Josiah and Ned parked people’s cars for them. Susan and Harry pulled up.
Josiah opened Harry’s door. “Hello, Harry. Terrible, terrible,” was all the normally garrulous fellow could say.
When Harry walked into the house she found enough food to feed the Sandanistas, and was glad she’d brought flowers for the table. She was not glad to see Fair but damned if she’d show it.
BoomBoom sat in a huge damask wing chair by the fireplace. Drained and drawn, she was still beautiful, made more so, perhaps, by her distress.
Harry and BoomBoom, two years apart in school, were never close but they got along—until last year’s Hunt Club ball. Harry put it out of her mind. She had heard the gossip that BoomBoom wanted to catch Fair, and the reverse. Were men rabbits? Did you snare them? Harry never could figure out the imagery many women used in discussing the opposite sex. She didn’t treat her men friends any differently than her women friends and Susan swore that was the source of her marital difficulties. Harry would rather be a divorcée than a liar and that settled that.
BoomBoom raised her eyes from Big Marilyn Sanburne, who was sitting next to her, dispensing shallow compassion. Her eyelids flickered for a split second and then she composed herself and held out her hand to Fair, who had just walked up to her.
“I’m so sorry, BoomBoom. I . . . I don’t know what to say.” Fair stumbled verbally.
“You never liked him anyway.” BoomBoom astonished the room, which was filled with most of Crozet.
Fair, befuddled, squeezed her hand, then released it. “I did like him. We had our differences but I did like him.”
BoomBoom accepted this and said, “It was correct of you to come. Thank you.” Not kind, not good, but correct.
Harry received better treatment. After extending her sympathy she went over to the bar for a ginger ale and to get away from Fair. What rotten timing that they had arrived so close together. The heat and the smoldering emotion made her mouth dry. Little Marilyn Sanburne poured a drink for her.
“Thanks, Marilyn.”
“This is too awful for words.”
Harry, ungenerously, thought that it might be too awful for a number of reasons, one being that Little Marilyn’s impending wedding was eclipsed, temporarily at least, by this event. Little Marilyn, not having been in the limelight, just might learn to like it. Her marriage was the one occasion when her mother wouldn’t be the star, or so she thought.
“Yes, it is.”
“Mother’s wretched.” Little Marilyn sipped a stiff shot of Johnny Walker Black.
Mim’s impeccable profile betrayed no outward sign of wretchedness, Harry thought to herself. “I’m sorry,” she said to Little Marilyn.
Jim Sanburne blew into the living room. Mim joined him as he walked over to BoomBoom, whispered in her ear, and patted her hand.
Difficult as it was, he toned down his volume level. When finished with BoomBoom he hauled his huge frame around the room. Working a room, second nature to Jim, never came easily to his wife. Mim expected the rabble to pay court to her. It galled her that her husband sought out commoners. Commoners do vote, though, and Jim liked getting reelected. Being mayor was like a toy to him, a relaxation from the toils of expanding his considerable wealth. Since God rewarded Mim and Jim with money, it seemed to her that lower life forms should realize the Sanburnes were superior and vote accordingly.
Perhaps it was to Marilyn’s credit that she grasped the fact that Crozet did not practice equality . . . but then, what community did? For Mim, money and social position meant power. That was all that mattered. Jim, absurdly, wanted people to like him, people who were not listed in the Social Register, people who didn’t even know what it was, God forbid.
A tight smile split her face. An outsider like Maude Bly Modena would mistake that for concern for Kelly Craycroft’s family. An insider knew Mim’s major portion of sympathy was reserved for herself, for the trial of being married to a super-rich vulgarian.
Harry didn’t know what possessed her. Maybe it was the suppressed suffering in the Craycroft house, or the sight of Mim grimly doing her duty. Wouldn’t everyone be better off if they bellowed fury at God and tore their hair? This containment oddly frightened her. At any rate she stared Little Marilyn right in those deep blue eyes and said, “Marilyn, does Stafford know you’re getting married?”
Little Marilyn, thrown, stuttered, “No.”
“We aren’t close, Marilyn. But if I never do anything else for you in your life let me do this one thing: Ask your brother to your wedding. You love him and he loves you.” Harry put down her ginger ale and left.
Little Marilyn Sanburne, face burning, said nothing, then quickly sought out her mother and father.
Bob Berryman’s hand rested on the doorknob of Maude’s shop. She had turned the lights out. No one could see them, or so they thought.
“Does she suspect?” Maude whispered.
“No,” Berryman told her to reassure her. “No one suspects anything.”
He quietly slipped out the back door, keeping to the deep shadows. He had parked his truck blocks away.
Pewter, out for a midnight stroll, observed his exit. She made a mental note of it and of the fact that Maude waited a few moments before going upstairs to her apartment over the shop. The lights clicked on, giving Pewter a tantalizing view of the bats darting in and out of the high trees near Maude’s window.
That night Mrs. Murphy and Tucker tried to distract Harry from her low mood. One of their favorite tricks was the Plains Indian game. Mrs. Murphy would lie on her back, reach around Tucker, and hang on like an Indian under a pony. Tucker would yell, “Yi, yi, yi,” as though she were scared, then try to dump her passenger. Harry laughed when they did this. Tonight she just smiled.
The dog and cat followed her to bed and when they were sure she was sound asleep they bolted out the back door, which contained an animal door that opened into a dog run. Mrs. Murphy knew how to throw the latch, though, and the two of them loped across the meadows, fresh-smelling with new-mown hay.
There wasn’t a car on the road.
About half a mile from the concrete plant Mrs. Murphy spied glittering eyes in the brush. “Coon up ahead.”
“Think he’ll fight?” Tucker stopped for a minute.
“If we have to make a detour, we might not get back by morning.”
Tucker called out, “We won’t chase you. We’re on our way to the concrete plant.”
“The hell you won’t,” the raccoon snarled.
“Honest, we won’t.” Mrs. Murphy sounded more convincing than Tucker.
“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. Give me a head start. I might believe you then.” With that the wily animal disappeared into the bushes.
“Let’s go,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“And let’s hope he keeps his promise. I’m not up for a fight with one of those guys tonight.”
The raccoon kept his word, didn’t jump out at them, and they arrived at the plant within fifteen minutes.
The dew held what scent there was on the ground. Much had evaporated. Gasoline fumes and rock dust pervaded. Human smells were everywhere, as was the scent of wet concrete and stale blood. Tucker, nose to the ground, kept at it. Mrs. Murphy checked out the office building. She couldn’t get in. No windows were open; there were no holes in the foundation. She grumbled.
A tang exploded in Tucker’s nostrils. “Here!”
Mrs. Murphy raced over and put her nose to the ground. “Where’s it go?”
“It doesn’t.” Tucker couldn’t fathom this. “It’s just a whiff, like a little dot. No line. Like something spilled.”