“You want to watch what you say, darlin,” Pete tells her with a grin. “There’s a Rexall just down 302 in Naples.” Then he glances up at the clock. Time has sped up for him, too. That’s okay, that makes a nice change.
Pete looks back at Trish. “You came here first. For the aspirin.”
“That’s right. I got a bottle of Anacin. Then I had some time to kill, so-”
“I know, you got a coffee next door at Christie’s, then went across to Renny’s.”
“Yes.
“You didn’t take your aspirin with hot coffee, did you?”
“No, I had a bottle of Poland water in my car.” She points out the window at a green Taurus. “I took them with some of that. But I checked the seat, too, Mr… Pete. I also checked the ignition.” She gives him an impatient look which says, I know what you’re thinking: daffy woman.
“Just one more question,” he says. “If I find your car-keys, would you go out to dinner with me? I could meet you at The West Wharf. It’s on the road between here and-”
“I know The West Wharf,” she says, looking amused in spite of her distress. At the counter, Cathy isn’t even pretending to read her magazine. This is better than Redbook, by far. “How do you know I’m not married, or something?”
“No wedding ring,” he replies promptly, although he hasn’t even looked at her hands yet, not closely, anyway. “Besides, I was just talking about fried clams, cole slaw, and strawberry shortcake, not a lifetime commitment.”
She looks at the clock. “Pete… Mr Moore… I’m afraid that at this minute I have absolutely no interest in flirting. If you want to give me a ride, I would be very happy to have dinner with you. But-”
“That’s good enough for me,” he says. “But you’ll be driving your own car, I think, so I’ll meet you. Would five-thirty be okay?''Yes, fine, but-”
“Okay.” Pete feels happy. That’s good; happy is good. A lot of days these last couple of years he hasn’t felt within a holler of happy, and he doesn’t know why. Too many late and soggy nights cruising the bars along 302 between here and North Conway? Okay, but is that all? Maybe not, but this isn’t the time to think about it. The lady has an appointment to keep. If she keeps it and sells the house, who knows how lucky Pete Moore might get? And even if he doesn’t get lucky, he’s going to be able to help her. He feels it.
“I’m going to do something a little weird now,” he says, “but don’t let it worry you, okay? It’s just a little trick, like putting your finger under your nose to stop a sneeze or thumping your forehead when you’re trying to remember someone’s name. Okay?”
“Sure, I guess,” she says, totally mystified.
Pete closes his eyes, raises one loosely fisted hand in front of his face, then pops up his index finger. He begins to tick it back and forth in front of him.
Trish looks at Cathy, the counter-girl. Cathy shrugs as if to say Who knows?
“Mr Moore?” Trish sounds uneasy now. “Mr Moore, maybe I just ought to-”
Pete opens his eyes, takes a deep breath, and drops his hand. He looks past her, to the door.
“Okay,” he says. “So you came in His eyes move as if watching her come in. “And you went to the counter…” His eyes go there. “You asked, probably, “Which aisle’s the aspirin in?" Something like that.”
“Yes, I-''Only you got something, too.” He can see it on the candy-rack, a bright yellow mark something like a handprint. “Snickers bar?” “Mounds.” Her brown eyes are wide. “How did you know that?” “You got the candy, then you went up to get the aspirin. He’s looking up Aisle 2 now. “After that you paid and went out… let’s go outside a minute. Seeya, Cathy.” Cathy only nods, looking at him with wide eyes.
Pete walks outside, ignoring the tinkle of the bell, ignoring the rain, which now really is rain. The yellow is on the sidewalk, but fading. The rain’s washing it away. Still, he can see it and it Pleases him to see it. That feeling of click. Sweet. It’s the line. It has been a long time since he’s seen it so clearly.
