Athletes are known for philandering, you know.”
Abigail rolled her eyes. There was no reason Bethany should
say such a thing. No reason to discourage an interest in Archie
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when she didn’t know the first thing about him. Harold from the
chemist’s was a dullard, and stout.
“He doesn’t play ball anymore. He buys lumber for fixing up
houses.”
“All the same, I think you’d be better off with poor Harold.”
“I don’t like him. I’ve told you. Why don’t you go with
him yourself.” She did not say how she’d been buying stock-
ings for work, how she had regarded the stranger for some time
before their eyes met, the cool nylon moving across the backs
of her fingers, how he’d said she had the look of an actress
about her.
“Be nice, Abbie,” Bethany said. “Anyway, it isn’t me Harold
fancies. It’s you.”
Bethany was the worst kind of pretty girl: either oblivious to
her own easy beauty and charm or, worse, pretending to be. In
addition to that, she was a bit of a priss. She would never guess
some of the things Abigail had done. Nobody would; not her
parents, not even Archibald Gates. It would never be suspected,
for instance, that she’d once let Clifford Price have a go behind the gymnasium. That would never be dreamed, though she had done
it and had not been afraid. There had been no risk of its getting
out, because Clifford knew it would not be believed, and anyway
he might not have wanted it known. She had been glad of that
then but now wished that he had spread the rumor a bit, if only
as proof that he wasn’t ashamed.
Clifford Price had moved away after school, as others had and
as, at the end of summer, Bethany would. Most young people did
not stay in Glass.
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At half ten, Tim Garvey entered the chemist’s in search
of an ointment to soothe a bad nail. He’d arrived in Glass some
two days before, having bused in from Croft, and Reading before
it. His own vehicle had been abandoned in Colby, its backseat
strewn with chip shop receipts, pamphlets espousing the wisdom
of term life insurance. “Peace of Mind” they said in large letters, a middle-aged couple holding hands on the front. He intended to
stay no more than three days, after which time a town this small
would take notice.
He scanned the aisle for the ointment he needed: the one in
the yellow tube, because that was the one that had proved helpful
each time the condition recurred. The girl he’d seen yesterday was not in today, but that was only to have been expected. She was not what you would have called a good looker. You wouldn’t boast or
show pictures to your friends at the pub. But she had the sort of
milky complexion he liked; you could imagine lying next to her
after, your head resting on that big, fleshy bosom, and her letting you do that, wanting you to.
The baseball bit had been a risk, he reflected; the sort of thing
that might be disproved. You’d be caught out, having no expertise.
A mess then. He would never have said it except that he’d found
himself drawn to the girl. The accent and the false name had been
more considered, thought out and practiced well in advance.
Archie Gates: trustworthy, vaguely exotic. In the next town he
would be somebody else.
At home, he would not yet be missed. Head office was mostly
indifferent; his friends at the pub knew he traveled for work. His mother might fret when he failed to ring Sunday, though even
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that he sometimes forgot, or skipped doing, not having the heart.
Just as likely it would be the discovery of his car that first brought his departure to light. The police department would contact his
mother. Perhaps they would contact Lorna as well. “What are you
telling me for?” she would say.
A young man stood in back of the counter. “All right?” he said
while Tim counted his money. “Nice day out.”
“Summer’s come,” Tim agreed. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to
know—” But he stopped short, thinking it might raise alarm, a
stranger in town asking after a girl.
Bethany was on again about Harold.
“He likes you, Abbie. What’s the harm in a date? It would be fun. You could borrow a dress from the shop.”
“I couldn’t do that. Mrs. L wouldn’t allow it.”
“Of course she would,” Bethany said. “She lets me wear them
out all the time.”
Abigail found that irksome and would have liked to say so, but
they fell silent because they could see through the window that
Harold was passing on his way back from lunch.
“What’s new, H?” Bethany said. She was fond of Harold, sens-
ing him harmless, and perhaps also because he showed only polite
interest in her. Even now as they spoke he kept glancing at Abigail, who stood at the back of the shop folding garments and, when
she became aware of his gaze, thumbing through catalogs of new
summer fashions.
“I’m trying for Next Edison now,” he said, grinning in his usual way. He always had one scheme or another, mostly to do with
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appearing on TV. Talent contests had been one obsession, bak-
ing competitions another. “Have you seen it? It’s one of the best
programs out.”
