She waited.
Adelle said nothing.
“For god’s sake, Adelle, I’m only kidding, okay?”
Adelle’s voice changed then — softened, almost whining. “Caroline. Darling. You know I hate to ask these things of you, but I just can’t do it all myself. I need you. Please? Just for the afternoon? A few arrangements, that’s all. Heaven knows you’re the only one who knows how to do them so they don’t look like plastic.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she grumbled as she rose, shaking the cord free and moving closer to the window.
“A few hours, that’s all I ask. Darling, I’m begging. I’m on my knees in the middle of four dozen white goddman carnations, and I’m goddamned begging, all right?”
She smiled. Four dozen carnations of any color wouldn’t begin to reach to Adelle’s wrinkled knees.
“And I swear on Corbin’s grave that I’ll never ask you to do this again.”
“Your husband isn’t dead.”
“You’re being obstinate.”
She leaned to her right and squinted through the screen. A spear of sudden sunlight blinded her, and vanished, and just as suddenly the radio hissed loudly and died, the preacher gone, the room oddly empty.
“Shit!” she muttered, breathless from surprise, falling back against the wall, one startled hand flung up against her naked chest. There was no smoke from either the clock radio or the plug, but she thought she smelled something burning.
“Caroline?”
“Okay, okay,” she said, sidling to the table. Eyeing the radio warily, she reached around the table and held her breath as she yanked the cord from its socket. When nothing happened, she closed her eyes briefly and nodded. “Of course,” she said.
Of course. Why should she be able to do what she wanted? It was only her first full day off in three weeks. Nothing special about that, right? What the hell. Call Caroline, she’s a sweet kid, she’ll help out, no problem. Aren’t widows always glad for something to do?
A wet breeze swept through the woods and died on the lawn. A handful of tiny brown leaves fluttered over the fence and settled on the ground. A small flock of sparrows began foraging in the grass, fussing loudly among themselves, taking swift flight and returning, completely ignoring a lone crow who decided to forage with them.
“Then you’ll be here?” Adelle asked hopefully. Caroline started; she’d forgotten she still had the receiver in her hand. “Yes, already. Just give me time to dress and eat, all right?”
“You’re a doll.”
“Double time.”
A pause. “That’s — ”
“Blackmail,” she said. “Right.”
“Okay.” Adelle’s turn to try to induce guilt.
It didn’t work. Caroline laughed, winked at the birds in the yard, and rang off. What the hell, she thought; she wasn’t doing anything today anyway. She might as well make a few extra dollars to pad the bank account. Or get herself a new radio, or find someone who knew how to fix it.
She snapped the plastic casing with her fingers.
“Heal yourself, preach,” she said with a giggle, and dressed hurriedly in a dark skirt and white blouse, chose not to wear jewelry, grabbed flats from her closet and hopped into them as she made her way along the hall to the staircase. Though she grumbled, and cursed when she barked her shin against the top post, it wasn’t all that bad, getting out into the village on a Saturday afternoon. Not all that bad at all.
After all, this wasn’t the city. This was Oxrun Station, the country, just like in the movies. People asked her name when they came into the shop; people greeted her with smiles; people didn’t look at her as she passed and whispered behind hands that hid disdaining lips.
People didn’t ask her about the people in her dreams.
People didn’t ask her why she chose to live alone.
After turning on her other clock radio, sitting within reach on the counter beside the refrigerator, Caroline made herself toast and coffee and dropped into a tubular chair at the small round table, her back to the hallway, her legs stretched out and crossed. She looked through the screen door at the yard, pleased that the timer on the sprinkler had worked for a change and the lawn wasn’t flooded. The sparrows were still there, but the intruding crow had left.
A chuckle when one of the birds tripped over himself; smiling to herself as she sipped a cup of coffee, nibbled a piece of dry toast, listened to a weatherman make a liar of his script. She stuck her tongue out at his voice when he explained about the sun glowing warmly in Harley; she told him to get stuffed when he suggested a picnic or a drive.
