her carnival glass lampshade in her lap. She tore off the first pink slip and taped it over the sign by the doorbell, the embossed one which said T H E K E E T O N s and NO SALESMEN, PLEASE.
She put the tape and the pad back in her left pocket, then took the key from her right and slipped it into the lock. Before turning it, she briefly examined the pink slip she had just taped up.
Cold and tired as she was, she just had to smile a little. It really was a pretty good joke, especially considering the way Buster drove.
It was a wonder he hadn’t killed anyone. She wouldn’t like to be the man whose name was signed at the bottom of the warning-slip, though. Buster could be awfully grouchy. Even as a child he hadn’t been one to take a joke.
She turned the key. The lock opened easily. Nettle went inside.
4
“More coffee?” Keeton asked.
“Not for me,” Myrtle said. “I’m as full as a tick.” She smiled.
“Then let’s go home. I want to watch the Patriots on TV.” He glanced at his watch. “If we hurry, I think I can make the kick-off.”
Myrtle nodded, happier than ever. The TV was in the living room, and if Dan meant to watch the game, he wasn’t going to spend the afternoon cooped up in his study. “Let’s hurry, then,” she said.
Keeton held up one commanding finger. “Waiter? Bring me the check, please.”
5
Nettle had stopped wanting to hurry home; she liked being in Buster and Myrtle’s house.
For one thing, it was warm. For another, being here gave Nettle an unexpected sense of power-it was like seeing behind the scenes of two actual human lives. She began by going upstairs and looking through all the rooms. There were a lot of them, too, considering there were no children, but, as her mother had always been fond of saying, them that has, gets.
She opened Myrtle’s bureau drawers, investigating her underwear.
Some of it was silk, quality stuff, but to Nettle most of the good things looked old. The same was true of the dresses hung on her side of the closet. Nettle went on to the bathroom, where she inventoried the pills in the medicine cabinet, and from there to the sewing room, where she admired the dolls. A nice house. A lovely house. Too bad the man who lived here was a piece of shit.
Nettle glanced at her watch and supposed she should start putting up the little pink slips. And she would, too. just as soon as she finished looking around downstairs.
6
“Danforth, isn’t this a little too fast?” Myrtle asked breathlessly as they swung around a slow-moving pulp truck. An oncoming car blared its horn at them as Keeton swung back into his lane.
“I want to make the kick-off,” he said, and turned left onto the Maple Sugar Road, passing a sign which read CASTLE ROCK 8 MILES.
7
Nettle snapped on the TV-the Keetons had a big color Mitsubishi-and watched some of the Sunday Super Movie. Ava Gardner was in it, and Gregory Peck. Gregory seemed to be in love with Ava, although it was hard to tell; it might be the other woman he was in love with. There had been a nuclear war. Gregory Peck drove a submarine. None of this interested Nettle very much, so she turned off the TV, taped a pink slip to the screen, and went into the kitchen.
She looked at what was in the cupboards (the dishes were Corelle, very nice, but the pots and pans were nothing to write home about), then checked the refrigerator. She wrinkled her nose. Too many leftovers.
Too many leftovers was a sure sign of slipshod housekeeping. Not that Buster would know; she’d bet her boots on that. Men like Buster Keeton wouldn’t be able to find their way around the kitchen with a map and a guide-dog.
She checked her watch again and started. She had spent an awfully long time wandering around the house. Too long. Quickly, she began to tear off slips of pink paper and tape them to things-the refrigerator, the stove, the telephone which hung on the kitchen wall by the garage doorway, the breakfront in the dining room.
And the more quickly she worked, the more nervous she became.
8
Nettle had just gotten down to business when Keeton’s red Cadillac crossed the Tin Bridge and started up Watermill Lane toward Castle View.
“Danforth?” Myrtle asked suddenly. “Could you let me out at Amanda Williams’s house? I know it’s a little out of the way, but she’s got my fondue pot. I thought-” The shy smile came and went on her face again. “I thought I might make you-us-a little treat.
For the football game. You could just drop me off.”
He opened his mouth to tell her the Williamses’ was a lot out of his way, the game was about to start, and she could get her goddam fondue pot tomorrow. He didn’t like cheese when it was hot and runny anyway. The goddamned stuff was probably full of bacteria.
Then he thought better of it. Aside from himself, the Board of Selectmen was made up of two dumb bastards and one dumb bitch.
Mandy Williams was the bitch. Keeton had been at some pains to see Bill Fullerton, the town barber, and Harry Samuels, Castle Rock’s only mortician, on Friday. He was also at pains to make these seem like casual calls, but they weren’t. There was always the possibility that the Board of Taxation had begun sending them letters as well. He had satisfied himself that they were not-not yet, at least-but the Williams bitch had been out of town on Friday.
“All right,” he said, then added: “You might ask her if any town business has come to her attention. Anything I should get in touch with her about.”
“Oh, honey, you know I can never keep that stuff straight-”
“I do know that, but you can ask, can’t you? You’re not too dumb to ask, are you?”
“No,” she said hastily, in a small voice.
He parted her hand. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him with a wonderstruck expression. He had apologized to her. Myrtle thought he might have done this at some time or other in their years of marriage, but she could not remember when.
“Just ask her if the State boys have been bothering about anything lately,” he said. “Land-use regulations, the damn sewage… taxes, maybe. I’d come in and ask myself, but I really want to catch the kick-off.”
“All right, Dan.”
The Williams house was halfway up Castle View. Keeton piloted the Cadillac into the driveway and parked behind the woman’s car.
It was foreign, of course. A Volvo. Keeton guessed she was a closet Communist, a lesbo, or both.
Myrtle opened her door and got out, flashing him the shy, slightly nervous smile again as she did so.
“I’ll be home in half an hour.”
“Fine. Don’t forget to ask if she’s aware of any new town business,” he said. And if Myrt’s description-garbled though it would surely b f what Amanda Williams said raised even one single hackle on Keeton’s neck, he would check in with the bitch personally… tomorrow. Not this afternoon. This afternoon was his.
He was feeling much too good to even look at Amanda Williams, let alone make chitchat with her.
He hardly waited for Myrtle to close her door before throwing the Cadillac in reverse and backing down to the street again.
9
