she'd given the restaurant manager Nudger's number to call.
The aging White Knight to the rescue. By ten o'clock, Nudger had parked the VW in front of the Right Steer and was on his way inside to get Candy Ann.
The manager met Nudger just inside the door. He was wearing pointy-toed boots, jeans, and a fringed vinyl vest today. Everything but spurs and six-guns. He said his name was Mathewson and led Nudger through the dining area, then behind where the steaks were being broiled on an open grill, to a small office next to the kitchen.
Candy Ann was lying on a brown vinyl sofa that matched exactly the color of Mathewson's vest, as if material had been left over and put to practical use. She was calm now, but she'd been crying hard. Her eyes were reddened and swollen almost closed. They were the kind of eyes that made your own water when you looked at them. 1 9 о
When she saw Nudger, she reached inside herself for a smile. She found a faint one that would have to do. 'Mr. Nudger…'
Mathewson said, 'You can take her out the side door.' He sounded impatient, worn down by Candy Ann and her trauma. This was a place of business, for chrissakes! The lunch crowd was already on his mental horizon; he could see their dust as they stampeded toward the swinging doors, hell-bent for the Buckeroo Special. 'Take as long off as you need, Candy Ann,' he added. 'Your job will be here for you.' Well, not such a bad guy after all.
Nudger thanked Mathewson for calling him, then led Candy Ann by the arm into the hot parking lot. Asphalt stuck to their soles. The sun was like a velvet weight pressing down.
'You want to go home?' he asked.
She nodded, then kept her head bowed. She'd never looked so frail; she seemed to have lost twenty pounds overnight.
Nudger held the car door open for her; she was, especially now, the kind of woman who aroused male protective impulses and was naturally treated as a lady.
He walked around and got in behind the wheel, then edged the Volkswagen out onto Watson Road and drove toward Placid Grove Trailer Park. This threatened to be the hottest day of the summer, and the inside of the trailer was stifling. As soon as they'd entered, Nudger switched on the air conditioner.
Candy Ann slumped in the small chair in the living room and used her palms to wipe perspiration from her face. The sweat stung her eyes, and that got her crying again. She didn't seem able to stop. It was the kind of deep, racking sobbing that perpetuated itself, that could lead to complete physical and mental exhaustion.
'Do you have a regular doctor?' Nudger asked.
She shook her head. 'Never needed one much. I've been down to People's Medical Clinic a few times, for female things. They assigned me to a Dr. Ochebow, a foreigner.'
Nudger phoned the clinic, talked to Dr. Ochebow, and explained the situation. Ochebow had a high voice and what sounded like an Indian accent. He was difficult to understand, but he seemed sympathetic and competent. He said he'd phone in a prescription for a sedative.
'Which of the neighbors do you get along with best?' Nudger asked, after he'd hung up.
Candy Ann thought about that. 'Wanda Scathers, in the trailer behind this one.' She stopped talking for a moment to ride out a sobbing jag. 'The one with the brown awnings.'
Nudger told Candy Ann he'd be back soon, then went outside and stepped over a twisted wire fence between the two trailers. A small grayish dog scrambled out from under the Scathers' trailer and started yapping at him as if it had never laid eyes on anything quite so contemptible and threatening. He noticed that its ears were laid back flat against its head, so it was scared and probably bluffing. Or so he told himself as he advanced and the dog retreated, matching him precisely step for step, as if they were performing an intricate Latin dance maneuver Nudger vaguely remembered from the movies.
'Stop it, Buffy! Right now!' the woman in the trailer's open back door shouted.
Magic voice, magic words. Buffy abruptly calmed down. He turned up his pinkish nose at Nudger, blinked several times, then retreated back beneath the trailer where it was cooler, as if to say all this wasn't worth his trouble anyway. Dogs could be fickle that way, not unlike people.
Nudger walked over to the woman, who had waddled down the metal steps and was standing in the shade of the back-door awning. She was in her forties, and hadn't been pretty even twenty years and fifty pounds ago. Her hair was thin and scraggly, and she was wearing bright pink slacks and a clashing green blouse with dark stains down the front. In her right hand was a paint-smeared screwdriver long and thick enough to use as a crowbar.
She looked at Nudger, then glanced down for a second at the screwdriver in her hand. 'Been fixin' things,' she explained, not smiling.
Nudger tried a smile and introduced himself. 'You're a friend of Candy Ann Adams, aren't you?'
She nodded. 'We know each other. Talked over the fence from time to time.'
'She's suffered a shock,' Nudger said. 'A friend of hers was killed and she's pretty upset.'
Wanda appeared surprised. Apparently she didn't read the newspapers or watch what passed for news on TV. She hadn't known about Curtis' execution and his relationship with Candy Ann. And, obviously, Candy Ann hadn't considered her enough of a friend to confide in.
'Was this person killed in some kinda accident?' she asked.
'You could say that. And you could help Candy Ann by driving over to Walgreen's Drugstore on Watson and picking up a prescription her doctor phoned in.'
'How come you ain't going?'
'I think I need to stay with her, the way she is.'
Wanda still wasn't sure about Nudger, the ominous stranger. What might he be up to? She peered around him, down along the side of Candy Ann's trailer. 'Can't tell, the past several months, whether she's home or not,' she said.
'She's home,' Nudger said. 'And I'm worried about her and telling you the truth. You want to phone her to check?'
But the offer itself was enough. 'I guess not.' She contorted an arm to reach behind her and scratch between her shoulder blades with the screwdriver. 'I'd like to help. Who knows, I might need the same sorta help myself someday. What kinda prescription?'
'Just a sedative to help her sleep off some of her grief. Nothing strong.' He looked into Wanda's small brown eyes, imagining her thoughts. Prescription medicine. Drugs. He couldn't blame her for being skeptical. 'Everything's legal,' he said. 'I promise. Nothing crossed but my heart.'
'I didn't mean to act like I didn't trust you.'
'That's okay,' Nudger said. 'You should be careful.'
'That's the truth, way people are these days.'
A thin girl about ten, with Wanda's tiny, vacuous eyes, came to the door. She stood with one hand lightly touching the doorjamb, as if to maintain contact with reality.
Wanda noticed her. 'Can you watch your baby sister for a while, Lou Jane? I gotta run an errand.'
The girl nodded silently.
Wanda turned back to Nudger, waiting. A large fly touched down on her shoulder. She absently brushed it away and it buzzed into the trailer.
Nudger gave her a ten-dollar bill. 'The prescription's in Candy Ann's name, phoned in by Dr. Ochebow from the People's Clinic.'
Wanda nodded, pocketed the money, then tossed the screwdriver past Lou Jane onto the trailer floor. Nudger heard it bounce and then roll into the dimness behind the child.
'Back as soon as I can, Lou Jane,' Wanda said. 'You keep your hands outa them potato chips.' She walked heavily around toward the front of the trailer.
Nudger heard a car start after three long, grinding attempts, then saw her drive down Tranquillity Lane in a dented blue Datsun.
He looked at Lou Jane and smiled. Deadpan, she quietly closed the door on him. Such a way he had with women.
He climbed back over the wire fence, knocking it flat and then stooping to bend it erect again. Buffy took that as a signal for mild aggression and emitted a few halfhearted growls from the shadows beneath the trailer. But it was a hot, hot day, and one burst of ferociousness by one small dog was enough. The pills took effect less than an hour after Candy Ann had swallowed the first one. She wanted to sleep where she was sitting in the living room
