WAGERED WOMAN Page 3

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  Chapter 3

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  For Sam, the rest of the weekend went by with a minimum of excitement, like most weekends in North Magdalene. The only commotion worthy of even passing mention occurred Saturday night at The Hole in the Wall when Owen Beardsly accused Rocky Collins of moving the eight ball during a pool match. Rocky took immediate offense and dived at Owen right across the pool table. Oggie broke it up straightaway by firing a warning shot into the ceiling with the .38 special he kept behind the bar.

  Sam heard the story secondhand on Sunday. He'd decided to keep clear of The Hole in the Wall for awhile. He wasn't in the mood to have Oggie Jones start in on him about Delilah. Sam didn't want to be badgered about Delilah, especially not after having gotten such a close look at her Saturday afternoon.

  And that was another thing Sam decided, after considering it way more than he should have. He wasn't going to spend any of his time thinking about Delilah Jones and how good-looking she'd turned out to be all of a sudden. Only a man with a self-destructive streak as big as the San Andreas fault would let himself imagine what might happen in a bedroom alone with her.

  And Sam was not self-destructive. Not anymore. The years when he'd been his own worst enemy were over. He went to the store Monday morning firm in his resolve not to think of Delilah Jones.

  At nine sharp, Julio Santino's third son, Marty, came in. Marty asked about the Help Wanted sign in the window. Sam, who'd been handling things on his own since he'd had to let Roger McCleb go two weeks before, explained that it was full-time work.

  Marty, fresh out of high school last June, said that was just what he was looking for. There was no place for him in the family business, Santino's BB&V. His sister helped his mother with the variety store and the beauty shop, and his father could easily handle the barbering alone. In fact, his two older brothers had long since left town for lack of work.

  "There aren't a lot of heads in North Magdalene, Mr. Fletcher," Marty explained glumly. The boy eyed Sam's hair and beard with a rueful expression. "And there's a heck of a lot of longhairs—no offense meant, sir."

  Sam, who'd put up with more snide remarks about his grooming over the years than he cared to think about, simply shrugged and got back to business. "You can start right now."

  "Gee, great, Mr. Fletcher!"

  They shook on it, and Sam began showing Marty his duties. By noon, Marty was handling things just fine. At three-thirty, Sam decided to go across the street and pick up his mail at the post office.

  North Magdalene wasn't big enough to support its own door-to-door carrier. The mail was dropped off at the post office, and the postmistress sorted it into private boxes. For most people in town the process of picking up the mail was a daily ritual.

  "No problem, Mr. Fletcher," Marty said brightly when Sam told him of his plans. Sam left the store feeling the next thing to jaunty. He'd come close to giving up on finding good help, and now it looked as if good help had been right next door at Santino's all along.

  Once inside the post office, he waved at Melanie Swan, the postmistress, in the counter room beyond an interior door and went to the wall of private boxes in the long main room, which was left open seven days a week for the convenience of the box-holders. He just had his own box opened and was reaching in to get the rolled pile of flyers, cards and bills when he heard the door open and felt the slight, chilly breeze from outside.

  He glanced toward the door.

  And there was Delilah Jones.

  She paused in the doorway when she saw him, and the afternoon sun from behind her made a gold rim around her thick black hair. She wore a gathered skirt today, its swirling colors rich and deep, with a dark red sweater on top. Most likely, he thought, she'd just come from the school that must have let out a few minutes before. He thought, with her inky hair and the strongly colored full skirt, that she looked like a gypsy, slightly wild, a little dangerous. When she spotted him, she froze for a moment.

  Then she seemed to shake herself. She nodded, tightly. He nodded back. She swept into the narrow room and went to her own box, beyond his. She passed close to him. He got a whiff of her perfume, woodsy and faintly musky, too. A damned alluring scent. He snatched the envelopes and brochures from the mailbox, slammed the little door without bothering to spin the combination dial, and got the hell out of there.

