He considered her for a moment, and for a moment she thought he was going to lean over to kiss her. Irrational. Stupid. And she looked dumbly at his outstretched hand when he offered her several ten-dollar bills. When she finally took them, still trying to shake the feeling and shake herself back to the real world in the shop, he gave her a friendly, two-fingered salute and headed for the door.
“Four,” she called after him.
He stopped with his hand on the knob. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. “
His smile — oh god that smile! — switched on again, but she had no time to respond. The door swung sharply open, nearly knocking him over, and Stacey Jeffries rushed in ahead of a slam of construction bedlam. Her long black hair was wind-woven, blades of grass clung to her jeans, which in turn clung to legs that looked almost too thin to hold her up. Her white shirt was open three buttons down, her skin deeply tanned across the tops of breasts that seemed too large for a woman so slender.
“Caroline, wait until you hear —” She stopped when she realized there was someone clinging to the door, rubbing his wrist with his free hand. “Oh my god. Oh . . .” Flustered, she reached out as though to help, but Rowan shook his head quickly and gave her the smile.
“You’d better go before you get killed,” Caroline called over the noise from outside.
“Right,” he said. “Right.” He nodded to Stacey and ducked into the street, the door closing with a near slam.
“Jeez,” Stacey said, looking at him through the window. “Boy, I guess I’ll hear about that later.”
Caroline stuffed the money into the register, whose drawer never seemed willing to either open or close without scraping off a knuckle. “Hear from who? You know him?”
“Sure,” Stacey said. “That’s Glenn. He’s a cop. Didn’t you know? He found that girl on Devon Street.”
“No,” she said. “As a matter of fact . . . no.” Then she watched as Stacey fussed around the shop, finger dusting the shelves that held tall and short vases and hand-painted figurines, adjusting the swivel rack that held greeting and note cards. She was only a few years into her twenties and still managed to seem as if she were only sixteen. Though Caroline liked her — no, enjoyed her — her enthusiasm could make a single day seem more like a year.
Adelle coughed in the back room, loud and hacking, and ended it with a curse before starting again.
A horn warned a jaywalking pedestrian.
A chilly draft from the display case tickled her ankles, took hold, chilled her calf. She shifted. And ignored the next cough, which was clearly a signal for her to return to work.
Something was wrong with Stacey.
And the moment the thought straightened her, Stacey stopped in the middle of the shop and said, “Caroline, I think I’m in trouble.”
The town’s luncheonette was on the next corner, and they were lucky enough to find a booth in back. The place was filled with dusty workers, and the noise they produced made it seem like a Friday-night bar.
Their orders came quickly — two salads, two coffees — but Stacey only stared at hers, poked at it with a fork, lifting shreds of lettuce as if expecting to find something underneath. Caroline watched her, noting how poorly she’d used dark makeup to cover the red rims of her eyes.
She waited.
Stacey said nothing.
“I have a feeling,” she finally said, “that I’m going to be working until midnight at least.” When Stacey looked up at her, puzzled, she nodded. “In fact, I know I am. It’s because I haven’t been able to practice my mind reading lately. Otherwise, I’d know what you’re talking about, just like that.” And she snapped her fingers.
Stacey almost smiled. “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.” Another wait, turning her gaze now to the T -shirted men lining the long counter, sweat staining their backs, yellow hard hats pushed back on their heads. Though both women had been blatantly looked over when they’d arrived, the men’s attention was elsewhere now — on their food, and the two waitresses who didn’t seem to mind the attention.
“Stace,” she said, swinging her head back around, “if you’re going to tell me you think you’re pregnant, I don’t think I’m the one to give you advice.”
“Oh god, no!” the younger woman protested. “Jeez, Caroline, that’s not it.” Her eyes widened. “Did you think it was? God, is that what you thought? That I was . . . oh no, god no, never, I’m not that dumb.”
