strawberry. Spencer’s also served as the local bus depot and from where they sat they could look through an old- fashioned scrolled arch and into the waiting room, where a solitary young man in Air Force blues sat glumly with his feet planted around his suitcase.
‘Doesn’t look happy to be going wherever he’s going, does he?’ she said, following his glance.
‘Leave’s over, I imagine,’ Ben said. Now, he thought, she’ll ask if I’ve ever been in the service.
But instead: ‘I’ll be on that ten-thirty bus one of these days. Good-by, ‘salem’s Lot. Probably I’ll be looking just as glum as that boy.’
‘Where?’
‘New York, I guess. To see if I can’t finally become self-supporting.’
‘What’s wrong with right here?’
‘The Lot? I love it. But my folks, you know. They’d always be sort of looking over my shoulder. That’s a bummer. And the Lot doesn’t really have that much to offer the young career girl.’ She shrugged and dipped her head to suck at her straw. Her neck was tanned, beautifully muscled. She was wearing a colorful print shift that hinted at a good figure.
‘What kind of job are you looking for?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve got a BA from Boston University… not worth the paper it’s printed on, really. Art major, English minor. The original dipso duo. Strictly eligible for the educated idiot category. I’m not even trained to decorate an office. Some of the girls I went to high school with are holding down plump secretarial jobs now. I never got beyond Personal Typing I, myself.’
‘So what does that leave?’
‘Oh… maybe a publishing house,’ she said vaguely. ‘Or some magazine… advertising, maybe. Places like that can always use someone who can draw on command. I can do that. I have a portfolio.’
‘Do you have offers?’ he asked gently.
‘No… no. But…’
‘You don’t go to New York without offers,’ he said.
‘Believe me. You’ll wear out the heels on your shoes.’
She smiled uneasily. ‘I guess you should know.’
‘Have you sold stuff locally?’
‘Oh yes.’ She laughed abruptly. ‘My biggest sale to date was to the Cinex Corporation. They opened a new triple cinema in Portland and bought twelve paintings at a crack to hang in their lobby. Paid seven hundred dollars. I made a down payment on my little car.’
‘You ought to take a hotel room for a week or so in New York,’ he said, ‘and hit every magazine and publishing house you can find with your portfolio. Make your appointments six months in advance so the editors and personnel guys don’t have anything on their calendars. But for God’s sake, don’t just haul stakes for the big city.’
‘What about you?’ she asked, leaving off the straw and spooning ice cream. ‘What are you doing in the thriving community of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, population thirteen hundred?’
He shrugged. ‘Trying to write a novel.’
She was instantly alight with excitement. ‘In the Lot? What’s it about? Why here? Are you -’
He looked at her gravely. ‘You’re dripping.’
‘I’m-? Oh, I am. Sorry.’ She mopped the base of her glass with a napkin. ‘Say, I didn’t mean to pry. I’m really not gushy as a rule.’
‘No apology needed,’ he said. ‘All writers like to talk about their books. Sometimes when I’m lying in bed at night I make up a
The Air Force youngster stood up. A Greyhound was pulling up to the curb out front, air brakes chuffing.
‘I lived in ‘salem’s Lot for four years as a kid. Out on the Burns Road.’
‘The Burns Road? There’s nothing out there now but the Marshes and a little graveyard. Harmony Hill, they call it.’
‘I lived with my Aunt Cindy. Cynthia Stowens. My dad died, see, and my mom went through a… well, kind of a nervous breakdown. So she farmed me out to Aunt Cindy while she got her act back together. Aunt Cindy put me on a bus back to Long Island and my mom just about a month after the big fire.’ He looked at his face in the mirror behind the soda fountain. ‘I cried on the bus going away from Mom, and I cried on the bus going away from Aunt Cindy and Jerusalem’s Lot.’
‘I was born the year of the fire,’ Susan said. ‘The biggest damn thing that ever happened to this town and I slept through it.’
Ben laughed. ‘That makes you about seven years older than I thought in the park.’
‘Really?’ She looked pleased. ‘Thank you… I think. Your aunt’s house must have burned down.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That night is one of my clearest memories. Some men with Indian pumps on their backs came to the door and said we’d have to leave. It was very exciting. Aunt Cindy dithered around, picking things up and loading them into her Hudson. Christ, what a night.’
‘Was she insured?’
‘No, but the house was rented and we got just about everything valuable into the car, except for the TV. We tried to lift it and couldn’t even budge it off the floor. It was a Video King with a seven-inch screen and a magnifying glass over the picture tube. Hell on the eyes. We only got one channel anyway-lots of country music, farm reports,