  The rest of the day, he kept catching his mind picturing black hair and dark, turbulent eyes. That was when he decided he was letting his mind get out of hand. And he was going to have to stop it. He just plain wasn't going to think about her anymore. He wasn't even going to think her name anymore, and that was all there was to it.

  Later, after he'd sent Marty home and was locking up the store, he realized what was wrong with him. He'd been spending too much time without pleasant feminine companionship, and that was causing him to imagine the most ridiculous things about a woman who was as far from what he was looking for as it was possible for a woman to be.

  He needed a date, that was all. If he had a pleasurable evening with a nice woman to look forward to, his overactive imagination would settle itself right down.

  That evening, when he got home, he called Sarah Landers, a medical technician who lived in Grass Valley and whom he had dated twice before. He asked her to dinner Saturday night. She accepted, sounding pleased that he'd called.

  When he hung up, he tried not to remember that the last time he took Sarah out, he'd more or less decided she just wasn't the woman for him. After all, he really did like Sarah. She was everything he'd been looking for in a woman: sweet and gentle, with a soft touch and a quiet voice.

  Not like some women he could mention, whom he wouldn't mention, whom he'd promised himself he wouldn't even let himself think of…

  It happened again on Thursday.

  Sam was rearranging the main window display while Marty cleaned the shelves by the side wall. With no warning, she drove up in her little hatchback car.

  Forgetting every solemn vow he'd made to himself about how he would ignore her, Sam pressed his nose against the edge of the window so he could watch her pull up in front of Santino's next door. She and a passenger, little Emma Riggins, got out of the car. They went together into Santino's store.

  "Looks like Emma's won the book."

  At the sound of Marty's voice, Sam jumped as if he'd been caught doing something reprehensible. He glanced over to where Marty dusted the shelves, near a side window with an angled view of the street.

  "What do you mean, the book?"

  "Last Thursday of the month," Marty explained, busily dusting away as he spoke. "Kid with the most book reports turned in gets a book of their choice from my mom's store. Miss Jones buys it herself. She's been doing that forever. She did it when she taught me, and that was almost seven years ago now."

  "I didn't know she did that," Sam remarked.

  "No offense, but everybody knows that, Mr. Fletcher."

  The bell over the door rang, and Sam was spared having to decide whether or not to reply to Marty's comment. Marty rushed to help the customer, and Sam returned to his window display.

  Not long after, Oggie's daughter and Emma Riggins emerged from Santino's. Emma clutched a brown bag against her chest. The woman and the child got back in the car and drove away.

  "Er, Mr. Fletcher?"

  Sam sprang back from the window. Somehow Marty had stepped right up beside him and was looking out the window, too.

  "Haven't you got a customer?" Sam challenged.

  "He just left, Mr. Fletcher." Marty was grinning all-too-knowingly for an employee, Sam thought.

  "Then get back to the shelves."

  "Right away, sir." Marty flew to the shelves, and resumed cleaning them with great enthusiasm.

  For a few minutes, the young man and the mature one worked without speaking. Then Sam said, "All right, Marty. What's on your mind?"

  "Well, sir, no offense, sir…"

  "Spit it out, Marty."

 
"If you got your eye on Miss Jones, sir, you better visit my dad's barbershop before you go asking her out. She's a teacher, sir. She likes a clean-cut look."

  Sam looked at Marty for a moment, recalling with a rueful sigh his last short-lived employee, Roger McCleb. Roger never would have noticed if Sam had been staring out the window at Oggie Jones's daughter. Roger had had his hands full trying to remember how to make change. Maybe, Sam found himself thinking, there were a few drawbacks to hiring a go-getter like Marty; Marty saw too damn much.

  "Mr. Fletcher—did I say something wrong, sir?" Marty inquired nervously, when Sam had been glowering at him for a while.

  "Just finish the shelves, Marty."

  "Er, you betcha, Mr. Fletcher."

  Saturday evening, Sam drove to Grass Valley for his date with Sarah Landers. They shared a meal, and took in a movie. It was a pleasant evening.

  And Sam knew halfway through dinner that calling her again had been pointless.