“C’mon, play the damned music,” she said without feeling. And glanced to her left, toward Nabb’s house. If she could find music like that to listen to every day, she’d have a radio — no, two radios in every room of the house.
One finger lifted.
Correction: her house.
She grinned, amazed as she was nearly every morning that this house, that yard, that pitiful excuse for green grass, was actually hers. Not a large place by any means, though it could easily suit a few more, but spacious enough to let her roam when the mood took her, each room as bright as she could make it, the only dark the wood trim, and the wainscoting in the hall and foyer.
It was supposed to be cheerful. That was the idea. And the idea behind leaving home after Harry had died. That house had become a mausoleum before she’d known it had happened; that life had become a monument to her dead instead of a getting-on.
A tightness in her chest she cleared by clearing her throat.
It’ll pass, she was told; it’ll never stop hurting, but it will pass, that’s what they tell me.
Right, she thought, and wished to hell she could believe it.
A phone-in show began, people griping about state politics, the Red Sox, New Yorkers. She leaned over and changed the station, found nothing, and tapped a foot impatiently as she slid along through the band until she reached a place where there was no sound at all but a faint wind like humming.
She smiled.
“Still have the touch,” she told herself, and took her hand away.
The only human being I know, Harry had said once, who can look for a rock station and get the wind instead.
Oh Christ, Harry, she thought, remembering. Oh Christ.
A bite of toast; the coffee was too hot.
Then the wind faded, and the preacher was there. “. . . put your hands on,” he said, voice still hoarse, still gentle. “The saving power of . . .”
She groaned loudly and shook her head in disgust, leaned over and turned the volume down. Grotesque, but at least he wasn’t one of those empty-hearted reporters who shoved microphones into people’s faces five minutes past a tragedy. Like the guy who’d relentlessly interviewed the grieving family of a girl found dead in her bedroom over in Harley two weeks ago. The reporter had made her so furious, she’d almost driven right over there, to shove that mike where his brains were hiding.
“Let yourself feel,” the preacher whispered. “Let the power make you —”
“Give up,” she said absently, and glanced around the room, still reasonably bright in spite of the grey light.
The kitchen was what she called housewife tacky, the counters and sink were brilliantly white, the appliances copper, the cabinets yellow. It was god awful, and she loved it, and it never failed to make her grin before she left to go to work.
The radio sputtered as the preacher whispered, “Lay on,” again, and was gone to silence.
“Damnit, if you die on me, too,” she threatened.
Static.
She glared at the counter where it sat.
A squirrel with tail raised sat among the sparrows. The static cleared, replaced by a soft humming.
“Oh . . . hell,” she grumbled, shoved herself to her
feet and grabbed her car keys from the top of the refrigerator. Then she reached for the top of the small radio, and yelped when a spark snapped into her palm.<
br />
“Jesus!” she said, blowing on her hand. It tingled. She shook it, puzzled because there was no pain at all; in fact, the tingling was almost pleasant. Veins on the back of her wrist bulged until she massaged them. Then she turned her hand over, expecting to see some sort of burn, some discoloration. There was nothing, and as she rubbed a thumb into her palm the wind sound returned.
Faintly.
And she listened for a moment when she thought she heard Harry.
Someone called her name as she locked the front door, and when she turned, she saw Bruce Kanfield waving to her from across the street. He was stripped to the waist, raking the lawn, and she grinned as she waved back and started for her car, parked at the curb. He was a pleasant, unthreatening neighbor, involved in something like investments or banking, forever bragging about his children, seldom mentioning his wife. Several times in the past six months he’d helped her around the house with wiring and a bit of carpentry, ridiculously simple things that simply eluded her.
He hadn’t patronized; he just showed her and assumed she’d not need him again.
“Hey,” he said, leaning on the rake, “you going to work?”
“Yep.”
“You driving?”
