I followed her out toward the whomping of the music, and she twisted the dial down to background size with a single expert tweak as she went by the radio. “I caught the coffee thing from Harry,” she said. “He was in the Navy, so it’s always on the fire, grind our own beans, never let it begin to bubble, like some people are about wine, I guess.” And as she spoke she deftly assembled tall white cup and saucer, poured it steaming rich, slid it into position at the end of the center island which was a breakfast bar, put sugar and cream within reach. She went over and stood at her eye-level wall oven, all copper and chrome, and peered in through the glass front at her pies.
“The only way I’m going to be able to tell is from the color of the crust. Lousy thermostat. Hey, want a cinnamon pecan roll? The bakery just delivered fresh, and they’re the special this week.”
She poured coffee for herself, got out the butter and the rolls, and sat around the corner of the bar end of the island at my left.
“Marvelous coffee, Mrs. Shottlehauster.”
“Specialty of the house, thank you kind sir,” she said. “What is it the Farleys want to buy?”
“I don’t know. We’re a service organization and we work for a lot of different client companies. The point is are they a good credit risk up to such and such an amount.”
She munched slowly, frowning. The pad of muscle at the corner of her jaw bulged with each bite. There was a flake of cooked sugar on her narrow underlip and, her tongue slipped cleverly out and hooked it in. “I like to try to be fair to everybody. So I just couldn’t say. It just depends on how much they can put into the spring planting, if they know what to plant, if they know how to go about getting help from the county agent and the state, if they’re all willing to work like Arabian slaves… I just don’t know, honestly. Mr. Farley is well-spoken. You can tell he’s had some advantages. I tried to be neighborly, and so did a couple of other women, but we spread the word that nobody else need waste their time. I stopped there last September and didn’t even get invited in. They just stared at me, and I had the idea they were laughing at me somehow. You know? She’s a big heavy woman, coarse-looking, and I don’t want to hurt their chances, but she smelled like a brewery, and it was a hot day and she wasn’t… properly covered up. I guess that kind of thing doesn’t mean much on a credit report.”
“It’s very helpful, really.”
“I’ve been noticing what a wonderful tan you’ve got, Mr. McGee.”
“I just got transferred up here from the Southwest. We get moved around a lot.”
“I guess you must think I’m some kind of a nut; inviting you in and all, and being absolutely all alone here until the bus brings the kids back, but I’ve got a sixth sense about people, and there’s a 16-gauge automatic shotgun standing, in the corner there by the front door and you wouldn’t have gotten a foot over the doorstep if I hadn’t known right off you were perfectly all right, if I hadn’t known I could trust you.”
“I do appreciate that.”
She smiled at me, and her pretty eyes had a slightly glazed look and they seemed to go in and out of focus. Her hand shook as she lifted the coffee cup. As she put it down she took a high quick shallow breath, shuddered, and her tongue hooked at crumbs that weren’t there. Under the brightness of the artificial daylight I saw a little sheen of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. A gentle sweet steam seemed to be rising from her. She hitched her hips on the stool and said in a huskier tone, “Since my littlest one started school and Harry took to being away politicking here and there, these winter days do seem to get awful long for an outgoing-type person like me.”
No trouble diagnosing the problem. She was a little bit scared, and a little bit excited, and she wasn’t accustomed to making a pass at a total stranger and she didn’t know exactly how to go about it, but Bread Boy had not taken the edge off her and the only thing she could think of was how, without a total loss of all pride and dignity, she could hop back onto that counter top, sans moccasins, stretch jeans, and plain, practical briefs, and get rid of that aching weight, that burden teetering on the brink. She shivered again and gave a high tense artificial laugh and said, “Somebody keeps walking across my grave, I guess.”
I looked at my watch and said, getting up quickly, “Holy Maloney, Mrs. Shottlehauster, this has been so pleasant I lost track of the time. I certainly do appreciate your kindness.”
“Don’t you have time for just one more cup of coffee?”
“I wish I did.”
As I drove away from the impressive farm, I tried to tell myself I was a very decent and restrained chap, quite above the shoddy device of rationalizing it as an act of mercy. But I knew I was lying to myself. I knew from a little sense of heaviness in my loins that had I not had that startled moment of peeping tomism, I might possibly have succumbed to the environment, realizing for the first time the grotesque eroticism of a kitchen deed, amid rich good smells of coffee and pies baking and country woman, as if desire had a curious link with the homely processes of hearty food. A brisk and staunch and amiable little woman, fruitful as the land, her needs earnest and simplified and swiftly and with abundant energy gratified, without residual obligation or accusation. Trot off and set herself to rights and come back with the grace to blush a little, then pay off with a pat, a sisterly kiss, more good coffee and another thickly buttered cinnamon pecan roll.
So it had not been restraint after all, not a moral hesitation. It had been just my supercilious sense of my own dignity. McGee could not take over the morning chore where Darling Bread Boy had left off. Fastidiousness. A stuffy sense of social stratum, and of course no chance to exercise that jackassy masculine conviction that the lady would not have yielded to anyone less charming and persuasive. Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility.
I knew something about her too. In any other part of the house it would be a horrified No. What do you think I am? The rest of the house gave her the sense of her value, wife of Harry, mother of six, doer of good deeds. The kitchen was her domain. There any little clinging web of guilt could be swiftly scrubbed away, like a thousand other things spilled and broken. Kitchens took care of simple hungers. Stir, mix, bake, and serve, then clean up the litter, polish, and scrub, and it is bright and new again-as if you hadn’t cooked a thiog.
I turned the nose of the car into the third of a mile of muddy ruts that led to the Farley farm. I stopped and stared at the road. I patted the slash pocket of the topcoat, feeling the little lump of the Airweight Bodyguard. Six rounds of 158 grain.38 Special. I traveled with it wrapped in a washcloth and tucked into a slightly oversized soap dish. This will not delude professionals. It escapes casual snoopers.