  She invited him in when he took her home, smiling at him sweetly, the light of anticipation shining in her soft hazel eyes. He declined the invitation, knowing for certain this time that he would see her no more. She kept her sweet smile, but he watched the light fade from her eyes.

  After he left her, he drove the twisting highway for home, feeling a depressing mixture of sadness and relief—sadness that he was alone, relief that he'd finally faced the fact that Sarah was not the right woman for him.

  At the edge of town, he thought for a moment of stopping in at The Hole in the Wall. Maybe Jared would be there, in from the logging camp in the woods where he lived most of the time after his second messy divorce. Though Jared no longer touched liquor, he sometimes hung out in the bar for companionship when he was in town. If Jared were there, Sam would buy him a soda and they could talk about old times…

  But Sam vetoed that idea before he let himself act on it. Oggie would be there, and Oggie, next to she-who-could-not-be-named, was the last person he could afford to get near right now. Oggie would be after him about her. And he didn't want to talk about her.

  He turned off Main Street

  and drove home. Once there, he went to the workroom over the garage where he kept his woodworking tools. He labored for a while on a hunk of white pine he'd found, one in which he had recognized the vague shape of an owl waiting in the wood to be set free. He boasted, or roughed out, the basic shape of the bird, finding peace in the concentration, comfort in the feel of his own hands on the wood. Then, his spirit somewhat soothed, he showered and watched some late-night television, eventually falling asleep on the couch.

  He dreamed of his first claim, that spot at the bend of the river that Oggie's vindictive little daughter had called hers. He dreamed he was working that four-inch dredge he'd spent his last five hundred dollars to buy, down below the surface of the water with the hose, vacuuming the crevices for placer deposits trapped there. Something stuck in the hose. He surfaced, and as he fiddled with the machine, he felt someone watching him.

  He looked up. And she was standing there.

  He stirred in his sleep, moaning a little, because he was trying, valiantly, even while unconscious, not to think her name. But then it came to him, rolling off the tongue, sweet and tempting as the smell of her: Delilah Jones.

  No. Wait a minute. Not Delilah. Lilah. Yeah. Lilah, that's what he would call her if he ever said her name again. Lilah. He muttered it aloud in his sleep, though of course no one heard.

  Lilah … smiling at him. She held out her hand. In her palm gleamed the biggest, purest nugget he'd ever seen in his life.

  She said, "The gold's over here, Sam. Come on and get it." And she tucked that big nugget down her shirt, right in the sweet valley between her full breasts—

  Sam sat bolt-upright, kicking the coffee table with the leg that was hanging off the side of the couch. He stared blankly at the television he'd left on, watching a giant reptilian bird tear the head off of a man in swim trunks as a pretty woman in a bikini cowered screaming nearby.

  Then he groaned, raked his hair back with both hands and switched off the television. Soon enough he staggered groggily to his bedroom and fell across the bed, asleep before his head hit the pillow. The next morning, he told himself that he had no memory at all of his dreams the night before.

  Around eleven, he dropped in at Lily's Café for a late Sunday breakfast.

  And there she was.

  In a booth at the back with Nellie Anderson and Linda Lou Beardsly, in for a snack after church. Sam almost turned around and got out of there. But he couldn't spend his life running from the sight of her.

  He slid onto a counter stool, resolutely turning his back to her, and ordered his usual. But he could see her in the mirror that took up the whole wall behind the counter, and he knew she saw him, too.

  Nellie and Linda Lou noticed him as well, though they sat side by side facing the other way. More than once, each of those old biddies turned and shot him a sour glance. He didn't let it bother him. He'd had run-ins with both of them, way back when, as he had with most all of the town's really upstanding types.

  Once, after a particularly wild night out with Jared, he'd awakened to find himself in Nellie's flower bed. Nellie herself, out in her robe and slippers to pick up her paper, discovered him right after he realized he was awake. She'd started screaming. He'd thrown up on her slippers. It had not been his most shining hour.

