood a wooden rack of prizes that included costly rifles, pearl-handled knives, gold watches, bottles of French perfume, silver lockets, and porcelain dolls.
“Name’s Jister,” the stout carnival man behind the table introduced himself. “Burris Jister.”
Theodosia stared at the man’s odd hat. It appeared to have been fashioned from some sort of rodent skin. Staring at it, she finally noticed a rat’s head above the man’s right ear.
A rat hat. She shuddered with distaste.
His cheroot pinched tightly between his teeth, Mr. Jister squinted as smoke rose into his eyes. “Glad to see you folks. Care to guess which eggs is boiled and which is raw? A dime buys you ten guesses. Guess right ten times in a row, and y’win one o’ the big prizes. Nine to one right guesses gets you a lemon drop, and no right guesses gets you a pat on the back and an offer to try again.”
A crowd gathering around him, Roman slapped a dime onto the table.
“I lost thirty cents a few minutes ago,” one of the townsmen warned.
“I lost fifty cents,” another added. “No matter what I did, I just couldn’t figure out which ones were raw and which ones were boiled.”
“Mr. Montana,” Theodosia said, laying her hand on his shoulder, “I—”
“Watch,” he instructed her. “Just watch how much fun it is to guess.”
“But Mr. Mon—”
“Miss Worth, would you just let me play the guessing game?”