He was Abigail’s age, had known her in school, and like her
he lived at home with his parents. His was the broad, open face
of a child: small, dark eyes shallowly set. A bit feebly he stood in the doorway, having eaten only a salad for lunch. He had lately
been watching his weight, ordering scanty meals at Hyde Pantry,
objecting when Debra tried to sneak him rashers of bacon. “I won’t see you starve,” she kept saying, her voice low and clotted with
cigarette tar. She had known him since he was a boy. Today, he’d
eaten half of the bacon, wrapped the rest in his napkin for later.
Abigail watched him at the edge of her vision, thinking what a
shame and how like her luck that Harold alone should fancy her
over Bethany. She would have preferred it be anyone else. Perhaps
Archie Gates would prove another exception. He had liked the
look of her right off, he’d said. “The look of an actress” were the words he had used, and she’d wanted to ask him which one he
meant but knew that that would have made her seem vain.
“Of course, I would think so,” Harold was saying. “Being an
inventor myself. Not everyone can see how their minds work. But
I can. I’d say they’re interesting folk.”
“It’s a good idea, Harold,” Bethany said. “My dad would buy
it. Abbie, wouldn’t your parents buy something like that, for keeping all the various wires in order? My dad is always muttering
about the wires, tripping over them and things.”
“They’d buy anything if it had a good ad on telly,” Abigail
said, recalling how her mother had asked for nothing more than
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a particularly absorbent mop for her birthday, and how, when it
arrived, her father
in his excitement had cleaned the floors for a month, the only times in twenty-five years of marriage he had
done so.
“I’ve got a clever idea for an ad,” Harold said. “It looks like the head of Medusa, but instead of snakes there’s all different wires
and cords.” He said this with a smile and a tone of satisfaction, the image being clear and very pleasing to him.
“That is clever, Harold,” Bethany said.
Abigail turned the page in her catalog.
“Doing well, Abbie?” Harold presently said, his voiced raised
because he hadn’t moved from the entrance and she was still at the rear of the shop.
“Well enough,” she said. “Bit bored today.”
“No offense taken,” Bethany said.
“That older bloke, yesterday, wouldn’t leave you alone? You’d
remember. Had a funny American accent?” He pretended not to
know what it was she had bought, though of course he had not
forgotten the stockings. Her legs now were obscured by the coun-
ter, otherwise he would have looked to see if she had them on. He
loved Abigail because there was a sadness about her. He wasn’t a
proper chemist, hadn’t stood for exams, but still he knew about the pills she was given: a sleep aid, something for nerves; you found out about that sort of thing with his job. Harold did not take medica-tion himself but felt it was something they shared nonetheless.
“Archie,” she said, looking up for the first time with interest.
“That’s his name. Archibald Gates. He was a baseball hurler, you
know.”
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“He was back in again. In the chemist’s, I mean. Buying creams
for a toenail fungus this time.”
“That’s really hot stuff,” Bethany said. She laughed until she
was red in the face. “What a dream boat, Abbie. What a catch that
Archibald Gates would be.”
“Just drop it, you two,” Abigail said.
“It was probably only for his granny or someone,” Harold
put forth, sensing her upset. A kindness, because he knew better,
of course.
Days passed, and Tim Garvey stayed on in Glass. He
saw the girl again when she made change at the bank. She was
wearing the stockings he’d seen her select. He had not gone to
visit the shop where she worked, having faith that he would come
upon her by chance and knowing that it would be better that way.
Morning to night he wandered the village, the four blocks at its
center, hills to the east, the headlands and boardwalk north by
the shore. Meals he took at the Cavalry Inn, charged to a bill that would never be paid.
He could not have said, if asked, what it was about her. He’d
have put her at twenty or so, as Lorna had been when first they
were married. In those days he’d been a security guard, ill paid and ill fed but deeply in love. Graveyard shifts under shopping mall
light, he would sit by himself and think of his wife. She was given to chills and to frightening dreams, so she disliked his being gone through the night. It had seemed for a while at that early juncture that he might have been delivered from hardship. Days, young
people would come to the mall. He liked to watch them interact
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with each other. His own childhood had been spoiled by the loss
of his father, who’d fallen to his death from a scaffold. His mother was never the same. The young people he encountered were as yet
unblemished. Because nothing bad had happened to them, they
seemed to feel certain that nothing ever would. It made him ten-
derhearted toward them, hopeful that they might not be mistaken.
Sometimes now, when he was worn down with travel, he
would find a girl who was on the game and take up for the night.
He would buy her coffee, or dinner if she wanted it (some of them
didn’t), and she would sit with him in the restaurant in full view of the world; later, in his rooms, it was just as if she were a part of his life. They were almost all of them kind. They always understood it was just that he was lonely. He reminded himself that it was different with the new girl, different because she was not on the game.