  But that had been years ago. Still, he was sure Nellie and Linda Lou continued to think of him as the rowdy young fool he had once been. And he just bet they were having a hell of a time reconciling the young wild man of whom they'd so thoroughly disapproved with the local merchant who'd just given five hundred bucks to help prop up the church bell tower.

  But Sam didn't really give a damn what Nellie Anderson and Linda Lou Beardsly thought. He was too busy trying to pay no attention to her.

  It shouldn't have been so difficult to ignore her. She hardly moved or made a sound, sitting there in the corner in a blue wool dress while the two battle-axes she called friends, Linda Lou and Nellie, jabbered away about the bell tower fund and the declining attendance at church. It should have been a piece of cake, to keep his eyes on his omelet and forget about her.

  And maybe, if she'd never moved a muscle, he might have done all right. But suddenly, when she'd been sitting very still for a long time with her hands in her lap beneath the table, she raised her right arm.

  For no reason he could fathom, Sam had a crystal clear mental image of her smiling at him, holding out something golden and gleaming. He almost choked on his coffee, and it sloshed in the saucer when he put the cup down. He looked again, furtively, and saw there was nothing at all in her hand. She had only lifted it to smooth her black hair.

  His appetite, he realized then, had fled. He paid for his untouched ham omelet and left.

  Good God, was there no escaping her? He couldn't go on like this.

  He saw her twice in the following week. Both times, mercifully, were at a distance. It was what happened on Saturday that finished him off.

  Saturday afternoon, Sam left Marty in charge of the store and drove to Grass Valley to stock up on staples.

  He went to the big supermarket on Brunswick Road

  . He was actually feeling about as contented as he'd ever felt the past two weeks, strolling the wide aisles picking up his flour and his bacon, far away from the never-ending temptations of Oggie Jones's one and only baby girl. Or so he thought.

  Until he came around the floral display to the produce section—and there she was, leaning on the handle of a big basket just like his, and chatting with the produce clerk. Sam froze in the aisle and listened as she asked for fresh mushrooms and the clerk pointed to them. She smiled and thanked him. It was a downright gorgeous smile.

  Had she always smiled like that? Sam wondered. And if she had, why not for him?

  Because she can't stand the sight of me, he reminded himself grimly. And I've never been able to tolerate her, e
ither. She's a prissy little twit half the time, and mean as a riled rattler the rest, not what I'm looking for at all…

  But he stood there, transfixed, as she wheeled her cart away from him, her beautiful hips swaying provocatively in trim jeans, and rolled down a plastic bag to begin choosing her fresh mushrooms. She selected them with great care, never looking up, and Sam found himself wishing he was one of them, a pale, fresh mushroom in her slender hand.

  After the third or fourth irritated shopper murmured a pointed "excuse me" at him, Sam realized he had to get moving again.

  Like a thief in the night, he pulled his cart backward, around the floral display and out of her sight. He simply could not make himself stroll past her, have her look up and glare at him, or worse, stare right through him, as if he didn't exist.

  He headed for a check-out lane and paid for what he'd already picked out. Then he loaded the bags in his new Bronco and returned to North Magdalene. He took the food home, put it away, and then joined Marty at the store.

  He and Marty worked smoothly together until nearly closing time, when he left Marty alone again to pick up the mail. As he entered the long room, he did not let his mind even consider the thought that she might be lurking there among the mailboxes, ready to drive him insane with her fierce, frozen glances, with her perfume that mingled a woodland morning with musk.

  But everything was fine. There was no sign of her. He spun the dial. The little door swung open, and he took his mail in his hands. He left the long room quickly, not wanting to tempt fate. He made it outside, where the sun was nearing the western hills and all was as it should be. He crossed the street to his store again.

  And then he saw her. Getting out of her car up by Lily's Café. She shut the car door and began strolling right toward him.

  He saw her stride break when she recognized him. She gave him that tight little nod, like she had in the post office a week before—that nod that, he supposed, was a concession to the fact that they'd spoken more or less civilly Saturday-before-last, when he'd donated five hundred dollars to her bell tower fund.