Rose and Victoria shook their heads. It was a wonder Pearl had any customers at all. Over the years she had kicked so many people out of her place that had it not been for her tendency to forget what was inconvenient to remember she’d have run herself out of customers entirely. The tyrant of necessity, however, dictated that she let them back in.
“So, what was it you were saying?” Rose asked, attempting to pick up the thread of their interrupted conversation. “Something about life not being as good as it seems?”
Victoria’s mind scrambled. Was that what she’d said? She couldn’t pull the words back to her. “Is that what I said?”
“Something like that. Look Vic, I’m not trying to be unkind, it’s just that you haven’t seemed happy for a long, long time. It bothers me to see you this way. Maybe you should just be honest with yourself, okay?”
Victoria looked away. Picked at her sandwich. Time hung paralyzed above her, awaiting an answer.
“Okay. All right. I guess you’re probably right. I suppose there’re some things I’d change if I could. But I can’t, Rose. You know how Bobby is. So, what’s the point of talking about it?”
“Hmm. I know. Life can disappoint a bit, can’t it?” Rose said, her hand reaching across to give Victoria’s arm a small squeeze.
Pearl’s return temporarily deflected Rose’s attention, and they watched in silence as two crisp salads, comprised almost exclusively of iceberg lettuce, were placed on the table accompanied by a virgin bottle of Thousand Islands.
“Thank you, Pearl. Those look just lovely.”
Pearl grunted, dropped the bill on the table and was gone.
Rose picked it up, looked it over and shook her head. Sneaking a quick peek to make sure Pearl wasn’t watching, she took a pen from her purse and adjusted the total.
“Rose!” Victoria hissed quietly. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not paying that much for those crappy salads. Don’t worry about it, Vic. She’ll never notice.”
Victoria sat upright, nervously watching Pearl’s movements behind the counter until she felt sure Rose’s audacious move had gone unseen.
“So. A little. Or a lot?” quizzed Rose, scarcely missing a beat from their previous conversation.
“A little or a lot what?” Victoria feigned a confusion that, although worked very well with others, was usually swept quickly aside by Rose.
“You know what, Vic. Disappointed. Are you just a little disappointed with your life or are you really disappointed with it? Come on now, be truthful.” Rose leaned toward her, elbows on the table, her cold coffee swirling moodily in her cup as a velvet shawl of dark curls fell around her bright blue shoulders.
“Okay. Okay, I guess you’re right, Rose. Sometimes I wish things had turned out differently. Sometimes maybe I wish I had gotten out when I had the chance.”
She glanced quickly at Rose to see if this confession had shocked her, but Rose had already picked it up, packaged it away and moved on. It was one of the traits that made it so easy to share things with her. She never offered judgment or advice, just listened. Victoria shifted in her seat, not able to find a comfortable position. She felt unclean, as if she’d confessed her bowel of iniquity and then regretted her repentance. She began to tidy the table. Dishes were stacked into matching sets. Cutlery and serviettes found matching pairs. Rose had used five creamers and Victoria gathered them, annoyed at the imposition on her symmetry.
“So, tell me about your ride in.”
“Oh. Not much to tell, really. He told me about some of the places he’s traveled to. He seems really nice.” Victoria grabbed a handful of napkins and began to snap them into tight, defensive little origami figures. She didn’t want to talk about Elliot. She felt selfish and wanted to cradle his memory close to herself, not taint it with the opinion of others.
“Hmm. I’m sure he is very nice. Seems like it anyhow.” A touch of quiet. “So, is he rich?”
“Rose!” Victoria attempted to admonish her with a frown. “How would I know if he’s rich? I just got a lift to town with him, I didn’t check his bank account.”
“Too bad. I would have.” And they laughed, happy to relieve the tension between them. But it was true. She’d never have come straight out and asked, but they both knew if Rose had spent twenty minutes in Elliot’s company she’d have gained most of his past, his future and a good deal in between, including his financial position and marriageability.
A glimpse of white ticked across Victoria’s eye, and she literally leapt from her seat. “Oh! There he is already, I’ve got to go.” She flustered her purse open and began digging.
“You’re getting a ride home with him, too?” Even Rose could not contain her surprise, and it pleased Victoria to see it.
