‘No,’ he said, and laughed nervously. ‘Just thinking.’
Parkins glanced up at the Marsten House, where the sun twinkled on chrome and metal in the driveway, then down at the old laundry with its new sign in the window. ‘And you’re not the only one, I guess. Always good to get new folks in town. You’ve met ‘em, ain’t you?’
‘One of them. Last year.’
‘Mr Barlow or Mr Straker?’
‘Straker.’
‘Seem like a nice enough sort, did he?’
‘Hard to tell,’ Larry said, and found he wanted to lick his lips. He didn’t. ‘We only talked business. He seemed okay.’
‘Good. That’s good. Come on. I’ll walk up to the Excellent with you.’
When they crossed the street, Lawrence Crockett was thinking about deals with the devil.
12
1:00 P.M.
Susan Norton stepped into Babs’ Beauty Boutique, smiled at Babs Griffen (Hal and Jack’s eldest sister), and said, ‘Thank goodness you could take me on such short notice.’
‘No problem in the middle of the week,’ Babs said, turning on the fan. ‘My, ain’t it close? It’ll thunderstorm this afternoon.’
Susan looked at the sky, which was an unblemished blue. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Yeah. How do you want it, hon?’
‘Natural,’ Susan said, thinking of Ben Mears. ‘Like I hadn’t even been near this place.’
‘Hon,’ Babs said, closing in on her with a sigh, ‘that’s what they all say.’
The sigh wafted the odor of Juicy Fruit gum, and Babs asked Susan if she had seen that some folks were opening up a new furniture store in the old Village Washtub. Expensive stuff by the look of it, but wouldn’t it be nice if they had a nice little hurricane lamp to match the one she had in her apartment and getting away from home and living in town was the smartest move she’d ever made and hadn’t it been a nice summer? It seemed a shame it ever had to end.
13
3:00 P.M.
Bonnie Sawyer was lying on the big double bed in her house on the Deep Cut Road. It was a regular house, no shanty trailer, and it had a foundation and a cellar. Her husband, Reg, made good money as a car mechanic at Jim Smith’s Pontiac in Buxton.
She was naked except for a pair of filmy blue panties, and she looked impatiently over at the clock on the nightstand: 3:02-where was he?
Almost as if the thought had summoned him, the bedroom door opened the tiniest bit, and Corey Bryant peered through.
‘Is it okay?’ he whispered. Corey was only twenty-two, had been working for the phone company two years, and this affair with a married woman-especially a knockout like Bonnie Sawyer, who had been Miss Cumberland County of 1973-left him feeling weak and nervous and horny.
Bonnie smiled at him with her lovely capped teeth. ‘If it wasn’t, honey,’ she said, ‘you’d have a hole in you big enough to watch TV through.’
He came tiptoeing in, his utility lineman’s belt jingling ridiculously around his waist.
Bonnie giggled and opened her arms. ‘I really like you, Corey. You’re cute.’
Corey’s eyes happened on the dark shadow beneath the taut blue nylon, and began to feel more horny than nervous. He forgot about tiptoeing and came to her, and as they joined, a cicada began to buzz somewhere in the woods.
14
4:00 P.M.
Ben Mears pushed away from his desk, the afternoon’s writing done. He had forgone his walk in the park so he could go to dinner at the Nortons’ that night with a clear conscience, and had written for most of the day without a break.
He stood up and stretched, listening to the bones in his spine crackle. His torso was wet with sweat. He went to the cupboard at the head of the bed, pulled out a fresh towel, and went down to the bathroom to shower before everyone else got home from work and clogged the place.
He hung the towel over his shoulder, turned back to the door, and then went to the window, where something had caught his eye. Nothing in town; it was drowsing away the late afternoon under a sky that peculiar shade of deep blue that graces New England on fine late summer days.
He could look across the two-story buildings on Jointner Avenue, could see their flat, asphalted roofs, and across the park where the children now home from school lazed or biked or squabbled, and out to the northwest section of town where Brock Street disappeared behind the shoulder of that first wooded hill. His eyes traveled