“Good.” She took a bite of the salad and decided the rabbits weren’t missing a thing. “So what’s the trouble?” She determined then to be patient while Stacey fussed again with her own meal, fussed with the silverware, folded and unfolded the napkin in her lap. She pulled her half over one shoulder and threw it back. She reached for her coffee, and pushed it away with a shudder of distaste.
Finally Caroline reached over and snared her left hand, held it firmly on the table, and said, “Stace, c’mon, give me a break, okay? Are we . . . are we talking men here? Is that why you haven’t talked to Marion?”
Stacey’s cheeks flushed, but not prettily, and she grabbed up her knife like a dagger. “I can’t talk to her,” she answered sullenly, staring at the blade, putting it down. “She’s not home. Besides, she thinks I’m still a baby, for god’s sake.”
“Ah. Then it is a man, yes?”
Stacey shrugged. And nodded reluctantly.
“Okay. Is it Nick, then? You guys having some kind of trouble?” She almost added: again?
As far as she understood the whirlwind of the girl’s life, Stacey had been going with one of Oxrun’s patrolmen, Nick Lonrow, for just about a year. Which was why the girl never left town on her days off. Caroline didn’t know him. Adelle said he was just a boy.
She saw the beginning of tears then, saw Stacey jerk her head side to side to keep them from falling. Oh boy, she thought; another romance bites the dust. And she eased her grip on the girl’s hand, patting it instead, wanting to tell her that losing a man this way was infinitely better than sitting alone at his bedside, watching the skin grow flaccid as what beneath it dissolved. Shrinking him. Discoloring him. Reducing him to a mockery while nameless men and women in white walked past him without seeing, stopping only long enough to take a pulse, a blood pressure, make a note, and move on.
Infinitely better.
While miracles hid, and no god answered prayers. Stacey snatched up her napkin and blew her nose loudly, lifted her chin and swallowed tightly. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Another woman?”
“I guess. I . . . he doesn’t want to talk anymore, you know? He says he’s busy. He wants to be a detective, and . . . and he says there’s no future for him here.” She snapped her head around to stare at the wall. “He wants to go to Hartford. Greenwich. He says . . .” She looked back, angry now. “Caroline, am I supposed to give a shit about what he wants when he doesn’t want me to go with him?”
They exchanged the luncheonette for the park and walked along the winding blacktopped path, under heavy branches whose shade on a bright day would have been welcome.
The overcast had deepened. Strips and slides of cloud dangled over the trees, were twisted by a cool breeze and shredded to ghosts of fog waiting in the leaves. Three girls played quiet tag around two mothers who ignored them. A ball game on the playing field was muffled by the early twilight, the sound of bat meeting ball less a crack than a slap.
“What I think is,” Stacey said, “I don’t want him to go.”
A kiosk selling ice cream and snacks was deserted; they walked past it.
A cyclist rushed past them, his passing the hiss of a late autumn wind.
Caroline saw a group of teenage boys lying on the grass, heads turning as Stacey walked by, the girl oblivious to the stir she created. Had she been alone at least one of them would have moved in; they ignored Caroline completely — for them she was much too old.
“I want him to stay.” What she said was: he’s mine.
The te
ars had withdrawn, the anger remained, and Caroline couldn’t help smiling sadly when she remembered her own tears, the wailing, the demands, the swing from rage to self-pity as Harry was sucked away by the machines, drained by the cancers, as if, in some way, he had finally decided to go somewhere else without taking her with him.
It wasn’t fair.
And justice, for her, had died in a room that smelled of death and cleaning.
“. . preacher,” Stacey said. “Jilly told me about him.”
Caroline rubbed her cheek briskly, brought herself back to the park. “I’m sorry? Preacher? Jilly? Your friend Jilly?” She touched the girl’s shoulder playfully. “Don’t tell me you’re getting religion, Stace. No offense, but I don’t think that’s going to help.”
“No,” the girl said with a single shake of her head. “Jilly’s . . . was telling me about this . . .” A shuddering deep breath and a sigh and toss of her head. “Jilly’s the one Glenn found yesterday.”
