Needful Things (67 page)

“And we're not going to fight, no matter what.”

He nodded solemnly. “No matter what.”

“Because I love you, too, Alan.”

He kissed her cheek, then let her go. “Let me see this ashcan thing he gave you.”

“It's not an ashcan, it's an
azka.
And he didn't
give
it to me, he loaned it to me on a trial basis. That's why I'm here—to buy it. I told you that. I just hope he doesn't want the moon and stars for it.”

Alan looked at the sign in the display window, and at the shade pulled down over the door. He thought, I'm afraid that's just what he
is
going to want, darlin.

He didn't like any of this. He had found it hard to take his eyes away from Polly's hands during the funeral service—he had watched her manipulate the catch on her purse effortlessly, dip into her bag for a Kleenex, then close the catch with the tips of her fingers instead of shuffling the bag awkwardly around so she could do it with her
thumbs, which were usually a good deal less painful. He knew her hands were better, but this story about a magic charm—and that was what it came down to when you scraped the frosting off the cake—made him extremely nervous. It reeked of confidence game.

TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

No—except for a few fancy restaurants like Maurice, he hadn't seen a business that kept appointment-only hours since he'd come to Maine. And you could walk right off the street and get a table at Maurice nine times out of ten . . . except in the summer, of course, when the tourists were spawning.

BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

Nevertheless, he had seen (out of the corner of his eye, as it were) people going in and out all week long. Not in
droves,
maybe, but it was clear that Mr. Gaunt's way of doing business hadn't hurt him any, odd or not. Sometimes his customers came in little groups, but far more often they seemed to be on their own . . . or so it seemed to Alan now, casting his mind back over the previous week. And wasn't that how con-men worked? They split you off from the herd, got you on your own, made you comfortable, and then showed you how you could own the Lincoln Tunnel for this one-time-only low price.

“Alan?” Her fist knocked lightly on his forehead. “Alan, are you in there?”

He looked back at her with a smile. “I'm here, Polly.”

She had worn a dark-blue jumper with a matching blue stock tie to Nettie's funeral. While Alan was thinking, she had taken off the tie and dextrously unbuttoned the top two buttons of the white blouse underneath.

“More!” he said with a leer. “Cleavage! We want cleavage!”

“Stop,” she said primly but with a smile. “We're sitting in the middle of Main Street and it's two-thirty in the afternoon. Besides, we've just come from a funeral, in case you forgot.”

He started. “Is it really that late?”

“If two-thirty's late, it's late.” She tapped his wrist.
“Do you ever look at the thing you've got strapped on there?”

He looked at it now and saw it was closer to two-forty than two-thirty. Middle School broke at three o'clock. If he was going to be there when Brian Rusk got out, he had to get moving right away.

“Let me see your trinket,” he said.

She grasped the fine silver chain around her neck and pulled out the small silver object on the end of it. She cupped it in her palm . . . then closed her hand over it when he moved to touch it.

“Uh . . . I don't know if you're supposed to.” She was smiling, but the move he'd made had clearly left her uncomfortable. “It might screw up the vibrations, or something.”

“Oh, come on, Pol,” he said, annoyed.

“Look,” she said, “let's get something straight, okay? Want to?” The anger was back in her voice. She was trying to control it, but it was there. “It's easy for you to make light of this. You're not the one with the oversized buttons on the telephone, or the oversized Percodan prescription.”

“Hey, Polly! That's—”

“No, never mind hey Polly.” Bright spots of color had mounted in her cheeks. Part of her anger, she would think later, sprang from a very simple source: on Sunday, she had felt exactly as Alan felt now. Something had happened since then to change her mind, and dealing with that change was not easy. “This thing
works.
I know it's crazy, but it
does work.
On Sunday morning, when Nettie came over, I was in agony. I'd started thinking about how the real solution to all my problems might be a double amputation. The pain was so bad, Alan, that I turned that thought over with a feeling that was almost surprise. Like ‘Oh yeah—amputation! Why haven't I thought of
that
before? It's so obvious!' Now, just two days later, all I've got is what Dr. Van Allen calls ‘fugitive pain,' and even that seems to be going away. I remember about a year ago I spent a week on a brown-rice diet because
that
was supposed to help. Is this so different?”