When she came out of the bank he was waiting for her, slack
against a light post, chewing a toothpick. She smiled when she
lifted her head. It had been a long time since anyone had been
happy to see him.
“I thought that was you went into the bank.”
“It was.”
“I’d hoped I would see you again.”
They walked the block and a half back to Laughlin’s Gown
Shop. She told him about Bethany, making her out as a bore,
overstating her beauty so that it would disappoint him in person.
“You’ve moved to Glass?” she said.
“Only doing a bit of business. There’s cheap birch to be had.
But I’ll be back; I’ll arrange it that way. I’ve taken a liking to the place.”
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This seemed to please her.
“A bit quiet, I’d have thought, for someone who has been an
athlete.”
“I like quiet places,” he said. “And quiet people.”
“But I guess you’ve been all over. All the big cities.”
“Ah, well the fact is the farm teams mostly play smaller towns.
Memphis, Nebraska.”
“But you’ve been in Mexico?”
“Tried a comeback in Japan,” he said, thinking of a program he
had watched about an ancient kind of archery. He had been taken
with the slow manner in which the bows had been drawn. His
mother preferred dramatic programs and sitcoms, but she would
usually watch something else if he wanted.
“Were you in Tokyo?” she said.
“Yes, and then in the mountains.”
In the years after the divorce he had wondered about things:
when precisely Lorna had given up on him, when she had got used
to sleeping alone. Later, when he began setting out on the road,
she had not seemed to mind his absence at all.
It was a pleasure now to walk down the street with the girl,
and not only because he knew they were seen. Near the gown
shop they paused to finish their chat, and he said he would like
to see her again. She smiled, and over her shoulder he was able
to catch a glimpse of the friend. It was true she seemed to be a
prettier type, but that did not change things about Abbie. She
had a bit of weight to her, Abigail did, but it was by no means
unpleasant. Even though she was not on the game, you could tell
by the way she had of looking at you that it would not have been
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the first go-round for her. He did not mind that, either. It was
all right.
They agreed to meet the following evening.
In her dreams he was there, always waiting for her.
Against another lamppost, reclining, he smoked; in an alley, steam rose from wet pavement.
I’d hoped to see you, he said.
I knew you’d be here.
In clean sheets, and smel ing of leather and soap, he was gentle.
His hands when they touched her were coarse. He wore no rings;
she’d noticed that as soon as she saw him. He was handsome—she
had noticed that, too—age having lent him an elegance. He was
a man, where Cl
ifford Price was only a boy. They both agreed it
didn’t matter about his being older.
She woke trembling, the familiar terrain of her bedroom slowly
reasserting itself in her mind. A thin sweat had broken out and
she threw back the covers. She ran her fingers over the places he’d touched in her dream.
“There’s a room where you can try on whatever you
like,” the lady said in the secondhand shop. He’d been rummaging
some time through the racks of old clothes.
It was difficult, always, to find things that fit him, being slen-
der with jangly limbs. It wouldn’t do to wear sleeves that came
short of the wrist, any more than it would to have grimy stains at his collar. Whatever desperate point his life might have reached, he would have to maintain certain standards. Thus far he had found
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a brown woolen suit and a shirt checked in pink and pale blue
with French cuffs.
Inside his shoes he wiggled his toes. They slipped against each
other, slickened with ointment.
He’d left most of his own clothes behind. Not that they were
any great shakes themselves, but it would have made things easier
not to have had to. It had been necessary that his luggage be found with the car to create the impression of having left it in haste, or else intending to come back. He never carried valuables in his
suitcase; if he had, he would have taken them out and strewn the
rest of its contents about the trunk and the ground.
In the fitting room he looked at himself in the mirror. It
seemed to him that he ought to look older.
Once again, he assured himself he’d done the right thing. He
had not wanted to abandon his mother. Only he’d come to the end
of his savings. The money from his policy would see her through
to the end; she would never be thrown out into the streets, as she might have been if he had not left. He glanced at his wristwatch: a quarter past three. She’d be watching her hospital program. After
that would be the one with the judge. She had been in hospital last year herself, but that had not lessened her interest in the program.
When he was not on the road he would watch it with her, and
sometimes she would take hold of his hand while she filled him in
on what he had missed. “These two are having it off,” she would say.
“About time. They were all lovey-dovey for years. And this one lost a patient last week. Prescribed the wrong dose of something or other.
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