Salem's Lot

to be Time. And as if the action was a natural outgrowth of the thought, he looked over his shoulder for the Marsten House, but the bulk of the Municipal Building blocked it out.

She saw his glance and it made her frown. As they spread their jackets on the grass and sat down (they had spurned the park benches without discussion), she said, ‘Mom said Parkins Gillespie was checking up on you. The new boy in school must have stolen the milk money, or something like that.’

‘He’s quite a character,’ Ben said.

‘Mom had you practically tried and convicted.’ It was said lightly, but the lightness faltered and let something serious through.

‘Your mother doesn’t care for me much, does she?’

‘No,’ Susan said, holding his hand. ‘It was a case of dislike at first sight. I’m very sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m batting five hundred anyway.’

‘Daddy?’ She smiled. ‘He just knows class when he sees it.’ The smile faded. ‘Ben, what’s this new book about?’

‘That’s hard to say.’ He slipped his loafers off and dug his toes into the dewy grass.

‘Subject-changer.’

‘No, I don’t mind telling you.’ And he found, surprisingly, that this was true. He had always thought of a work in progress as a child, a weak child, that had to be protected and cradled. Too much handling would kill it. He had refused to tell Miranda a word about Conway’s Daughter or Air Dance, although she had been wildly curious about both of them. But Susan was different. With Miranda there had always been a directed sort of probing, and her questions were more like interrogations.

‘Just let me think how to put it together,’ he said.

‘Can you kiss me while you think?’ she asked, lying back on the grass. He was forcibly aware of how short her skirt was; it had given a lot of ground.

‘I think that might interfere with the thought processes,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s see.’

He leaned over and kissed her, placing one hand lightly on her waist. She met his mouth firmly, and her hands closed over his. A moment later he felt her tongue for the first time, and he met it with his own. She shifted to return his kiss more fully, and the soft rustle of her cotton skirt seemed loud, almost maddening.

He slid his hand up and she arched her breast into it, soft and full. For the second time since he had known her he felt sixteen, a head-busting sixteen with everything in front of him six lanes wide and no hard traveling in sight.

‘Ben?’

‘Yes.’

‘Make love to me? Do you want to?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I want that.’

‘Here on the grass,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

She was looking up at him, her eyes wide in the dark. She said, ‘Make it be good.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Slow,’ she said. ‘Slow. Slow. Here… ’

They became shadows in the dark.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Oh, Susan.’

3

They were walking, first aimlessly through the park, and then with more purpose toward Brock Street.

‘Are you sorry?’ he asked.

She looked up at him and smiled without artifice. ‘No. I’m glad.’

‘Good.’

They walked hand in hand without speaking.

‘The book?’ she asked. ‘You were going to tell me about that before we were so sweetly interrupted.’

‘The book is about the Marsten House,’ he said slowly. ‘Maybe it didn’t start out to be, not wholly. I thought it was going to be about this town. But maybe I’m fooling myself. I researched Hubie Marsten, you know. He was a mobster. The trucking company was just a front.’

She was looking at him in wonder. ‘How did you find that out?’

‘Some from the Boston police, and more from a woman named Minella Corey, Birdie Marsten’s sister. She’s seventy-nine now, and she can’t remember what she had for breakfast, but she’s never forgotten a thing that happened before 1940.’

‘And she told you-’

‘As much as she knew. She’s in a nursing home in New Hampshire, and I don’t think anyone’s really taken the time to listen to her in years. I asked her if Hubert Marsten had really been a contract killer in the Boston area-the police sure thought he was-and she nodded. 'How many?' I asked her. She held her fingers up in front of her eyes