"Claude and Carrie got married, Lily says!"
This caused a general burst of comment among the others in the room. Brian Gruber quit doing stomach crunches and sat up on the bench, patting his face with his towel. Jeri yanked her cellular phone from her workout bag and called a friend she knew would be up and drinking her coffee. A couple of other people sauntered over to discuss this news. And I caught a blaze of some emotion on Bobo's face, some feeling I found didn't fit in any category of comfortable response to my trivial piece of gossip.
"How did you know?" Janet asked, and I discovered I was in the middle of a small group of sweaty and curious people.
"I was there," I answered, surprised.
"You were a witness?"
I nodded.
"What did she wear?" Jerri asked, pushing her streaky blond hair away from her forehead.
"Where'd they go for their honeymoon?" asked Marlys Squire, a travel agent with four grandchildren.
"Where are they gonna live?" asked Brian Gruber, who'd been trying to sell his own house for five months.
For a moment, I thought of turning tail and simply walking away, but... maybe ... it wasn't so bad, talking to these people, being part of a group.
But when I was driving away from the gym I felt the reaction; I'd let myself down, somehow, a corner of my brain warned. I'd opened myself, made it easy. Instead of sliding between those people, observing but not participating, I'd held still long enough to be pegged in place, laid myself open to interpretation by giving them a piece of my thoughts.
While I worked that day, I retreated into a deep silence, comforting and refreshing as an old bathrobe. But it wasn't as comfortable as it had been. It didn't seem, somehow, to fit anymore.
That evening I walked, the cool night covering me with its darkness. I saw Joel McCorkindale, the minister of the Shakespeare Combined Church, running his usual three miles, his charisma turned off for the evening. I observed that Doris Massey, whose husband had died the previous year, had resumed entertaining, since Charles Friedrich's truck was parked in front of her trailer. Clifton Emanuel, Marta Schuster's deputy, rolled by in a dark green Bronco. Two teenagers were breaking into the Bottle and Can Liquor Store, and I used my cell phone to call the police station before I melted into the night. No one saw me; I was invisible.
I was lonely.
Chapter Six
Jack called Friday morning just as I was leaving for my appointment with Lacey at Deedra's apartment.
"I'm on my way back," he said. "Maybe I can come down Sunday afternoon."
I felt a flash of resentment. He'd drive down from Little Rock for the afternoon, we'd hop into bed, and he'd have to go back for work on Monday. I made myself admit that I had to work Monday, too, that even if he stayed in Shakespeare we wouldn't get to see each other that much. Seeing him a little was better than not seeing him at all... as of this moment.
"I'll see you then," I said, but my pause had been perceptible and I knew I didn't sound happy enough.
There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. Jack is not stupid, especially where I'm concerned.
"Something's wrong," he said at last. "Can we talk about it when I get there?"
"All right," I said, trying to soften my voice.
"Good-bye." And I hung up, taking care to be gentle with the telephone.
I was a little early. I propped myself against the wall by Deedra's apartment door and waited for Lacey. I was sullen and grim, and I knew that was unreasonable. When Lacey trudged up the stairs, I nodded a greeting, and she seemed just as content to leave it at that.
She'd succeeded in getting Jerrell to remove the boxes we'd packed the previous session, so the apartment looked a lot emptier. After a minimum of discussion, I began sorting through things in the small living room while Lacey boxed the linens.
I pitched all the magazines into a garbage bag and opened the drawer in the coffee table. I saw a roll of mints, a box of pens, some Post-It notes, and the instruction booklet that had come with Deedra's VCR. I patted the bottom of the drawer, then reached back in its depths. That netted me a coupon for a Healthy Choice microwave meal. I frowned, feeling the muscles around my mouth clamp in what would be wrinkles before too many years passed.
"It's gone," I said.
Lacey said, "What?"
I hadn't even heard her in the kitchen behind me. The service hatch was open.
"The TV Guide."
"Maybe you threw it away Wednesday?"
"No," I said positively.
"What possible difference could it make?" Lacey didn't sound dismissive, but she did sound puzzled.
I stood to face her. She was leaning, elbows on the kitchen counter, her golden-brown sweater already streaked with lint from the dryer. "I don't know," I said, and shrugged. "But Deedra always, always kept the TV Guide in this drawer, because she marked the shows she wanted to tape." I'd always found it interesting that someone with Deedra's limited intelligence was blessed with a knack for small appliances. She could set her VCR to tape her favorite shows in a matter of minutes. On nights she didn't have a date, Deedra had television. Even when Deedra was going to be in her apartment, if there was a man present, often she wouldn't watch her shows. She'd set up her VCR to record.
Every workday morning, Deedra slid in a tape to catch her favorite soaps, and sometimes Oprah. She used the Post-It notes to label her tapes; there was always a little yellow cloud of them in the living room wastebasket.
Oh, hell, what difference could a missing magazine make? Nothing else was missing—nothing that I'd yet discovered. If Deedra's purse was still missing (and I hadn't heard that it had been found) then the thief hadn't been after her keys for entry into her apartment, but had wanted something else in her purse.
I couldn't imagine what that object could be. And there wasn't anything of value missing from the apartment, only the stupid TV Guide. Oh, there might be some Kleenex missing. I hadn't counted those. Marta would probably ask me to.
While I'd been grumbling to myself, I'd been running my hands under the bright floral couch cushions, crouching to look underneath the little skirt that concealed the legs.
"It's just not here," I concluded. Lacey had come into the living room. She was looking at me with a puzzled expression.
"Did you want it for something special?" she asked cautiously, obviously humoring me.
I felt like a fool. "It's the only thing that's missing," I explained. "Marta Schuster asked me to tell her if I found anything gone missing, and the TV Guide is the only thing."
"I just hardly see ..." Lacey said doubtfully.
"Me too. But I guess I better call her."
Marta Schuster was out of the office, so I talked to Deputy Emanuel. He promised to draw the absence of the magazine to Sheriff Schuster's attention. But the way he said it told me he thought I was crazy for reporting the missing TV Guide. And I couldn't blame him for his conclusion.
As I went back to my work, it occurred to me that only a maid would have noticed the absence of the TV Guide. And I had to admit to myself that I'd only noticed because once Deedra had left it on the couch and I'd put it on the kitchen counter: in the hatchway, though, so it was easily visible. But Deedra had had a fit, one of the very few she'd had while I'd cleaned for her. She'd told me in no uncertain terms that the TV Guide always, always went in the coffee-table drawer.