“Yeah. He said he was going back that way anyhow. He wants to take some pictures off McCully Hill or something. It’s not a special trip or anything,” she jabbered as she threw too much money beside the origami flower that the bill had blossomed into. “Bye, Rose. It was fun.”
“But, what about . . . ? Never mind, I’ll phone you later.”
Victoria hurried across the street as the white truck pulled in and parked. She worked to slow her pace as a tall figure, graced with the lean muscles of a runner, hopped from the truck and walked toward her, his faded denims and black T-shirt casually doing him justice as his curls flirted in the breeze. Flipping her hair back, she greeted him with a sunny smile.
Hinckly sported a few paved roads, but the one that ran out past Elliot’s farm was not one of them. It was pockmarked with frost heaves and potholes, and the truck more jostled than drove along it. Victoria hadn’t realized Elliot’s offer of a ride home had included a stop by his house to pick up camera equipment, but the prospect of seeing his life up close, as well as spending even more time in his company, was not an unpleasant one. What was unpleasant was the knowledge that Bobby was sure to find out what she’d been up to, and his reaction was bound to be less than pleasurable. She pushed the thought aside and took a deep breath, determined to enjoy the moment.
Elliot had picked up groceries in town, the three bags reclining on the floor between them emblazoned with
Lucky Dollar
in a stark, black-and-white lie. There were only three grocery stores within a two-hour drive of Hinckly, and Mr. Graves owned them all. The largest of these was the Lucky Dollar, a tight-fisted business that offered a hodgepodge of sundry items, everything eternally on sale and everything infernally overpriced. The only dollars to be considered lucky were the many that filled the cash register of Mr. Graves, who daily practiced his swindling techniques and, by all accounts, had become quite skilled.
As the truck rumbled along, the plastic bags shimmied down like loose knee socks, revealing a cosmopolitan mix of packages. Some contained standard household staples, but others she recognized only vaguely from cookbook pictures. Still others she could only guess at: bok choy, capers, cherrystone clams, tapioca, some mutated form of mushrooms, a tiny bag of dried leaves. Victoria picked up the bag of leaves and turned it over to read the label. Tarragon. She looked at Elliot then quickly back to the groceries, as if trying to connect the two. Elliot, catching her glance, misread the question in her eyes.
“You like tarragon? I have the best recipe for tarragon chicken. Practically had to beg it from a friend of mine back East. Would you like to try it? I can give it to you if you want.”
Victoria nodded and smiled at his enthusiasm. “Sure, sounds good.” She’d never met a man before who cooked anything that didn’t start with a can opener and end in a pot.
“Remind me when we get out to the house, okay? You have to be open to trying new things, though. There’s a few unusual combinations, but it tastes great. I promise. You like trying new recipes?”
“Uh-huh. I try making a lot of different things. I’d get bored just making the same stuff over and over like some people do.” She smiled her lie at him convincingly. She’d get the recipe, but she knew already she’d never make it. Bobby liked his talk easy, his life simple, his food plain, and he bore a cast-iron resistance to change that was as impervious as the granite cliffs that formed the valley.
“You’ll have to plan ahead when you want to make it, though. Some of the ingredients have to be ordered in special, and Mr. Graves likes at least two weeks’ notice.”
“Oh. I was wondering about that. I don’t think I’ve seen half this stuff in the store before.”
Elliot rolled an easy laugh through the truck, running his hair back from his face with long fingers.
“No, I wouldn’t think so. Most people around here seem to be pretty much meat-and-potato types, but that’s okay. Mr. Graves is more than happy to order things in for me. Makes sure it’s worth his while, though, I’ll tell you that! I don’t know how people afford to buy groceries for whole families here. I find it way more expensive than in the city.”
“Well, I guess maybe that’s why they just stick to meat and potatoes. Doesn’t it make you mad?”
Elliot looked at her with the trace of a frown. “Well, yes actually it does. I personally think it should be against the law to have such a boring diet as that.”
“Oh. Well, that’s not what I—” Too late she saw the sparkle playing in his eyes and realized he’d been teasing her. “Very funny. What I meant was, doesn’t it make you mad that he rips you off like that? I hate shopping there. He jacks his prices up so high I always get this bizarre urge to steal half my groceries just so I can break even!”
