Needful Things

“Come on!” Norris said. “You do it, Alan, okay?”

“Can’t. I’ve got that appropriations meeting with the selectmen next week.”

“He hates me already,” Norris said morbidly. “I know he does.”

“Buster hates everyone except his wife and his mother,” Alan said, “and I’m not so sure about his wife. But the fact remains that I have warned him at least half a dozen times in the last month about parking in our one and only handicapped space, and now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.”

“No, I’m going to put my J’Oh where your mouth is. This is really mean, Alan. I’m sincere.” Norris Ridgewick looked like an ad for When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

“Relax,” Alan said. “You put a five-dollar parking ticket on his windshield. He comes to me, and first he tells me to fire you.”

Norris moaned.

“I refuse. Then he tells me to tear up the ticket. I refuse that, too. Then, tomorrow noon, after he’s had a chance to froth at the mouth about it for awhile, I relent. And when I go into the next appropriations meeting, he owes me a favor.”

“Yeah, but what does he owe me?”

“Norris, do you want a new pulse radar gun or not?”

“Well-”

“And what about a fax machine? We’ve been talking about a fax machine for at least two years.”

Yes! the falsely cheerful voice in his mind cried. You started talking about it when A

“I guess,” Norris said. He reached for his citation book with sadness and resignation writ large upon his face.

“Good man,” Alan said with a heartiness he didn’t feel. “I’ll be in my office for awhile.”

3

He closed the door and dialled Polly’s number.

“Hello?” she asked, and he knew immediately that he would not tell her about the depression which had come over him with such smooth completeness. Polly had her own problems tonight.

It had taken only that single word to tell him how it was with her.

The 1-sounds in hello were lightly slurred. That only happened when she had taken a Percodan@r perhaps more than one-and she took a Percodan only when the pain was very bad. Although she had never come right out and said so, Alan had an idea she lived in terror of the day when the Percs would stop working.

“How are you, pretty lady?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and putting a hand over his eyes. The aspirin didn’t seem to be doing much for his head. Maybe I should ask her for a Perc, he thought.

“I’m all right.” He heard the careful way she was speaking, going from one word to the next like a woman using stepping-stones to cross a small stream. “How about you? You sound tired.”

“Lawyers do that to me every time.” He shelved the idea of going over to see her. She would say, Of course, Alan, and she would be glad to see him-almost as glad as he would be to see her-but it would put more strain on her than she needed this evening. “I think I’ll go home and turn in early. Do you mind if I don’t come by?”

“No, honey. It might be a little better if you didn’t, actually.”

“Is it bad tonight?”

“It’s been worse,” she said carefully.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Not too bad, no.”

Your own voice says you’re a liar, my dear, he thought.

“Good. What’s the deal on that ultrasonic therapy you told me about? Find anything out?”

“Well, it would be great if I could afford a month and a half in the Mayo Clinic-on spec-but I can’t. And don’t tell me you can, Alan, because I’m feeling a little too tired to call you a liar.”

“I thought you said Boston Hospital-”

“Next year,” Polly said.

“They’re going to run a clinic using ultrasound therapy next year.

Maybe.”

There was a moment of silence and he was about to say goodbye when she spoke again. This time her tone was a little brighter. “I dropped by the new shop this morning. I had Nettle make a cake and took that.

Pure orneriness, of course-ladies don’t take baked goods to openings.

It’s practically graven in stone.”

“What’s it like? What does he sell?”

“A little bit of everything. If you put a gun to my head, I’d say it’s a curios-and-collectibles shop, but it really defies description.

You’ll have to see for yourself.”

“Did you meet the owner “Mr. Leland Gaunt, from Akron, Ohio,” Polly said, and now Alan could actually hear the hint of a smile in her voice. “He’s going to be quite the heartthrob in Castle Rock’s smart set this year-that’s my prediction, anyway.”

“What did you make of him?”

When she spoke again, the smile in her voice came through even more clearly. “Well, Alan, let me be honest-you’re my darling, and I hope I’m yours, but-”

“You are,” he said. His headache was lifting a little. He doubted if it was Norris Ridgewick’s aspirin working this small miracle.

“-but he made my heart go pitty-pat, too. And you should have seen Rosalie and Nettle when they came back…”

“Nettle?” He took his feet off the desk and sat up. “Nettle’s scared of her own shadow!”

“Yes. But since Rosalie persuaded her to go down with her-you know the poor old dear won’t go anywhere alone-I asked Nettle what she thought of Mr. Gaunt after I got home this afternoon. Alan, her poor old muddy eyes just lit up. ’He’s got carnival glass!’ she said.

’Beautiful carnival glass! He even invited me to come back tomorrow and look at some more!’ I think it’s the most she’s said to me all at once in about four years. So I said, ’Wasn’t that kind of him, Nettle?’ And she said, ’Yes, and do you know what?’ I asked her what, of course, and Nettle said, ’And I just might go!’ “Alan laughed loud and heartily. “If Nettle’s willing to go see him without a due

ought to check him out. The guy must really be a charmer.”

“Well, it’s fu

“Watch it, lady,” Alan growled. “My jealous muscle is starting to twitch.”

She laughed a little. “I don’t think you have to worry. There’s one other thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Rosalie said Wilma Jersyck came in while Nettle was there.”

“Did anything happen? Were words passed?”

“No. Nettle glared at the jerzyck woman, and she kind of curled her lip at Nettle-that’s how Rosalie put it-and then Nettle scurried out. Has Wilma jerzyck called you about Nettle’s dog lately “No,” Alan said. “No reason to. I’ve cruised past Nettle’s house after ten half a dozen nights over the last six weeks or so. The dog doesn’t bark anymore. It was just the kind of thing puppies do, Polly. It’s grown up a little, and it has a good mistress. Nettle may be short a little furniture on the top floor, but she’s done her duty by that dog-what does she call it?”

“Raider.”

“Well, Wilma jerzyck will just have to find something else to bitch about, because Raider is squared away. She will, though. Ladies like Wilma always do. It was never the dog, anyway, not really; Wilma was the only person in the whole neighborhood who complained. It was Nettle. People like Wilma have noses for weakness.

And there’s a lot to smell on Nettle Cobb.”

“Yes.” Polly sounded sad and thoughtful. “You know that Wilma jerzyck called her up one night and told her that if Nettle didn’t shut the dog up, she’d come over and cut his throat?”

“Well,” Alan said evenly, “I know that Nettle told you so. But I also know that Wilma frightened Nettle very badly, and that Nettle has had… problems. I’m not saying Wilma jerzyck isn’t capable of making a call like that, because she is. But it might have only been in Nettle’s mind.”

That Nettle had had problems was understating by quite a little bit, but there was no need to say more; they both knew what they were talking about. After years of hell, married to a brute who abused her in every way a man can abuse a woman, Nettle Cobb had put a meat-fork in her husband’s throat as he slept. She had spent five years in juniper Hill, a mental institution near Augusta.