“I will. And I’ll get the rest of this mess cleaned up.”
“I know you will, John. Take it easy.”
Alan went out to the parking lot, shaking his head.
3
The small silver bell over the door of Needful Things tinkled and Babs Miller, member in good standing of the Ash Street Bridge Club, came in a little timidly.
“Mrs. Miller!” Leland Gaunt welcomed her, consulting the sheet of paper which lay beside his cash register. He made a small tickmark on it. “How good that you could come! And right on time!
It was the music box you were interested in, wasn’t it? A lovely piece of work.”
“I wanted to speak to you about it, yes,” Babs said. “I suppose it’s sold.” It was difficult for her to imagine that such a lovely thing could not have been sold. She felt her heart break a little just at the thought. The tune it played, the one Mr. Gaunt claimed he could not remember… she thought she knew just which one it must be.
She had once danced to that tune on the Pavillion at Old Orchard Beach with the captain of the football team, and later that same evening she had willingly given up her virginity to him under a gorgeous May moon.
He had given her the first and last orgasm of her life, and all the while it had been roaring through her veins, that tune had been twisting through her head like a burning wire.
“No, it’s right here,” Mr. Gaunt said. He took it from the glass case where it had been hiding behind the Polaroid camera and set it on top. Babs Miller’s face lit up at the sight of it.
“I’m sure it’s more than I could afford,” Babs said, “all at once, that is, but I really like it, Mr. Gaunt, and if there was any chance that I could pay for it in installments… any chance at all - -.”
Mr. Gaunt smiled. It was an exquisite, comforting smile. “I think you’re needlessly worried,” said he. “You’re going to be surprised at how reasonable the price of this lovely music box is, Mrs.
Miller.
Very surprised. Sit down. Let’s talk about it.”
She sat down.
He came toward her.
His eyes captured hers.
That tune started up in her head again.
And she was lost.
4
“I remember now,” Jillian Mislaburski told Alan. “It was the Rusk boy. Billy, I think his name is. Or maybe it’s Bruce.”
They were standing in her living room, which was dominated by the Sony TV and a gigantic plaster crucified Jesus which hung on the wall behind it. Oprah was on the tube. judging from the way Jesus had His eyes rolled up under His crown of thorns, Alan thought He would maybe have preferred Geraldo. Or Divorce Court. Mrs. Mislaburski had offered Alan a cup of coffee, which he had refused.
“Brian,” he said.
“That’s right!” she said. “Brian!”
She was wearing her bright green wrapper but had dispensed with the red doo-rag this morning. Curls the size of the cardboard cylinders one finds at the centers of toilet-paper rolls stood out around her head in a bizarre corona.
“Are you sure, Mrs. Mislaburski?”
“Yes. I remembered who he was this morning when I got up.
His father put the aluminum siding on our house two years ago.
The boy came over and helped out for awhile. He seemed like a nice boy to me.”
“Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?”
“He said he wanted to ask if they’d hired anyone to shovel their driveway this winter. I think that was it. He said he’d come back later, when they weren’t fighting. The poor kid looked scared to death, and I don’t blame him.” She shook her head. The large curls bounced softly. “I’m sorry she died the way she did…” Jill Mislaburski lowered her voice confidentially. “But I’m happy for Pete.
No one knows what he had to put up with, married to that woman.
No one.” She looked meaningfully at Jesus on the wall, then back at Alan again.
“Uh-huh,” Alan said. “Did you notice anything else, Mrs.
Mislaburski? Anything about the house, or the sounds, or the boy?”
She put a finger against her nose and cocked her head. “Well, not really. The boy-Brian Rusk-had a cooler in his bike basket.
I remember that, but I don’t suppose that’s the kind of thing-”
“Whoa,” Alan said, raising his hand. A bright light had gone on I for a moment at the front of his mind. “A cooler?”
“You know, the kind you take on picnics or to tailgate parties?
I only remember it because it was really too big for his bike basket.
It was in there crooked. It looked like it might fall out.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Mislaburski,” Alan said slowly. “Thank you very much.”
“Does it mean something? Is it a clue?”
“Oh, I doubt it.” But he wondered.
I’d like the possibility of vandalism a lot better if the kid was sixteen or seventeen, Henry Payton had said. Alan had felt the same way… but he had come across twelve-year-old vandals before, and he guessed you could tote a pretty fair number of rocks in one of those picnic coolers.
Suddenly he began to feel a good deal more interested in the talk he would be having with young Brian Rusk this afternoon.
5
The silver bell tinkled. Sonny jackett came into Needful Things slowly, warily, kneading his grease-stained Sunoco cap in his hands.
His manner was that of a man who sincerely believes he will soon break many expensive things no matter how much he doesn’t want to; breaking things, his face proclaimed, was not his desire but his karma.
“Mr. jackett!” Leland Gaunt cried his customary welcome with his customary vigor, and then made another tiny check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. “So glad you could stop by!”
Sonny advanced three steps farther into the room and then stopped, glancing warily from the glass cases to Mr. Gaunt.
“Well,” he said, “I didn’t come in to buy nuthin. Got to put you straight on that. Ole Harry Samuels said you ast if I’d stop by this mornin if I had a chance. Said you had a socket-wrench set that was some nice. I been lookin for one, but this ain’t no store for the likes of me. I’m just makin my manners to you, sir.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but you don’t want to speak too soon, Mr. jackett. This is one nice set of sockets-double-measure adjustable.”
“Oh, ayuh?” Sonny raised his eyebrows. He knew there were such things, which made it possible to work on both foreign and domestic cars with the same socket-wrenches, but he had never actually seen such a rig. “That so?”
“Yes. I put them in the back room, Mr. Jackett, as soon as I heard you were looking. Otherwise they would have gone almost at once, and I wanted you to at least see them before I sold the set to someone else.”
Sonny jackett reacted to this with instant Yankee suspicion.
“Now, why would you want to do that?”
“Because I have a classic car, and classic cars need frequent repairs. I’ve been told you’re the best mechanic this side of Derry.”
“Oh.” Sonny relaxed. “Mayhap I am. What’ve you got for wheels?”
“A Tucker.”
Sonny’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at Mr. Gaunt with a new respect. “A Torpedo! Fancy that!”
“No. I have a Talisman.”
“Ayuh? Never heard of a Tucker Talisman.”
“There were only two built-the prototype and mine. In 1953, that was. Mr. Tucker moved to Brazil not long after, where he died.” Mr.
Gaunt smiled mistily. “Preston was a sweet fellow, and a wizard when it came to auto design… but he was no businessman.”
“That so?”
“Yes.” The mist in Mr. Gaunt’s eyes cleared. “But that’s yesterday, and this is today! Turn the page, eh, Mr. jackett? Turn the page, I always say-face front, march cheerily into the future, and never look back!”