The anger had gone out of her voice as she spoke, and now she was looking at him almost pleadingly.

“I don't know, Polly. I really don't.”

She had opened her hand again, and she now held the
azka
between her thumb and forefinger. Alan bent close to look at it, but made no move to touch it this time. It was a small silver object, not quite round. Tiny holes, not much bigger than the black dots which make up newsprint photographs, studded its lower half. It gleamed mellowly in the sunlight.

And as Alan looked at it, a powerful, irrational feeling swept him: he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. He resisted a brief, powerful urge to simply rip it off Polly's neck and throw it out the open window.

Yes! Good idea, sport! You do that and you'll be picking your teeth out of your lap!

“Sometimes it almost feels like something is moving around inside of it,” Polly said, smiling. “Like a Mexican jumping bean, or something. Isn't that silly?”

“I don't know.”

He watched her drop it back inside her blouse with a strong sense of misgiving . . . but once it was out of sight and her fingers—her undeniably limber fingers—had gone to work re-buttoning the top of her blouse, the feeling began to fade. What didn't was his growing suspicion that Mr. Leland Gaunt was conning the woman he loved . . . and if he was, she would not be the only one.

“Have you thought it could be something else?” Now he was moving with the delicacy of a man using slick stepping-stones to cross a swift-running stream. “You've had remissions before, you know.”

“Of
course
I know,” Polly said with edgy patience. “They're
my
hands.”

“Polly, I'm just trying—”

“I knew you'd probably react just the way you
are
reacting, Alan. The fact is simple enough: I know what arthritic remission feels like, and brother, this isn't it. I've had times over the last five or six years when I felt pretty good, but I never felt
this
good even during the best of them. This is different. This is like . . .” She paused, thought, then made a small frustrated gesture that was mostly hands and shoulders. “This is like being
well
again. I don't expect you to understand exactly what I mean, but I can't put it any better than that.”

He nodded, frowning. He
did
understand what she was saying, and he also
understood that she meant it. Perhaps the
azka
had unlocked some dormant healing power in her own mind. Was that possible, even though the disease in question wasn't psychosomatic in origin? The Rosicrucians thought stuff like that happened all the time. So did the millions of people who had bought L. Ron Hubbard's book on Dianetics, for that matter. He himself didn't know; the only thing he could say for sure was that he had never seen a blind person think himself back to sight or a wounded person stop his bleeding by an effort of concentration.

What he
did
know was this: something about the situation smelled wrong. Something about it smelled as high as dead fish that have spent three days in the hot sun.

“Let's cut to the chase,” Polly said. “Trying not to be mad at you is wearing me out. Come inside with me. Talk to Mr. Gaunt yourself. It's time you met him anyway. Maybe he can explain better what the charm does . . . and what it doesn't do.”

He looked at his watch again. Fourteen minutes of three now. For a brief moment he thought of doing as she suggested, and leaving Brian Rusk for later. But catching the boy as he came out of school—catching him while he was away from home—felt right. He would get better answers if he talked to him away from his mother, who would hang around them like a lioness protecting her cub, interrupting, perhaps even telling her son not to answer. Yes, that was the bottom line: if it turned out her son had something to hide, or if Mrs. Rusk even
thought
he did, Alan might find it difficult or impossible to get the information he needed.

Here he had a potential con artist; in Brian Rusk he might have the key that would unlock a double murder.

“I can't, honey,” he said. “Maybe a little later today. I have to go over to the Middle School and talk to someone, and I ought to do it right away.”

“Is it about Nettie?”