Caroline didn’t know what to say, and so said nothing as Stacey talked on after much clearing of her throat. But it seemed that Jilly Pentworth had had man problems of her own, and had discovered some radio preacher who somehow was able to reach her, who made her believe that nothing was impossible if she only believed hard enough. Clap your hands if you believe in fairies, Caroline thought, though she kept it to herself when she saw the way Stacey looked, the way her eyes brightened in spite of her anger, the animation in her walk as she explained how this guy, whoever he was, never talked about Jesus, or God, or even the Bible. He simply talked, and Stacey was beginning to wonder if maybe he could help her.
“Forgive me,” Caroline said gently, “but it doesn’t look like he was much help to Jilly, at the end.”
Stacey only answered, “She didn’t believe.”
At the end of the path the land began to rise, a knoll that marked the beginning of a small patch of woodland. They turned around, headed back for the gates, in silence now while Caroline marveled at the gullibility of the innocent.
Finally, passing the kiosk again, the boys gone, the ball game drawing to a close in an argument with the umpire, she massaged the side of her neck.
“I think,” she said, “if Nick doesn’t want you to go, then you aren’t going, and no radio pulpit-pounder’s going to make any difference.”
“Oh, but he will!” Stacey insisted.
“Jilly’s dead,” she reminded her.
“Yes, but . . .” Stacey quickened her pace, slowed, turned and walked backward. “You see, he talks about the power, y’know?”
feel the power
Caroline tried not to smile. “Yeah, but Stacey, he’s — ”
hands lay your hands
Stacey scowled, her face instantly aging, instantly a crone, before softening, sagging, then defiant again. “You don’t get it, Caroline. You just don’t get it.”
And before Caroline could defend herself, the girl whirled and ran off, vanishing around a turn in the path. She took a quick step after her and changed her mind. It wouldn’t do any good to chase after her; she probably wouldn’t be able to catch her anyway. But it angered her to see what that boyfriend was doing to her. And what the girl was doing to herself. She was still young, for god’s sake, plenty of time to find someone else, to have someone find her. And to resort to a faceless voice on the radio —
feel
She raised her eyebrows as she reached the high iron gates at the park entrance. It must be the same guy she’d chanced upon that morning. But she hadn’t heard anything special, hadn’t noted any extraordinary qualities in the man or the sermon. All the son of a bitch had done was short out her radios.
Which is exactly what she told Adelle when she returned to the shop, unapologetic for the time lost, swearing on every blossom in the store that she wouldn’t leave until ail the most vital orders had been filled.
“But I won’t be in tomorrow,” she said, sleeves rolled, apron around her waist to protect her skirt. “Monday. Stacey and I will take care of everything else Monday.”
“Darling, if you say so.”
She grinned. Of course she did. And she was briefly ashamed for taking advantage, knowing she was the best thing that had happened to The Florist since Adelle’s husband had taken it over. She didn’t understand what the affinities were with the flowers, the arrangements; she only knew that her hands knew what to do, her eyes knew what was right, her sense of smell understanding what would work perfectly and what wouldn’t.
Harry had said she was part rose herself.
And in thinking of him, more recently than she had in the past two years thanks in some curious way to Stacey, she wasn’t surprised when Glenn Rowan showed up just at four, and threw up his hands in exaggerated astonishment when she handed him the white vase with the roses already in place.
“Incredible,” he said. “She’ll love me forever.”
“If she doesn’t. give me a call,” she answered with a laugh that choked into a gasp. She gaped, sputtered, watched in horror as her hands batted the air over the counter for want of someplace to land, something to do. “Work,” she managed at last, pointing to the heads and back room. “So much to do. Let me know how she likes it. Must . . . closing time . . .”
And she fled, grasping the edge of the worktable until she heard the harness bell signal his departure.
“My god,” she said to the wall. “What the hell are you doing?”
