“Cal, why do things have to be so stinking?”
“I don’t know. I could make some tiresome comment about how that’s the way the world is. But usually it’s not quite this... flagrant. Cheer up. You see, you would have found out anyway. But it would have been worse to find out a year from now, when there’d be no chance at all of recovering any of the twenty-something thousand they’d have gouged out of you on top of what the layout is actually worth. Be glad you found out before it happened.”
“I guess I will be, after a while.”
“You’ll be working too hard to give it much thought anyhow, Lollie. Making that thing pay is going to take all kinds of work.”
“Good. It’s what I need.” She gave him an oblique look. “Twice now you’ve saved me, Cal.”
“Twice?”
“I would have tried to hang onto the kind of life I had with Mitch. But I would have had to keep pretending it was what I wanted. There were people who sort of wanted to... take charge and tell me how to live. You came along and just gave me a gentle nudge, at the right time.”
“You would have come up with the same idea.”
She hitched her chair into the shade of the poolside umbrella. She looked at Kit poised on the low board, scrawny, brown and vital, visibly taller than when they had started the trip.
“Would I, Cal? I don’t know. There’s such a terrible temptation to leave things as unchanged as possible. You are supposed to believe children get insecure if you go moving them around, forcing them to make new friends. I guess I would have used that as an excuse. But they have a strange wisdom, don’t they? Because you brought up the idea of the trip, I was obligated to bring it up, and pretend to them that I wanted to do it. I expected David to be terribly upset about missing summer camp. I’d promised him. And I thought Kit wouldn’t want to leave her friends. But before I could finish explaining the idea, they both wanted to go. Actually, it annoyed me. I’d been so sure of staying, for their sake. When we actually left, I felt lost and scared. But then every day began to be better and brighter. How could they know it would be like that? What special instinct did they have?”
“Maybe they weren’t as adjusted as they seemed.”
“That could be it. And then we found this place, and all three of us fell in love with it. So quickly. We talked about staying. They were making new friends. But I couldn’t believe they meant it. I knew that when I talked about selling the house, they would be upset. But they were so darned casual about never seeing it again.”
“Things went wrong for them there.”
“So I farmed them out and went back and closed the deal. Some nice people had been very anxious to buy it. I went through the house like a whirlwind. I packed stuff and stored it so I can send for it, and let the rest go with the house. I said my good-bys. When I got back here I slept the clock around. I still can’t believe we won’t be going back.”
“I thought something like this might happen, Lollie, if you could get away from there. I wasn’t really sure you would. I thought you might change your mind at the last minute.”
“Except for the pressure from the kids, I might have. But... I thought this was going to be so nice. I thought this was going to be such a good idea. And now it all seems sort of shabby. Some... some of the shine is gone.”
“Because they tried to cheat you?”
“I guess so. I thought they were nice. I thought they liked me. I liked them.”
“And you thought the place was making money. That would be nice and easy, if it was. You could go right in and start having an income from it. You’d have time to make mistakes. You could play a nice little game of pretending to run a business. This way you’ll have no room for mistakes. If you want to play games, you better skip the whole idea, Lollie.”
She turned her head sharply to stare at him. “What do you think I am?”
He shrugged. “I’d do you no favor to pat you on the head. You’re a young widow. Business experience zero. How many retail businesses fail every year? Fifty thousand? Certainly not all those people are inexperienced. The widow puts her money into a gift shop or a tea room or a motel, and traditionally, while she’s going broke, she finds out she didn’t know what it was really like.”
“Are you telling me not to do it?”
“What do you think?”
She glared at him. Her chin looked more prominent. She doubled a small tanned fist and banged it on the aluminum arm of her chair. “I don’t care how grim and nasty and rugged it gets! I don’t care how much I have to learn or how fast I have to learn it. I’ll show you, Cal Burch! I’ll show everybody. Playing games, indeed! And when I’ve done it — when I’ve made it go — I’m going to invite you to come and look at it and eat boiled crow.”
He grinned in a lazy way. “That’s what I had to hear, woman. Now I can tell you to go ahead with it.”
After a first flush of wild anger, she gave him a rueful smile. “Manipulated again, by golly!”
“As soon as I get back I’ll airmail you some very practical manuals on operating a small business.”
“I’ll learn them by heart.”
After the sale was closed, he made flight arrangements and she drove him to El Paso. The kids did not go along. She seemed subdued on the trip down. She did not recover her good spirits until they were in the airport restaurant. “Those old people,” she said, “they were pleasant enough to me, but they both looked at you as if they despised you. You didn’t seem to notice.”
“I noticed. It’s a normal adjustment. I’m used to it. They can’t live with the idea they tried to steal your money. So I have to become the villain of the piece. A year from now they’ll firmly believe I slickered them out of their property, and they’ll moan about it to their friends.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“It used to, until I realized it doesn’t cost anything to be a villain.”
“I take possession two weeks from tomorrow. It scares me.”
“You take possession after the inventory is verified. I told George Emer to be sure to tell them it will be verified. Otherwise I’m afraid that sweet old couple would take off with the wiring, the fuse boxes and the water pumps.”
“I’ve got so much to learn. Can I write you about things that come up?”
“I want you to. And that guy at the bank will give you good advice in an emergency. So will George Emer. Don’t be afraid to ask. And don’t get reckless with your working capital, Lollie. Cling to it like a miser.”
She shook her head in wonder. “Mitch used to get purple over the strange things I’d do to check stubs. If he could see me now, he’d have hysterics.”
“That fellow George recommended will set up your books, show you how to keep them, and make out all your statements and tax forms.”
His flight was announced. She went out to the gate with him. After he kissed her, he kept his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake and, looking down into the solemnity of her green-gray eyes, said, “You’ll make out, Lollie. I believe that.”
“I wish I was as sure as I was yesterday.”
“Spend the two weeks going around to good business operations and asking nosy questions.”
“Okay, Cal.”
“Write me.”
“I will.”
After the plane took off it banked toward the Northwest. He looked back and saw the tiny figure in the blue skirt and white blouse trudging toward the parking lot, looking very alone in the hot golden weight of the sunshine.
For Laura Barnes it became a long strange time of unreality, made strangely dim by the unrelenting expenditure of energy involved in coming to terms with survival. She said at first that her working hours were from dawn till exhaustion, and then it ceased to be a wry joke.