“It's about Wilma Jerzyck . . . but if my hunch is right, Nettie comes into it, yes. If I find anything out, I'll tell you later. In the meantime, will you do something for me?”

“Alan, I'm buying it! They're not your hands!”

“No, I expect you to buy it. I want you to pay him by check, that's all. There's no reason why he shouldn't take one—if he's a reputable businessman, that is. You live in town and you bank right across the street. But if something shakes out funny, you've got a few days to put a stop on payment.”

“I see,” Polly said. Her voice was calm, but Alan realized with a sinking feeling that he had finally missed his footing on one of those slippery stepping-stones and fallen headlong into the stream. “You think he's a crook, don't you, Alan? You think he's going to take the gullible little lady's money, fold his tent, and steal off into the night.”

“I don't know,” Alan said evenly. “What I
do
know is that he's only been doing business here in town for a week. So a check seems like a reasonable precaution to take.”

Yes, he was being reasonable. Polly recognized that. It was that very reasonableness, that stubborn rationality in the face of what seemed to her to be an authentic miracle cure, that was now driving her anger. She fought an urge to begin snapping her fingers in his face, shouting
Do you
SEE
that, Alan? Are you
BLIND
?
as she did so. The fact that Alan was right, that Mr. Gaunt should have no problem at all with her check if he was on the up-and-up, only made her angrier.

Be careful, a voice whispered. Be careful, don't be hasty, turn on brain before throwing mouth in gear. Remember that you love this man.

But another voice answered, a colder voice, one she barely recognized as her own: Do I? Do I really?

“All right,” she said, tight-lipped, and slid across the seat and away from him. “Thank you for looking after my best interests, Alan. Sometimes I forget how badly I need someone to do that, you see. I'll be sure to write him a check.”

“Polly—”

“No, Alan. No more talk now. I can't not be mad at you any longer today.” She opened the door and got out in one lithe gesture. The jumper rode up, revealing a momentary heart-stopping length of thigh.

He started to get out on his own side, wanting to catch
her, talk to her, smooth it over, make her see that he had only voiced his doubts because he cared about her. Then he looked at his watch again. It was nine minutes of three. Even if he pushed it, he might miss Brian Rusk.

“I'll talk to you tonight,” he called out the window.

“Fine,” she said. “You do that, Alan.” She went directly to the door beneath the canopy without turning around. Before he put the station wagon in reverse and backed out into the street, Alan heard the tinkle of a small silver bell.

“Ms. Chalmers!” Mr. Gaunt cried cheerfully, and made a small check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. He was nearing the bottom of it now: Polly's was the last name but one.

“Please . . . Polly,” she said.

“Excuse me.” His smile widened.
“Polly.”

She smiled back at him, but the smile was forced. Now that she was in here, she felt a keen sorrow at the angry way she and Alan had parted. Suddenly she found herself struggling just to keep from bursting into tears.

“Ms. Chalmers? Polly? Are you feeling unwell?” Mr. Gaunt came around the counter. “You look a trifle pale.” His face was furrowed with genuine concern. This is the man Alan thinks is a crook, Polly thought. If he could only see him now—

“It's the sun, I think,” she said in a voice that was not quite even. “It's so warm outside.”

“But cool in here,” he said soothingly. “Come, Polly. Come and sit down.”

He led her, his hand near but not quite touching the small of her back, to one of the red velvet chairs. She sat upon it, knees together.

“I happened to be looking out the window,” he said, sitting in the chair next to hers and folding his long hands into his lap. “It looked to me as if you and the Sheriff might be arguing.”

“It's nothing,” she said, but then a single large tear
overspilled the corner of her left eye and rolled down her cheek.

“On the contrary,” he said. “It means a great deal.”

She looked up at him, surprised . . . and Mr. Gaunt's hazel eyes captured hers. Had they been hazel before? She couldn't remember, not for certain. All she knew was that as she looked into them, she felt all the day's misery—poor Nettie's funeral, then the stupid fight she'd had with Alan—begin to dissolve.