She stared pointedly at the car. “No, ski.”
“Oh, Well, don’t forget all that construction. You’ll end up parking back here again.
Her hand stopped shy of slipping the key into the lock when she realized he was right. She might as well walk; it wouldn’t take any longer.
“Hey, do me a favor?” he called as she started up the street.
She nodded as she turned, walking backward, smiling.
“Fix me up something for Cora? A bouquet? I’ll pick it up later, or send one of the kids around.”
She grinned a yes and faced front, and nearly stumbled when she spun around again, thinking Bruce had changed, that he’d grown taller, huskier, more like . . .
Jesus, she thought; Jesus, what’s with you?
She almost ran to Centre Street.
But she refused to think of Harry.
The Florist was a narrow recessed shop jammed between Anderson Footwear on the right, and Pickett’s, a men’s clothing store that sold only tailored English suits and handmade shirts. Caroline had been in each of them only once, to satisfy her curiosity that Oxrun was, indeed, a village of means. Were she a man, on her salary, she didn’t think she’d even be able to afford Anderson’s laces.
On the other hand, the Centre Street range of shops was such that she seldom had to leave town and drive east to Harley, the nearest community to the Station. And the people she met more than made up for the occasional feeling that she was out of her depth here.
When she arrived, grumbling to herself about all the construction on the street — a major renovation to replace the tarmac with brick and create a pedestrian mall. Adelle was in the back room, fussing helplessly over carnations, roses, a few giant yellow mums, and sprays of baby’s breath that kept poking her in the eye.
“I am helpless!” the stout, white-haired woman declared when Caroline strode in, knocking aside the strings of wooden beads that served as a curtain for the doorway. “I am absolutely helpless!” The woman pointed a pudgy finger at a pile of green paper. “How the hell do you get the damned things to lie down on that?”
Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask them nicely?”
Adelle frowned, her rouged cheeks sucking in, puffing out. “That isn’t funny, Miss Edlin.”
“It’s your shop, Mrs. Vanders.”
“Only because my husband thinks I need something to do.” She lit a filterless cigarette and gladly gave way when Caroline dropped her purse on a cluttered desk and moved to the worktable. “The only thing I need to do is go home and get drunk.” Then she dropped into a wooden chair that squealed when she pushed her and it against the wall with her feet. “My darling, I am exhausted. “
“From what?” Caroline asked, hands already floating over the flowers, already blending colors and scents from chaos. “It looks like you left it all for me.”
It wasn’t said angrily, nor even sarcastically. Now that she was here, she didn’t mind it at all. The flowers, like the music, took her mind and gave it shape, gave her daydreams something to do while the hours marked their way to dark, and sleep.
From the street they heard the sharp fist of a jackhammer, both looking at the same time.
“You know,” Adelle said, “I’m sorry they ever started that now. Who wants to go shopping with all that dust flying in the air? We’re going to lose millions, mark my words.”
The floor trembled as a pair of grimy dump trucks lumbered past, loaded with blocks and slabs of what remained of Centre Street’s old surface; the flowers quivered on the table. And Caroline was grateful that she’d been able to find the house on Thorn Road. It was the southernmost street in the village, all the houses and trees between acting, thus far, as a perfect sponge for the noise.
“They found another one.”
She paused in reaching for a length of wire to bind some stems. “Huh?”
Adelle blew smoke at the floor. “Over on Devon. A little girl was discovered yesterday morning in her bedroom. Not a child, you understand. I think she was twenty. God, you can’t hear anything else on the street. It’s so morbid. I hate listening to that sort of thing. It’s ghastly.”
A sliver of stiff leaf lodged under her thumbnail, and Caroline hissed as she worked it out gently. “Maniac, right?” A drop of blood glistened.
“How should I know? It doesn’t interest me. All I know is, that’s one here, two in Harley, one in New Haven, all since the beginning of the year. Corbin says no one has a clue, and,” she added, her voice lowered, “you’ll notice that not a single detail has been in the papers. They must have been chopped up or something.”
