“Even thinner.”
“I can’t cut it any thinner than this,” he said, and sliced off a narrow piece of cake. “It smells heavenly. Thank you again, Polly.”
“You’re more than welcome.”
It did smell good, and she wasn’t on a diet, but her initial refusal had been more than first-meeting politeness. The last three weeks had been a stretch of gorgeous Indian summer weather in Castle Rock, but on Monday the weather had turned cool, and her hands were miserable with the change. The pain would probably abate a little once her joints got used to the cooler temperatures (or so she prayed, and so it always had been, but she was not blind to the progressive nature of the disease), but since early this morning it had been very bad.
When it was like this, she was never sure what she would or would not be able to do with her traitor hands, and her initial refusal had been out of worry and potential embarrassment.
Now she stripped off her gloves, flexed her right hand experimentally. A spear of hungry pain bolted up her forearm to the elbow. She flexed again, her lips compressed in anticipation. The pain came, but it wasn’t as intense this time. She relaxed a little.
It was going to be all right. Not great, not as pleasant as eating cake should be, but all right. She picked up her fork carefully, bending her fingers as little as possible when she grasped it. As she conveyed the first bite to her mouth, she saw Gaunt looking at her sympathetically. Now he’ll commiserate, she thought glumly, and tell me how bad his grand father’s arthritis was. Or his ex-wife’s. Or somebody’s.
But Gaunt did not commiserate. He took a bite of cake and rolled his eyes comically. “Never mind sewing and patterns,” he said, “you should have opened a restaurant.”
“Oh, I didn’t make it,” she said, “but I’ll convey the compliment to Nettle Cobb. She’s my housekeeper.”
“Nettle Cobb,” he said thoughtfully, cutting another bite from his slice of cake.
“Yes-do you know her?”
“Oh, I doubt it.” He spoke with the air of a man who is suddenly recalled to the present moment. “I don’t know anyone in Castle Rock.”
He looked at her slyly from the corners of his eyes. “Any chance she could be hired away?”
“None,” Polly said, laughing.
“I was going to ask you about real-estate agents,” he said. “Who would you say is the most trustworthy around here?”
“Oh, they’re all thieves, but Mark Hopewell’s probably as safe as any.
He choked back laughter and put a hand to his mouth to stifle a spray of crumbs. Then he began to cough, and if her hands hadn’t been so painful, she would have thumped him companionably on the back a few times. First acquaintance or not, she did like him.
“Sorry,” he said, still chuckling a little. “They are all thieves, though, aren’t they?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Had she been another sort of woman@ne who kept the facts of her own past less completely to herself-Polly would then have begun asking Leland Gaunt leading questions. Why had he come to Castle Rock? Where had he been before coming here? Would he stay long? Did he have family? But she wasn’t that other sort of woman, and so she was content to answer his questions… was delighted to, in fact, since none of them were about herself. He wanted to know about the town, and what the flow of traffic was like on Main Street during the winter, and if there was a place nearby where he could shop for a nice little jotul stove, and insurance rates, and a hundred other things.
He produced a narrow black leather notebook from the pocket of the blue blazer he wore and gravely noted down each name she mentioned.
She looked down at her plate and saw that she had finished all of her cake. Her hands still hurt, but they felt better than they had when she arrived. She recalled that she had almost decided against coming by, because they were so miserable. Now she was glad she’d done it, anyway.
“I have to go,” she said, looking at her watch. “Rosalie will think I died.”
They had eaten standing up. Now Gaunt stacked their plates neatly, put the forks on top, and replaced the top on the cake container. “I’ll return this as soon as the cake is gone,” he said.
“Is that all right?”
“Perfectly.”
“You’ll probably have it by mid-afternoon, then,” he said gravely.
“You don’t have to be that prompt,” she said as Gaunt walked her to the door. “It’s been very nice to meet you.”
“Thanks for coming by,” he said. For a moment she thought he meant to take her arm, and she felt a sense of dismay at the thought of his touch-silly, of course-but he didn’t. “You’ve made what I expected to be a scary day something of a treat instead.”
“You’ll be fine.” Polly opened the door, then paused. She had asked him nothing at all about himself, but she was curious about one thing, too curious to leave without asking. “You’ve got all sorts of interesting things-”
“Thank you. “-but nothing is priced. Why is that?”
He smiled. “That’s a little eccentricity of mine, Polly. I’ve always believed that a sale worth making is worth dickering over a little.
I think I must have been a Middle Eastern rug merchant in my last incarnation. Probably from Iraq, although I probably shouldn’t say so these days.”
“So you charge whatever the market will bear?” she asked, teasing just a little.
“You could say so,” he agreed seriously, and again she was struck by how deep his hazel eyes were-how oddly beautiful. “I’d rather think of it as defining worth by need.”
“I see.”
“Do you really?”
“Well… I think so. It explains the name of the shop.”
He smiled. “It might,” he said. “I suppose it might, at that.”
“Well, I’ll wish you a very good day, Mr. Gaunt-”
“Leland, please. Or just Lee.”
“Leland, then. And you’re not to worry about customers. I think by Friday, you’ll have to hire a security guard to shoo them out at the end of the day.”
“Do you? That would be lovely.”
“Goodbye.”
“Ciao,” he said, and closed the door after her.
He stood there a moment, watching as Polly Chalmers walked down the street, smoothing her gloves over her hands, so misshapen and in such startling contrast to the rest of her, which was trim and pretty, if not terribly remarkable. Gaunt’s smile grew. As his lips drew back, exposing his uneven teeth, it became unpleasantly predatory.
“You’ll do,” he said softly in the empty shop. “You’ll do just fine.”
5
Polly’s prediction proved quite correct. By closing time that day, almost all of the women in Castle Rock-those who mattered, anyway-and several men had stopped by Needful Things for a quick browse. Almost all of them were at some pains to assure Gaunt that they had only a moment, because they were on their way to someplace else.
Stephanie Bonsaint, Cynthia Rose Martin, Barbara Miller, and Francine Pelletier were the first; Steffie, Cyndi Rose, Babs, and Francie arrived in a protective bunch not ten minutes after Polly was observed leaving the new shop (the news of her departure spread quickly and thoroughly by telephone and the efficient bush telegraph which runs through New England back yards).
Steffie and her friends looked. They ooohed and ahhhed. They assured Gaunt they could not stay long because this was their bridge day (neglecting to tell him that the weekly rubber usually did not start until about two in the afternoon). Francae asked him where he came from. Gaunt told her Akron, Ohio. Steffie asked him if he had been in the antiques business for long. Gaunt told her he did not consider it to be the antiques business… exactly. Cyndi wanted to know if Mr. Gaunt had been in New England.long.