“Back to your car,” he says, talking to himself now. “Back to take a couple of your aspirin with your water… “He crosses the sidewalk, slowly, to the Taurus. The woman walks behind him, eyes more worried than ever now. Almost frightened. “You opened the door. You’ve got your purse… your keys… your aspirin… your candy… all this stuff… juggling it around from hand to hand… and that’s when…” He bends, fishes in the water flowing along the gutter, hand in it all the way up to the wrist, and brings something up. He gives it a magician’s flourish. Keys flash silver in the dull day.
“… you dropped your keys.”
She doesn’t take them at first. She only gapes at him, as if he has performed an act of witchcraft (warlock-craft, in his case, maybe) before her eyes.
“Go on,” he says, smile fading a little. “Take them. It wasn’t anything too spooky, you know. Mostly just deduction. I’m good at stuff like that. Hey, you should have me in the car sometime when you’re lost. I’m great at getting unlost.”
She takes the keys, then. Quickly, being careful not to touch his fingers, and he knows right then that she isn’t going to meet him later. It doesn’t take any special gift to figure that; he only has to look in her eyes, which are more frightened than grateful.
“Thank… thank you,” she says. All at once she’s measuring the space between them, not wanting him to use too much of it up.
“Not a problem. Now don’t forget. The West Wharf, at five-thirty. Best fried clams in this part of the state.” Keeping up the fiction. You have to keep it up, sometimes, no matter how you feel. And although some of the joy has gone out of the afternoon, some is still there; he has seen the line, and that always makes him feel good. It’s a minor trick, but it’s nice to know it’s still there.
“Five-thirty,” she echoes, but as she opens her car door, the glance she throws back over her shoulder is the kind you’d give to a dog that might bite if it got off its leash. She is very glad she won’t be riding up to Fryeburg with him. Pete doesn’t need to be a mind-reader to know that, either.
He stands there in the rain, watching her back out of the slant parking space, and when she drives away he tosses her a cheerful car-salesman’s wave. She gives him a distracted little flip of the fingers in return, and of course when he shows up at The West Wharf (at five-fifteen, just to be Johnny on the spot, Just in case) she isn’t there and an hour later she’s still not there. He stays for quite awhile just the same, sitting at the bar and drinking beer, watching the traffic out on 302. He thinks he sees her go by without slowing at about five-forty, a green Taurus busting past in a rain which has now become heavy, a green Taurus that might or might not be pulling a light yellow nimbus behind it that fades at once in the graying air.
Same shit, different day, he thinks, but now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness that feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal. He lights a cigarette-in the old days, as a kid, he used to pretend to smoke but now he doesn’t have to pretend anymore-and orders another beer.
Milt brings it, but says, “You ought to lay some food on top of that, Peter.”
So Pete orders a plate of fried clams and even eats a few dipped in tartar sauce while he drinks another couple of beers, and at some point, before moving on up the line to some other joint where he isn’t so well-known, he tries to call Jonesy, down there in Massachusetts. But Jonesy and Carla are enjoying the rare night out, he only gets the baby-sitter, who asks him if he wants to leave a message.
Pete almost says no, then reconsiders. “Just tell him Pete called. Tell him Pete said SSDD.”
“S… S… D… D.” She is writing it down. “Will he know what-”
“Oh yeah,” Pete says, “he’ll know.”
By midnight he’s drunk in some New Hampshire dive, the Muddy Rudder or maybe it’s the Ruddy Mother, he’s trying to tell some chick who’s as drunk as he is that once he really believed he was going to be the first man to set foot on Mars, and although she’s nodding and saying yeah-yeah-yeah, he has an idea that all she understands is that she’d like to get outside of one more coffee brandy before closing. And that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow he’ll wake up with a headache but he’ll go in to work just the same and maybe he’ll sell a car and maybe he won’t but either way things will go on. Maybe he’ll sell the burgundy Thunderbird, goodbye, sweetheart. Once things were different, but now they’re the same. He reckons he can live with that; for a guy like him, the rule of thumb is just SSDD, and so fucking what. You grew up, became a man, had to adjust to taking less than you hoped for; you discovered the dream-machine had a big OUT OF ORDER, sign on it.