In Milton Lumky Territory (1984) Read online

  “Aren’t you old enough?”

  “Sure,” he grumbled. “It’s just too sweet for me. Scotch is my drink.”

  Nodding, she sat down her cafe royal. At the first taste she pushed it aside and shuddered. “I can’t drink it,” she said.

  “You ought to see a doctor,” he said. “Find out if it’s serious.”

  “I hate doctors,” she said. “I know it’s not serious. It’s just psychosomatic. Because I’m worried and full of anxiety, because of my marriage breaking up. I got so dependent on Walt. That was part of the trouble. I was just like a child with him; I let him make all the decisions and that wasn’t right. If anything went wrong I blamed him. It was a vicious circle. Then finally we both realized I had to get free and try living on my own again. I don’t think I was ready for marriage. You have to be able to reach a certain stage before you’re ready for it. I wasn’t. I just thought I was.”

  “How long were you married?” he asked.

  “Two years.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Not long enough,” she said. “We were still getting acquainted. Are you married, Mr. -” His name did not materialize.

  “Stevens,” he said. “Bruce.”

  “Mr. Stevens?” she finished.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve given it some thought, but I’d like to wait until I’m absolutely positive. I don’t want to make any mistakes on something that serious.”

  “Weren’t you going steady with Peg Googer?”

  “For awhile,” he said. “Last year or so.”

  “Did you live up here?”

  “Yes,” he said vaguely, not wishing to spoil the deception that he came from Reno.

  “Did you drive up to see Peg?”

  “No,” he said. “I came up this way on business.” He told her, then, about Consumers’ Buying Bureau, what he did and what it did. He told her that it sold goods at an average of twenty-five percent off, that it didn’t have to advertise, that its overhead was low because it had no windows to dress and few fixtures to maintain, only one vast long single-story building, like a factory, with counters, and with clerks who did not even need to wear ties. He explained that a discount house never stocked complete lines of anything, only those items that it could get hold of cheaply enough. The items came and went, according to what the buyers could lay their hands on.

  Right now, he told her, he had driven up here to Boise to scout out a warehouse of car wax.

  That seemed to intrigue her. “Car wax,” she said. “Really? Five hundred miles for car wax?”

  “It’s good stuff,” he said. “A paste wax.” The thing was, he explained, that paste wax did not sell well any more because it was so much work to apply. Now there were new silicates that could be dabbed on and then wiped without rubbing. But nothing gave a finish like good old paste wax, out of a can and not a bottle or spout, and every car owner deep down inside knew that, or thought he knew that. And at a discount sale-price of about ninety cents a can, the wax would move. A man would spend an entire Saturday rubbing it on his car to save a dollar off what he knew to be the retail price.

  She listened intently. “And how much will you have to pay?”

  “We’ll make an offer on the lot,” he said. His boss had authorized him to start at forty cents a can, and to go up to sixty at most. There was some doubt as to how many cans there were. And of course, if the wax was too old, if it had gotten dry, then the deal was off.

  “And you go all over looking for buys like that?” Susan said.

  “Everywhere. As far east as Denver and all the way out to the Coast. Down to L.A.” He basked in his grandeur.

  “How fascinating,” she said. “And nobody knows where you get the things you sell. I imagine regular retailers come to you very angry and wanting to know if their suppliers sold to you at more of a discount than they get.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “But we never disclose our sources of supply.” Now he found himself passing out information ordinarily kept quiet. “Sometimes naturally we do get hold of stuff directly from the local jobbers, at a price. And a really good deal is to drive to the manufacturer - we have our own big trucks - and pick it up direct, at what the wholesaler pays or even less. And then sometimes when a retail outlet goes bust, we get stuff that way. Or overstock that doesn’t move. Or even old stock.”

  At the table, Susan Faine stirred her cup of coffee and brandy at so slow and depressed a tempo that he realized his talk had adversely affected her. “And these deals go on all the time?” she murmured. “No wonder I can’t get anywhere.”

  “You’re not in retail selling,” he said. “Are you?”

  “Oh,” she said listlessly, “I sell a couple of typewriter ribbons and a few sheets of carbon paper now and then.”

  She got to her feet and wandered off to stand facing him, her arms folded just beneath her breasts. Her belt, still undone, allowed the top of her skirt to separate where it was intended to fit together, two edges of fabric unconnected and hanging loose. She had narrow, modern-looking hips, and he got the impression that unless she fastened her belt something would presently slip gradually off. But she remained unconscious of herself; she had a frowning, introverted expression on her face. He noticed that she had rubbed off her lipstick; it left her lips straw-colored, with countless radiating lines, a dry mouth. Her skin, too, had a dryness, but it was stretched smooth. In spite of her stark black hair, her skin was light. And her eyes, he saw, were blue. Looking more intently at her hair, he discovered that at the roots it became reddish brown. So evidently she had dyed it. That explained its lack of luster.

  And once again he thought, I know her. I’ve seen her before, talked to her; she’s familiar to me, her voice, mannerisms, choice of words. Especially her choice of words. I’m accustomed to listening to her talk. It is a voice as well-known to me as anybody in the world’s.