And again, “What are you thinking of, woman?” as she walked in the front door just after eight and threw her keys on the foyer table, didn’t look for the mail because there seldom was any. Her mother, were she alive to see and hear what had happened, would have been shocked; her aunt would have called her a hussy and probably would have thrown her out of the house. She called herself out of her goddman mind and strode into the living room, poured herself a scotch from the larder on the sideboard, and dragged one of the armchairs around to face the window. She had eaten at the Mariner Cove, had tasted nothing, and was positive that Rowan had told all his friends about the woman in the florist shop who had come on to him like gangbusters. The patrons had stared at her, she was sure, peeking slyly around their menus, snickering to their companions.
She hadn’t tasted a thing.
She had met Kanfield on Chancellor Avenue, and he laughed when she told him she’d forgotten his bouquet.
“Not to worry,” he’d said, patted her shoulder, moved on.
Now she sat and watched the sun draw the light with it over the peaked roof of the Tudor, watched the shadows crawl in angles over the street toward her front yard, watched the neighbors pop in and out of their houses like mechanical toys in shop windows while children hustled home and the first rain began to fall.
Harry.
God, she missed him.
She didn’t turn on a lamp.
She emptied her glass and wished that Nabb and his musicians would play for her again. So she could hear herself in the songs, find herself in the words — though the words that she heard were only the words that she dreamed.
She wished Glenn didn’t have a girlfriend.
You know, she thought, I think maybe this is what they call the coming out of it.
She drank.
She sipped.
Harry’s dead, you miss him, and now the mourning’s over, and you hate yourself for it.
She sipped.
The sun set.
And shortly after ten, empty glass in her hand, chin trembling, cheeks wet while the window streaked wetly, she heard a voice in the kitchen:
“Lay on your hands and feel!”
The man on the hilltop had no dimension, was only black, his outstretched arms black cracks in the blue that pretended to be the sky, that widened until the sky retreated into night, that widened until she couldn’t see him anymore, though she knew he was there, watching her and waiting for her and asking her to come to him; until she couldn’t sense him anymore, though she knew he was there, patient and insistent a
nd blotting out the stars that once were faces she recognized while she turned in a dancing circle, trying to make up her mind; until she couldn’t see anything, feel anything, hear anything anymore but the burr of the alarm in the clock radio by her bed.
Her eyes were wet; she didn’t dry [hem.
It was Sunday.
It rained.
The kitchen radio worked after she thumped it with a fist, and she decided the short hadn’t been fatal after all. But she kept eyeing it, was afraid to turn the dial, even when all the music was backed by that same insistent humming, that sounded more and more like the wind.
Then she cleaned the house room to room, top to bottom, and exhausted herself listening hard for the telephone to ring, and listening for the preacher’s voice that meant so much to Stacey Jeffries.
On Monday the rain was a blessing. Steady without being hard, it successfully kept the road workers from returning, brought a relative peace to the street despite the great gaps in its surface. Caroline opened up, but Stacey didn’t come in until almost ten-thirty, her hair not quite combed, the dress she wore not quite ironed or fitting her well. And if anything, Caroline thought, the girl actually looked thinner.
“You okay?” she asked quietly, standing in the back doorway, bead strings draped over one shoulder.
At the counter Stacey nodded. “Just thinking, that’s all.” She propped a transistor radio against the register. “Wish to hell I could find that damned station.”
“Huh?”
“The preacher,” she said, as if Caroline should have known. “Jilly’s preacher. You can never find him when you want him. Damn.”
Caroline chose tactful silence, and when a customer came in, Stacey brightened falsely, allowing Caroline to retreat thankfully to the worktable. An anniversary wreath that was to be picked up by noon; a funeral wreath someone from Sutherland’s would come for that afternoon; Bruce Kanfield’s bouquet, a gift from her to him to apologize for forgetting. On a sheet of paper in the upper corner a sketch of the street window display she wanted to set up by the end of the week. Generally, all florist shops looked alike from the sidewalk, and she hoped Adelle would let her do something different. It wasn’t the competition — in Oxrun there wasn’t any; it was the principle. She hated coming to work to the same old thing, the same fresh and dried flowers, the same announcements of sales for Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, the standard look people ignored because they already knew what was inside.
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 3: Dialing the Wind (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 4