“Well, I wouldn’t recommend doing that.” Elliot grinned at her over-wrought frustration as he rummaged in the bag closest to him and pulled out two sunset-orange nectarines. “Want one?”
“No, thank you. I guess I shouldn’t get so worked up about it but, well, I don’t know . . . it just seems sometimes like he resents your presence in his store, and then he acts like he’s doing you a favor taking your money.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever found him that bad. But then again, he doesn’t have anything against me because I wasn’t here when everyone killed his pig.”
“He told you that story! That was years ago. And he killed his own pig, anyhow.” Victoria shook her head and laughed. She couldn’t believe a grown man could hang onto a twisted grudge for so long.
“Oh yeah. He sure did. First six months after I moved here I think I heard it every time I went into the store.”
“And did he remember to mention that it happened fifteen years ago?”
“Fifteen years ago! No. I thought it was a fairly recent event. He’s still mad as hell about it. Told me that’s why he had to charge so much for bringing in special orders.” Elliot laughed again at his own expense, and Victoria looked at him puzzled as to what he could possibly find so humorous about being ripped off.
“That’s funny? You find that funny?” she asked, almost angered by his lack of anger.
“Well ya, kind of. I guess it’s taking him a long time to offset the cost of that pig!”
“I don’t know how you can see that as funny. The cheap old bugger tells you some half-truth to justify picking your pocket, and you find it amusing? I’d be furious!”
“Hmm. Well, maybe you take things too seriously. You have to try and find the humor in life sometimes. It makes it so much more, umm . . . what’s the word? Placable.”
“Placable?”
“Yeah. Placable. Ease up a bit, have a laugh. Hey, it was a funny story. I got a good chuckle from it. That’s got to be worth something, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I don’t know anyone else who saw anything funny about it. The whole town was up in arms the way he raised his prices after that.”
“Well, maybe the whole town needs to learn to have a laugh at themselves every now and again.”
Victoria watched his mouth as he smoothly consumed his nectarine, slicing the tender flesh into large mouthfuls while his lips and tongue worked the soft, velvety edges to keep the juices from running down his chin and into his lap.
“Ya, well I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen any time soon. So . . . I guess maybe I’ll have to learn from you.” She dropped the words and looked out the window. Her heart pounded like she’d just stepped to the edge of a cliff and in a foolish moment peered over and realized the precarious danger of her position.
Facts used to justify one’s bad behavior have a way of becoming vague and convoluted to intercept the attempts of truth; the pig story was no exception. The project had been a simple enough one to begin with. Mrs. Lyncroft’s daughter Joni had decided to get married to Jimmy Smith, and the young bride was put in charge of ordering the food needed for the reception. The Lyncrofts were a sizable bunch, both in numbers and bulk, and the generally accepted notion was that they also had comparatively more money than most others in the valley. Being acutely aware of this fact and the expectation it placed on her reception dinner, young Joni had insisted on having something more elaborate than plain lettuce in the reception sandwiches. Fancy red-leaf lettuce was eventually decided upon, and Mrs. Lyncroft made the fateful mistake of sending her amply girthed but empty-headed daughter into the Lucky Dollar to place the special order.
Two days before the event, Mrs. Lyncroft was presented with twelve cases of wilted red-leaf lettuce and a horrendous bill that erred favorably in Mr. Graves’s direction in several places. Furious, Mrs. Lyncroft had refused to pay, saying the order was for 12 heads not 12 cases. Mr. Graves had flown into a rage, insisting the girl had wanted enough lettuce for 250 salads and he had ordered no more than the appropriate amount. He was abruptly informed that it was 250 sandwiches, not salads, and that 12 heads would do just fine. Mr. Graves threatened to call the police, in his hysteria having completely forgotten Jimmy Smith was one. Mrs. Lyncroft had laughed rather brusquely in his wrinkled, red face and then stomped home to yell at her daughter. Who in turn yelled at her fiancé, who much to his detriment yelled back, and the whole wedding was promptly canceled, Mr. Graves stuck with the whole fancy red-leafed truckload.