  While he was pondering that, a great wave of sound rolled in from the front of the house. The door burst open, people pushed indoors, turning on lights and chattering. Peg and her clerkish pals had returned home with the ginger ale.

  Without batting an eye - as if she didn’t hear the people - Susan said, “I’m very interested in all this. I suppose I really have to be. It’s the new trend in selling, more or less. In fact -” She turned her head as Peg appeared with a paper bag at her shoulder.

  “What are you doing back?” Peg said, amazed to see him. “I thought you left.” Sweeping past him she set down the bag on the drainboard. The bag clinked.

  “I forgot my coat,” he said.

  “How did you get in? The door was locked.”

  Susan said, “I let him in.”

  “You’re supposed to be lying down sick,” Peg said to her. She left the kitchen and returned to the living room, leaving them.

  “Is she angry with you?” Susan said. “She acted strangely after you left. You left so hurriedly. How long will you be up here, before you drive back to Reno?”

  “It depends on how I make out,” he said. “A day at the most.”

  “I’d like to talk to you again sometime,” Susan said, leaning back against the edge of the sink.

  “So would I,” he said. “You know, I have the feeling I know you. But I can’t place you.”

  “I have the feeling I know you, too,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said, “people always say that.”

  “A ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ sort of thing.” She smiled. “instantaneous identification of the beloved.”

  That quickened his pulse, hearing mat.

  “You know,” Susan said, “listening to you talk about selling and buying made me feel better. My stomach’s stopped growling.”

  “Good,” he said, shelving such statements off to the back of his mind; they did not go with his image of her, the rest of their discussion and all.

  “Maybe that’s what I need,” she said. “Everything’s been so mixed up since I got back from Mexico City. That was only
a month or so ago, actually. I can’t seem to get back in with things … why don’t you drop by and visit us one day? Here, I’ll give you our official card.” She trailed past him, out of the kitchen. He remained. When she returned she carried a business card which she presented to him with a formal flourish. “Drop by,” she said, “and you can take me out and buy me lunch.”

  “I’d love to do that,” he said, already considering how and when he would be up at Boise again. Was it worth making the drive, over a thousand miles round trip, on his own time? If he waited for company business, it might be another six months, and then, as now, it would permit him only a day or so. While he battled it out in his mind, Susan left him and went into the living room with the others.

  I could really go for her, he thought. In a big way.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER he had said good-bye to everyone and had left the house, for a second time.

  As he drove along in his car, back toward the highway, he thought to himself how much better-groomed an older woman was. If they looked good they do so on purpose, not because of chance. Not because nature had flung them a nice build and teeth and legs. They had a cultivated beauty.

  And in addition to that, he was positive - without having tried it - that they knew what to do.

  He had gotten almost to the highway when, all at once, he remembered who Susan Faine was. Slowing, he drove by reflex, letting the car roll.

  Back in those days she had lived in Montario. None of them had known her first name, and of course “Faine” was her married name. Naturally, she had not had that name, then. They all thought of her as Miss Reuben. The last time he had seen her had been in 1949, when he was in high school, still a student, and of course he had thought of himself that way, and so had she. It had been natural for both of them to think of him as a student from the beginning.

  Susan Faine had been his fifth grade teacher. At the Garret A. Hobart Grammar School, in Montario. Back in 1944, when he had been eleven years old.

  3

  HE SPENT THE NIGHT at a motel on the outskirts of Boise. The next morning he met with the auto supply people and negotiated successfully for the lot of car wax.

  At eleven in the morning he had rented a trailer and had begun loading as many cartons as possible onto the trailer and into his car. The auto supply people had meantime confirmed his check. They signed the tag, arranged for delivery of the balance of the cartons, and off he drove, the load and trailer keeping his speed down.

  With such a load he could not make the drive back to Reno during the heat of day. Were he to get out on the desert now, the engine of the Merc would overheat, boil off its water, and possibly warp the head. Usually, in circumstances of this kind, he paid a dollar or so and got use of a motel room for the day; he could nap, take it easy, read, and then, at sunset, get back out on the road.

  He drove along the motel strip for a time, but then he changed his mind, made a U-turn, and returned to downtown Boise.

  At one in the afternoon he parked his car and trailer in front of a shoe store, got out, made certain that the cartons in the trailer could not be pried loose by passing thieves, and then he walked along the sidewalk, with the midday shoppers, until he saw ahead of him a small office with a sign above it reading: R & J Mimeographing Service.

  Perspiring with nervousness, he entered the office noticing that the counter and fixtures were modern and that directly across from the doorway another modern office, a real estate and notary public firm, did business. A fan, on the counter, cooled the place. Several dark-shiny waiting room chairs had been set out for customers.

  A friendly-looking middle-aged woman wearing a smock approached him. “Hello,” she said.

  Bruce said, “Is Miss Reuben around?” Then he wished he had asked for Mrs. Faine; he had given it all away right off the bat. If she heard him she knew he had known her in the past.