Caroline gave Adelle the shudder she knew the woman hoped for, though she didn’t tum to show her smile. “I thought you hated that stuff.”
Adelle crushed the cigarette under her heel. “Oh, my dear, I do, of course I do. But one has to keep up, doesn’t one? Besides, you and I, darling, are apparently too old for this guy, whoever he is. We’re safe in our dotage.”
You and I, Caroline thought as she sucked the blood from her thumb, are twenty-five years apart.
“My goodness, don’t you listen to the radio, child?” “Can’t. I have two, and they’re both busted. Besides, all I could get this morning was some evangelical preacher, talking about healing me or something. Plus, the damned thing gave me a shock. There’s a short somewhere, I guess.”
Adelle commiserated, then sighed when the harness bells nailed over the entrance sounded. She added a groan for good measure and hauled herself up, brushed her hands over her spotless white-and-gold apron, and checked herself in a tiny mirror propped on the desk. “Duty calls,” she said.
Caroline only nodded. And scowled five minutes later when her name was called from the front.
According to the scribbled orders haphazardly taped to the whitewashed wall above the table, she was going to be here all day, and probably well after supper, too. What she didn’t need were interruptions, just because the older woman couldn’t tell ragweed from heather.
“Darling!” Adelle said sweetly when she pushed through the hanging beads.
Caroline smiled, brushed aside a peacock’s feather standing in a brass spittoon, and saw a tall man in a cream linen suit waiting on the other side of the short counter. He was lean, his long face creased and melancholy in spite of the one-sided grin he gave her over Adelle’s shoulder, one that told her that interrupting her work wasn’t his idea.
“Darling,” Adelle said, standing to one side, “this lovely gentleman is looking for something special. One of your famous displays in wicker, or a vase, would be simply perfect.” She nodded once, and left the room, smoke from a fresh cigarette a leash that drew her back in seconds, just long enough to say, “And he needs it by four.”
Caroline
couldn’t help a grimace.
“Don’t say it,” the man said, raising a palm, spreading his grin. “I know. But it’s kind of an emergency.”
“Not a funeral or something, I hope,” she said politely, pulling the order pad to her.
“No. Worse — a forgotten anniversary.”
From the uncaring hang of his suit, he definitely didn’t shop at Pickett’s, and when he put his hands on his hips, slipping the jacket behind them, she saw a shoulder holster nestled against his side. “I hope you’re a cop,” she said, determined not to seem startled.
He looked down, and dropped his arms suddenly, letting the jacket close. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you.” His fingers raked nervously through curly brown hair that dropped just below his collar. “I’m not used to it yet.”
“Oh? A new cop then?”
“Sort of,” he said. “New to plainclothes, anyway.” His grin snapped on, snapped off. “Glenn. Glenn Rowan.”
She took the offered hand, felt warmth, felt perspiration, and asked him what he wanted. He didn’t know. Something to keep his girlfriend from taking off his head when he told her he had to work tonight instead of taking her out to dinner.
“How about a plane ticket to California?” she suggested, half turning to look at the stock in the cooled, glass-front display case behind her. Rowan bothered her, and she didn’t know quite why.
Liar, she thought; you know damned well why. He laughed. “A ticket, huh? For me, or her?”
“I think . . . or you. With that face, you’ll never be able to lie to her. I’ll bet you’re lousy at poker, too.”
Jesus, Caroline, what the hell are you doing?
Again he laughed, and leaned a hip against the counter. “It’s a good idea, but I think it’ll have to wait.” He pointed. “Those roses. The orangey ones.”
She told him the price.
He winced. “Ouch. I’ll be eating peanut butter for a year.”
She looked at him along her shoulder. “You want to live, I can do something with the roses. You want to eat, you’ll have to go for the ticket.”
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 3: Dialing the Wind (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 3
