He smiled suddenly; when he smiled that way his entire face lit up, and it was easy to see why he had never had much trouble with women since the evening with the vague, pretty French sub.
He wrote: What’s that mole just above her
pubic hair look like to you?
To me it looks like a question mark.
Do you have any questions?
That was enough; a meal is as good as a feast, his mother had always said. He found an envelope and put the message inside. After a pause, he slipped the business card in, and addressed the envelope, also in block letters, to Vic’s office. After a moment’s thought. he decided to show the poor slob a little mercy and added PERSONAL below the address.
He propped the letter on the windowsill and leaned back in his chair, feeling totally good again. He would be able to write tonight, he felt sure of it.
Outside, a truck with out-of-state plates pulled into his driveway. A pickup with a great big Hoosier cabinet in the back. Someone had picked up a bargain at a barn sale. Lucky them.
Steve strolled out. He would be glad to take their money and their Hoosier cabinet, but he really doubted if he would have time to do the work. Once that letter was mailed, a change of air might be in order. But not too big a change, at least not for a while. He felt he owed it to himself to stay in the area long enough to make at least one more visit to Little Miss Highpockets . . . when it could be ascertained that Handsome Hubby was definitely not around, of course. Steve had played tennis with the guy and he was no ball of fire—thin, heavy glasses, spaghetti backhand—but you never knew when a Handsome Hubby was going to go off his gourd and do something antisocial. A good many Handsome Hubbies kept guns around the house. So he would want to check out the scene carefully before popping in. He would allow himself the one single visit and then close this show entirely. He would maybe go to Ohio for a while. Or Pennsylvania. Or Taos, New Mexico. But like a practical joker who had stuffed a load into someone’s cigarette, he wanted to stick around (at a prudent distance, of course) and watch it blow up.
The driver of the pickup and his wife were peering into the shop to see if he was there. Steve strolled out, hands in the pockets of his jeans, smiling. The woman smiled back immediately. “Hi, folks, can I help you?” he asked, and thought that he would mail the letter as soon as he could get rid of them.
That evening, as the sun went down red and round and hot in the west, Vic Trenton, his shirt tied around his waist by the arms, was looking into the engine compartment of his wife’s Pinto. Donna was standing beside him, looking young and fresh in a pair of white shorts and a red-checked sleeveless blouse. Her feet were bare. Tad, dressed only in his bathing suit, was driving his trike madly up and down the driveway, playing some sort of mind game that apparently had Ponch and Jon from CHiPS pitted against Darth Vader.
“Drink your iced tea before it melts,” Donna told Vic.
“Uh-huh.” The glass was on the side of the engine compartment. Vic had a couple of swallows, put it back without looking, and it tumbled off—into his wife’s hand.
“Hey,” he said. “Nice catch.”
She smiled. “I just know you when your mind’s somewhere else, that’s all. Look. Didn’t spill a drop.”
They smiled into each other’s eyes for a moment—a good moment, Vic thought. Maybe it was just his imagination, or wishful thinking, but lately it seemed there were more of the good small moments. Less of the sharp words. Fewer silences which were cold, or—maybe this was worse—just indifferent. He didn’t know what the cause was, but he was grateful.
“Strictly Triple-A farm club,” he said. “You got a ways to go before you make the bigs, kid.”
“So what’s wrong with my car, coach?”
He had the air cleaner off; it was sitting in the driveway. “Never saw a Frisbee like that before,” Tad had said matter-of-factly a few moments ago, swerving his trike around it. Vic leaned back in and poked aimlessly at the carburetor with the head of his screwdriver.
“It’s in the carb. I think the needle valve’s sticking.”