I heard Connie yelling, good-naturedly, “You are definitely not excused! Janet-you come back here and dish, or else! ”
I felt the finger tap my shoulder.
I winced, then swung easily around on the bar stool and glanced at her as casually as I could.
“Oh hi,” I said.
“Oh hi?” Her smile went up a little more on one side than the other, creating a nice dimpled effect. “I guess I owe you a drink.”
“You don’t. Really.”
“I do. Really.”
The stool next to me was vacant; it would be. She took it. We looked at each other in the mirror again, this time on purpose.
She said, “Why do I think you’re checking up on me?”
“Why do you?”
For several long seconds she studied me in the mirror, then she said to my reflection, “Well…I imagined I saw you in a booth at Denny’s this morning.”
“Some imagination you have.”
Her eyes were smiling, too. “ Wasn’t it you?”
“That was me. But I wasn’t looking for you.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You were just there for that delicious Grand Slam breakfast, right?…And now you’re here, Guardian Angel, seeing if Rick’s had the good sense to…”
“Take a hint?”
Her smile went up on both sides, this time, and ushered in some laughter. Shaking her head, she said, “I really do owe you one…Have a drink with us.”
I didn’t want to join her and Connie, and give the other librarian a closer look at me. But I was cornered. Turning Janet down would have been suspicious. Or so I told myself.
Whatever the case, I was soon sitting on Janet’s side of the booth as she and bubbly Connie chitchatted, both of them nicely at ease around me, Janet revealing a new self-confidence.
Connie licked some beer foam from her upper lip and, just the tiniest bit drunk, said, “That little prick Rick? He’s been a bully since grade school. But he always gets away with it, ’cause his family has money.”
“Fuck him,” I said. “His family hasn’t given me any money.”
They both laughed at my naughty talk.
Making reluctant eye contact with Connie, I joined in on the chitchat. “You’re from here?”
“Born and raised, and too dumb and untalented to get out.” She smirked at Janet, good-naturedly. “What’s your excuse?”
Janet shrugged and said, “Destiny. Which is to say, answering an ad.”
Connie, suddenly quite serious, locked eyes with me. “This little girl’s gonna be head librarian one of these days. Just you wait and see.”
“Really,” I said, and narrowed my eyes and nodded.
Amused, Janet said, “Don’t pretend to be impressed-doesn’t suit you…And, so, Jack-what is it you do?”
“I’m in sales and service,” I said.
Janet, apparently the designated driver, was drinking a Diet Coke. “What kind of sales and service?”
“Veterinary medicine.”
“That sounds…interesting.”
I smiled a little. “No it doesn’t.”
Connie, frowning, asked, “Do you sell vets that stuff they use to put animals to sleep?”
“Afraid so,” I said.
Connie made a face. “Dirty job but…”
“I’m sure,” Janet says, “he sells plenty of things that make the animals feel better.”
“I try,” I said.
Janet and Connie exchanged looks. Connie’s smile at her friend told me I’d passed the test-for at least one night. Saturday at Sneaky Pete’s, the options were limited.
Janet gave Connie a glance that I didn’t at first understand, until Connie straightened herself, her breasts distorting Marilyn Monroe’s image but not in a bad way, and said, “You know…I see a guy over there who’s just cute enough to interest me, and drunk enough to think likewise…”
She got up and out of the booth less graceful than a ballet dancer, but more fun to watch.
Janet gave me a sideways look. “Now you’ll think that’s how I spend my weekends.”
“What is?”
“You know. Picking guys up.”
I offered half a smile. “Have I been?”
Her hands were draped around the Coke glass like it was the Silver Chalice. “It’s just…I never had anybody do anything so… sweet for me, before.”
“Sweet like pound the piss out of your boyfriend?”
I expected a laugh, but what I got was: “Exactly…I’m not really the type to, I don’t know…hit the bars on a Saturday night.”
“I know.”
Her eyebrows tensed with curiosity. “You do?”
“Today was your day off, right?”
Mildly surprised, Janet said, “Right.”
I shrugged. “You cleaned all morning, did laundry all afternoon, and then you listened to music or maybe read, a while. You fell asleep and were almost late to go out with your girlfriend.”
Astonished, she said, “My God-are you psychic?”
“No.” I toasted her with my beer glass. “I’m shadowing you.”
That got a smile and a laugh out of her. The truth will do that.
She was shaking her head. “I’m just not good at this. The game. The ritual. The small talk’s all so…”
“Small,” I said.
“I guess…I’ve always been kind of shy, frankly. A loner.”
“Me, I’m a people person.”
Another smile. “Oh, yeah, I can see that,” she said.
“You often…gravitate toward people like Rick?”
Her smile was gone and a smirk took its place. “Connie says it’s low self-esteem. I say it’s bait and switch…guys on their best behavior when they meet you, but who aren’t really, you know…”
“What they seem?”
Suddenly she sat up, something obviously occurring to her. She checked her watch.
“Shit,” she said.
“Was it something I said?”
“No! No, no, there’s just…Look, there’s something I have to do, something that slipped my mind, I should’ve done earlier.”
“You need a lift somewhere? Your friend seems busy.”
Connie was flirting with a guy over by the jukebox, which was having the good if rare sense to play a Patsy Cline song, “Crazy.”
Janet was shaking her head, saying, “Well, you see, I’m sort of semi-housesitting…for some friends of mine? Anyway, I need to bring in their mail, and their dog’s probably half-starved…Somehow after last night, with Rick, I just…spaced out on it, today.”
“I see.”
She gave me a look that had some pleading in it. “I don’t want to bother Con. Would you mind…driving me out there?”
“Sure,” I said, getting out of the booth, and helping her do so, too. “But you’ll have to show me the way.”
Nine
She was a tad over-dressed, in that silk blouse, for watering the plants, but the plants didn’t seem to mind, and I certainly didn’t.
I followed her around as dutifully as a dog-she’d already fed the real dog, and put it on a leash and walked it, and I’d kept her company on those chores, too-and we’d already worked through a lot of small talk about the library and her friend Connie and a little bit about Rick, who she actually sort of felt sorry for (I let her get away with that) (for now) and currently she was filling me in on this beautiful house itself, which was as wood and stone inside as out, including a hall fountain that was like water rushing over mountain rocks.
I asked when the place was built, and she said, “In the fifties some time, by my friend’s father…my friend, Dave Winters-he owns the office furniture plant, that keeps Homewood going? This is his house now, his and Lisa’s…I met Dave at college.”
Following her to the next plant, I said, “I thought you weren’t a local girl.”
“I’m not,” she said, taking care not to over-water. She was using a little red watering can from the kitchen. “Dave’s on the library board-when my application came in, he recognized the name of course, and helped me get the job. His wife is great, too.”
“Lisa,” I said.
She frowned at me. “How do you know Lisa?”
“I don’t. You mentioned her, before.”
“Oh.”
And on to the next plant.
“Where are the Winters?”