"Ladies!" Fair, framed by a sale sign for charcoal briquets, waved from the end of the aisle.
Aysha smiled at Fair, then looked at Harry to pick up telltale signs of emotion. Harry smiled, too, and waved back. She liked her ex.
"Well, I'd better push on, forgive the pun." Susan headed out. "Danny will be the youngest coronary victim in Crozet if I don't get back with this food."
"Me too."
"Harry, are you cooking?" Aysha couldn't believe it.
Harry pointed to her cart. "Tucker and Mrs. Murphy."
"Give them my best." Aysha moved in the other direction, her laughter tinkling as she went.
Ottoline, hands on hips, appeared at aisle's end. "Will you hurry up?"
Harry reached the end of the aisle, where Fair waited for her. He was pretending to buy charcoal at a discount.
"How you doin'?"
"Fine, what about you?"
"Seeing more shin splints than I can count. Too many trainers are overworking their young horses on this hard ground." Shin splints, or bucked shins, are a common problem among young racehorses.
Harry owned three horses, one of which, still a bit new to her, had been given to her by Fair and Mim. Lately, Mim had warmed to Harry. In fact, the haughty Mrs. Sanburne seemed to have softened considerably over the past couple of years.
"We're doing pretty good at home. Come on by and let's ride up Yellow Mountain."
"Okay." Fair eagerly accepted. "Tomorrow's a mess, but the day after? I'll swing by at six. Ought to have cooled off a little by then."
"Great. Who do you want to take out?"
"Gin Fizz."
"Okay." She started off knowing that the cat and dog would be crabby from waiting so long.
"Uh, heard you and Blair Bainbridge were up at Ash Lawn yesterday. I thought he was out of town." Fair prayed he would be going out of town again soon—like tomorrow.
"He finished up that shoot and instead of stopping by to see his folks, he came directly home. He's pretty tired, I think."
"How can you get tired wearing clothes and twirling in front of the camera?"
Harry refused to be drawn into this. "Damned if I know, Fair, no one's ever asked me to model." She wheeled away. "See you day after tomorrow."
4
"Get out the shovels," Hairy called to Mrs. Hogendobber as she trooped through the back door just as Rob Collier, the mail delivery man, was leaving by the front door.
He ducked his head back in. "Morning, Mrs. H."
"Morning back at you, Rob." She beheld the mammoth bags of mail on the floor. "What in the world?"
"Heck of a way to start August."
As the big mail truck backed out of the driveway, the two women, transfixed by the amount of mail, just stared. "Oh, hell, I'll get the mail cart and start on bag one."
"I'll be right back." Mrs. Hogendobber hurried out the door and returned in less than five minutes, enough time for Harry to upend the big canvas bag and enough time for Mrs. Murphy to crash full force into the pile, sending letters and magazines scattering. Then she rolled over and bit some envelopes while scratching others.
"Death to the bills!''the cat hollered. She spread all four paws on the slippery pile, looked to the right, then to the left, before springing forward with a mighty leap, sending mail squirting out from under her.
"Get a grip, Murph." Harry had to laugh at the tiger's merry show.
"Here's what I think of the power company." She seized a bill between her teeth and crunched hard. "Take that. And this is for every lawyer in Crozet." She pulled her right paw over a windowpane bill, leaving five parallel gashes.
Tucker joined the run, but not being as agile as Mrs. Murphy, she could only run through the mail and shout, "Look at me!"
"All right, you two. This is the only post office in America where people get mail with teeth marks on it. Now, enough is enough."
Mrs. Hogendobber opened the back door just as Pewter was entering through the animal door. "Hey, hey, wait a minute."
Mrs. Murphy sat down in the mail debris and laughed as her fat friend swung toward her. Mrs. Hogendobber laughed too.
"Very funny. "Pewter, incensed, wriggled out.
"Everyone's loony tunes this morning." Harry bent over to tidy the mess but thought the cat had the right idea. "What is that incredible smell?"
"Cinnamon buns. We need sustenance. Now, I was going to wait and bring these over for our break, but Harry, we'll be working through that." She checked the big old railroad clock on the wall. "And Mim will be here in an hour."
"Mim will have to come back." Harry threw letters in the mail cart and wheeled it to the back side of the mailboxes. "Unless you've got some scoop, turn on the radio." Harry winked as she snatched a hot cinnamon bun and started the sorting.
"I'm not listening to country and western this morning."
"And I don't want to be spiritually uplifted, Miranda."
"Don't fuss." Mrs. Hogendobber clicked on the dial.
The announcer bleated the news. "—an eight-million-dollar loss for this quarter, the worst in FI's sixty-nine-year history. One thousand five hundred employees, twenty-five percent of the famed company's work force, have been let go—"
"Damn." Harry shot a postcard into Market Shiflett's box.
"I imagine those people being handed their pink slips are saying worse than that."
The news continued after a commercial break for the new Dodge Ram. The deep voice intoned, "Threadneedle, the feared computer virus, was already striking early this morning. Leggett's department store has reported some small problems, as has Albemarle Savings and Loan. The full extent of the scramble won't be known until the business day gets under way. But the early birds are reporting light trouble."
"You know, if some computer genius out there really wanted to perform a service for America, he or she would destroy the IRS."
"We are overtaxed, Harry, but you're becoming an anarchist." Miranda wiped a bit of vanilla icing that dripped off her lips, hot coral today to match her square hot coral earrings. Mrs. H. believed in dressing for success, fifties style.
"Ten percent across the board if you make over one hundred thousand and five percent if you make under. Anyone making less than twenty-five thousand a year shouldn't have to pay tax. If we can't run the country on that, then maybe we'd better restructure the country—like FI, we're becoming a dinosaur… Too big to survive. We trip over our own big feet."
Mrs. Hogendobber flipped up another bag. "I don't know— but I do agree we're making a mess of things. Now, what's she doing here?" She saw Kerry McCray coming through the door.
"Hope you don't need your mail," Mrs. Hogendobber called out.
"Itore it up anyway. "Mrs. Murphy licked her lips.
"Didyou really?" Pewter was impressed.
"Sure, look at this." Mrs. Murphy pushed over an envelope bearing neat fang marks on the upper and lower corners.
"Bet it's a federal offense," the gray cat sagely noted.
"Hope so, "Mrs. Murphy saucily replied.
"I'm not here for the mail," Kerry said. "Just wanted to tell you that the Light Opera series at Ash Lawn is doing Don Giovanni on Saturday and really, you've got to come. The lead has such a clear voice. I don't know music like you do, Mrs. Hogendobber, but he is good."
"Why, thank you for thinking of me, Kerry. I will try to swing by."
Harry stuck her head around the mailboxes. "So, Kerry, you been out with the lead singer yet?"
Kerry blushed. "I did show him the University of Virginia."
"You just keep being yourself, honey. He'll soon fall head over heels."
Kerry blushed again, then left, crossing the street to the bank.