  But the middle-aged woman said, “Susan didn’t come in today. She phoned about nine this morning and said she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, relieved. Now he became calmer. “Ill drop by again some other time,” he said.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” the woman asked, standing with her hands clasped together, into the sleeves of her smock. She wore tortoise-shell glasses, and her hair was done up in a braided ring. She had a sympathetic, wrinkled face, round, heavy at the jowls, and when she smiled she showed a variety of gold and silver dental work.

  “No,” she said. “I’m a friend of hers. I’m up from Reno and I thought I’d drop by and say hello.”

  “What a pity you missed her.”

  “Well,” he said, “I saw her last night.”

  “Oh, over at Peg Googer’s?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How was she feeling then?”

  “Not too well,” he said. “She was lying down for awhile. She said something about being afraid she had picked up a bug in Mexico. It sounded more to me like Asiatic Flu.”

  “Listen,” the woman said, with agitation. “Why don’t you drive up to the house? You have a car, don’t you?” She hurried away from him, back behind the counter. Gathering together piles of papers, she said, “I have these things she has to see, today. I was going to close up at four and take a cab out there.” She returned to the counter with an armload. “Checks she has to sign, mail, a manuscript a student brought in that has math symbols in it; we can’t type the symbols, but Susan can draw them in - she’s the one who does that, not me.” She held out the armload to him.

  “I don’t know if I can, “he muttered, but the armload was dropped into his hands and he found himself holding it. “I’ve never been there.”

  “It’s not hard to find.” She took hold of the sleeve of his coat and led him over to a large lacquered wall map of the city. “Here,” she said, pointing to a red x on the map. “This is where we are. You drive out this way.” She explained the route in detail and wrote down the address, obviously relieved that she had found someone to deliver the things to her partner. “I really appreciate it,” she finished up. “I have so much to do here, with Susan away. She’s been away, you know, out of the country. I’ve had it all to do,” she called, as she went back behind the counter and seated herself at a big old-fashioned electric typewriter. Smiling at him over her glasses, she began to type. “I hope you’ll excuse me,” she said.

  “Thanks for telling me how to get there,” he said, disturbed that she would give the firm’s checkbook to a stranger simply because he mentioned the other owner’s name. What a guileless soul, he thought. And what a haphazard way to run a business. “Do you think there’s any medicine or anything I can pick up for her?” he said. “As long as I’m going out there?”

  “No,” she said cheerfully. “The mail and the checkbooks are the important thing. And don’t forget to remind her that she or I have to call that student - his name’s on the manuscript - before we start on it, so he’ll know how much it’ll be. He only has fifty dollars.”

  Saying good-bye, he left the office. A moment later he had opened his car door and was depositing the heap of papers, envelopes, and the heavy board check ledger on the car seat.

  Now I have to go out there, he realized.

  He started up the car, drove out into traffic, and in the direction of Susan Faine’s house.

  YEARS AGO, when he had been in high school, he had been a paper boy. He had delivered papers after school, in Montario, and Miss Reuben had lived along his route. For the first few months he had had no contact with her, because she had not subscribed to the paper. But one day, when he had picked up his bundle, he found a notice of a new subscriber on route 36, plus one additional newspaper to add to his pack. So he walked up the wide cement steps, past the trees and flower beds, until he stood below the second-story balcony, and from there he had lobbed a folded-up paper over the railing and onto the porch of the house. And six times a week he did the same after that, for almost a year.

  This house now did
not resemble that fine stone mansion with its trees, fountain, fish pool and bird bath, its outdoor sprinkling system. In those days, she had been single and she had shared the house with three other women. They did not own it; they only rented it. This house, smaller, stuck up square and regular, wood, not stone. The windows were small. The yard, in front, had no trees in it, only a few bushes, flowers, no grass at all. The steps were brick. But it was a modern house, in good condition, and he saw that behind it a long grassy yard stretched out, flat and well-kept, with what appeared to be a ping pong table in the middle of it, and roses growing up into an arbor … The house had recently been painted a pleasant off-white. Dried drops of paint on the leaves of the shrubs suggested that the job had been done during the last month or so.

  He closed and locked the car door, crossed the sidewalk, and then stepped up to the porch and rang the bell before he could have time to suffer any further doubts.

  Nobody answered the ring. He rang again.

  Off somewhere within the house a radio could be heard, tuned to a program of dance music. After waiting and ringing, he walked back down to the path and around the side of the house, through an open gate and into the back yard.

  At first the garden seemed empty. He started back toward me front again, and then he saw Susan Faine; motionless, she blended with the garden. She sat on the back step, with a lap of brightly-colored clothes; apparently she had been darning or sewing, because on the step beside her lay a pair of scissors and a number of spools of thread. What she had were children’s socks. And now he noticed toys strewn about the yard, a rusted metal horse, blocks, parts of games. Susan had on a white frilly blouse, short-sleeved, and a great long unpressed wrinkled green skirt of some thin material that whipped about her legs each time a breeze moved through the yard. Her legs and arms seemed unusually white. Her feet were bare, but he saw a pair of canvas shoes that had been kicked off, nearby.

  If she had been darning socks she certainly had stopped, now. She sat bent over, with one red sock across her right wrist and hand, her fingers inside it. A thimble sparkled from the second finger of her left hand. But he saw no sign of needle or thread.