Harry leaned over the box. “Scram.”
Mrs. Murphy meowed, a meow of consummate irritation.
Blair laughed. “What’d she say?”
“Don’t rain on my parade,” Harry replied, and to torment the cat she placed the box on the floor.
“No, she didn’t,” Tucker yelped. “She said, ‘Eat shit and die.’ ”
“Shut up, Fuckface,” Mrs. Murphy rumbled from the depths of the carton, the tissue paper crinkling in a manner most exciting to her ears.
Tucker, not one to be insulted, ran to the box and began pulling on the flap.
“Cut it out,” came the voice from within.
Now Tucker stopped and stuck her head in the box, cold nose right in Mrs. Murphy’s face. The cat jumped straight up out of the box, turned in midair, and grabbed on to the dog. Tucker stood still and Mrs. Murphy rolled under the dog’s belly. Then Tucker raced around the post office, the cat dangling underneath like a Sioux on the warpath.
Blair Bainbridge bent over double, he was laughing so hard.
Harry laughed too. “Small pleasures.”
“Not small—large indeed. I don’t know when I’ve seen anything so funny.”
Mrs. Murphy dropped off. Tucker raced back to the box. “I win.”
“Do you have anything fragile in there?” Harry asked.
“No. Some gardening tools.” He opened the box to show her. “I ordered this stuff for bulb planting. If I get right on it I think I can have a lovely spring.”
“I’ve got a tractor. It’s near to forty years old but it works just fine. Let me know when you need it.”
“Uh, well, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to drive one,” Blair confessed.
“Where are you from, Mr. Bainbridge?”
“New York City.”
Harry considered this. “Were you born there?”
“Yes, I was. I grew up on East Sixty-fourth.”
A Yankee. Harry decided not to give it another minute’s thought. “Well, I’ll teach you how to drive the tractor.”
“I’ll pay you for it.”
“Oh, Mr. Bainbridge.” Harry’s voice registered surprise. “This is Crozet. This is Virginia.” She paused and lowered her voice. “This is the South. Someday, something will turn up that you can do for me. Don’t say anything about money. Anyway, that’s what’s wrong with Little Marilyn and Fitz-Gilbert. Too much money.”
Blair laughed. “You think people can have too much money?”
“I do. Truly, I do.”
Blair Bainbridge spent the rest of the day and half the night thinking about that.
4
The doors of the Allied National Bank swung open and the vagrant breezed past Marion Molnar, past the tellers. Marion got up and followed this apparition as he strolled into Benjamin Seifert’s office and shut the door.
Ben, a rising star in the Allied National system, a protégé of bank president Cabell Hall, opened his mouth to say something just as Marion charged in behind the visitor.
“I want to see Cabell Hall,” he demanded.
“He’s at the main branch,” Marion said.
Protectively Ben rose and placed himself between the unwashed man and Marion. “I’ll take care of this.”
Marion hesitated, then returned to her desk as Ben closed the door. She couldn’t hear what was being said but the voices had a civil tone.
Within a few minutes Ben emerged with the man in the baseball jacket.
“I’m giving the gentleman a lift.” He winked at Marion and left.
5
The dew coated the grass as Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker walked along the railroad track. The night had been unusually warm again and the day promised to follow suit. The slanting rays of the morning drenched Crozet in bright hope—at least that’s how Harry thought of the morning.
As she passed the railroad station she saw Mrs. Hogendobber, little hand weights clutched in her fists, approaching from the opposite direction.
“Morning, Harry.”
“Morning, Mrs. H.” Harry waved as the determined figure huffed by, wearing an old sweater and a skirt below the knee. Mrs. Hogendobber felt strongly that women should not wear pants but she did concede to sneakers. Even her sister in Greenville, South Carolina, said it was all right to wear pants but Miranda declared that their dear mother had spent a fortune on cotillion. The least she could do for that parental sacrifice was to maintain her dignity as a lady.
Harry arrived at the door of the post office just as Rob Collier lurched up in the big mail truck. He grunted and hauled off the mail bags, complaining bitterly that gossip was thin at the main post office in Charlottesville, hopped back in the truck, and sped off.
As Harry was sorting the mail BoomBoom Craycroft sauntered in, her arrival lacking only triumphant fanfare. Unlike Mrs. Hogendobber she did wear pants, tight jeans in particular, and she was keen to wear T-shirts, or any top that would call attention to her bosom. She had developed early, in the sixth grade. The boys used to say, “Baboom, Baboom,” when she went sashaying past. Over the years this was abbreviated to BoomBoom. If her nickname bothered her no one could tell. She appeared delighted that her assets were now legend.
She did not appear delighted to see Harry.
“Good morning, BoomBoom.”
“Good morning, Harry. Anything for me?”
“I put it in the box. What brings you to town so early?”
“I’m getting up earlier now to catch as much light as I can. I suffer from seasonal affect disorder, you know, and winter depresses me.”
Harry, long accustomed to BoomBoom’s endless array of physical ills, enough to fill many medical books, couldn’t resist. “But BoomBoom, I thought you’d conquered that by removing dairy products from your diet.”
“No, that was for my mucus difficulty.”
“Oh.” Harry thought to herself that if BoomBoom had even half of the vividly described maladies she complained of, she’d be dead. That would be okay with Harry.
“We”—and by this BoomBoom meant herself and Harry’s ex-husband, Fair—“were at Mim’s last night. Little Marilyn and Fitz-Gilbert were there and we played Pictionary. You should see Mim go at it. She has to win, you know.”
“Did she?”
“We let her. Otherwise she wouldn’t invite us to her table at the Harvest Fair Ball this year. You know how she gets. But say, Little Marilyn and Fitz-Gilbert mentioned that they’d met this new man—‘divine looking’ was how Little Marilyn put it—and he’s your neighbor. A Yale man too. What would a Yale man do here? The South sends her sons to Princeton, so he must be a Yankee. I used to date a Yale man, Skull and Bones, which is ironic since I broke my ankle dancing with him.”
Harry thought calling that an irony was stretching it. What BoomBoom really wanted Harry to appreciate was that not only did she know a Yale man, she knew a Skull and Bones man—not Wolf’s Head or any of the other “lesser” secret societies, but Skull and Bones. Harry thought admission to Yale was enough of an honor; if one was tapped for a secret society, too, well, wonderful, but best to keep quiet about it. Then again, BoomBoom couldn’t keep quiet about anything.
Tucker yawned behind the counter. “Murph, jump in the mail cart.”
“Okay.” Mrs. Murphy wiggled her haunches and took a flying leap from the counter where she was eavesdropping on the veiled combat between the humans. She hit the mail cart dead center and it rolled across the back room, a metallic rattle to its wheels. Tucker barked as she ran alongside.
“Hey, you two.” Harry giggled.
“Well, I’ll be late for my low-impact aerobics class. Have a good day.” BoomBoom lied about the good day part and left.
BoomBoom attracted men. This only convinced Harry that the two sexes did not look at women in the same way. Maybe men and women came from different planets—at least that’s what Harry thought on her bad days. BoomBoom had attractive features and the celebrated big tits but Harry also saw that she was a hypochondriac of the first water, managing to acquire some dread malady whenever she was in danger of performing any useful labor.