Needful Things (7 page)

People usually registered some discomposure or embarrassment of their own when she showed them her hands. Gaunt did not. He grasped her upper arm in hands that felt extraordinarily strong and shook
that
instead. It might have struck her as an inappropriately intimate thing
to have done on first acquaintance, but it did not. The gesture was friendly, brief, even rather amusing. All the same, she was glad it was quick. His hands had a dry, unpleasant feel even through the light fall coat she was wearing.

“It must be difficult to run a sewing shop with that particular disability, Ms. Chalmers. How ever do you manage?”

It was a question very few people put to her, and, with the exception of Alan, she couldn't remember anyone's ever asking her in such a straightforward way.

“I went right on sewing full-time as long as I could,” she said. “Grinned and bore it, I suppose you'd say. Now I have half a dozen girls working for me part-time, and I stick mostly to designing. But I still have my good days.” This was a lie, but she felt it did no harm, since she told it mostly for her own benefit.

“Well, I'm delighted that you came over. I'll tell you the truth—I've got a bad case of stage fright.”

“Really? Why?” She was even less hasty about judging people than she was of judging places and events, and she was startled—even a little alarmed—at how rapidly and naturally she felt at home with this man she had met less than a minute ago.

“I keep wondering what I'll do if no one comes in. No one at all, all day long.”

“They'll come,” she said. “They'll want a look at your stock—no one seems to have any idea what a store called Needful Things sells—but even more important, they'll want a look at you. It's just that, in a little place like Castle Rock—”

“—no one wants to seem too eager,” he finished for her. “I know—I've had experience of small towns. My rational mind assures me that what you've just said is the absolute truth, but there's another voice that just goes on saying, ‘They won't come, Leland, oohhh, no, they won't come, they'll stay away in
droves,
you just wait and see.' ”

She laughed, remembering suddenly that she had felt exactly the same way when she opened You Sew and Sew.

“But what's this?” he asked, touching the Tupperware container with one hand. And she noticed what Brian Rusk
had already seen: the first and second fingers of that hand were exactly the same length.

“It's a cake. And if I know this town half as well as I think I do, I can assure you it will be the only one you'll get today.”

He smiled at her, clearly delighted. “Thank you! Thank you very much, Ms. Chalmers—I'm touched.”

And she, who never asked anyone to use her first name on first or even short acquaintance (and who was suspicious of anyone—realtors, insurance agents, car salesmen—who appropriated that privilege unasked), was bemused to hear herself saying, “If we're going to be neighbors, shouldn't you call me Polly?”

The cake was devil's food, as Leland Gaunt ascertained merely by lifting the lid and sniffing. He asked her to stay and have a slice with him. Polly demurred. Gaunt insisted.

“You'll have someone to run your shop,” he said, “and no one will dare set foot in mine for at least half an hour—that should satisfy the protocols. And I have a thousand questions about the town.”

So she agreed. He disappeared through the curtained doorway at the back of the shop and she heard him climbing stairs—the upstairs area, she supposed, must be his living quarters, if only temporarily—to get plates and forks. While she waited for him to come back, Polly wandered around looking at things.

A framed sign on the wall by the door through which she had entered said that the shop would be open from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It would be closed “except by appointment” on Tuesdays and Thursdays until late spring—or, Polly thought with an interior grin, until those wild and crazy tourists and vacationers arrived again, waving their fistfuls of dollars.

Needful Things, she decided, was a curio shop. An upscale curio shop, she would have said after a single
glance, but a closer examination of the items for sale suggested it was not that easily categorized.

The items which had been placed out when Brian stopped in the afternoon before—geode, Polaroid camera, picture of Elvis Presley, the few others—were still there, but perhaps four dozen more had been added. A small rug probably worth a small fortune hung on one of the off-white walls—it was Turkish, and old. There was a collection of lead soldiers in one of the cases, possibly antiques, but Polly knew that all lead soldiers, even those cast in Hong Kong a week ago last Monday, have an antique-y look.

The goods were wildly varied. Between the picture of Elvis, which looked to her like the sort of thing that would retail on any carnival midway in America for $4.99, and a singularly uninteresting American eagle weathervane, was a carnival glass lampshade which was certainly worth eight hundred dollars and might be worth as much as five thousand. A battered and charmless teapot stood flanked by a pair of gorgeous
poupées,
and she could not even begin to guess what those beautiful French dollies with their rouged cheeks and gartered gams might be worth.

There was a selection of baseball and tobacco cards, a fan of pulp magazines from the thirties
(Weird Tales, Astounding Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories),
a table-radio from the fifties which was that disgusting shade of pale pink which the people of that time had seemed to approve of when it came to appliances, if not to politics.

Most—although not all—of the items had small plaques standing in front of them:
TRI-CRYSTAL GEODE, ARIZONA
, read one.
CUSTOM SOCKET-WRENCH KIT,
read another. The one in front of the splinter which had so amazed Brian announced it was
PETRIFIED WOOD FROM THE HOLY LAND
. The plaques in front of the trading cards and the pulp magazines read:
OTHERS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

All the items, whether trash or treasure, had one thing in common, she observed: there were no price-tags on any of them.

Gaunt arrived back with two small plates—plain old Corning Ware, nothing fancy—a cake-knife, and a couple of forks. “Everything's helter-skelter up there,” he confided, removing the top of the container and setting it aside (he turned it upside down so it would not imprint a ring of frosting on the top of the cabinet he was serving from). “I'll be looking for a house as soon as I get things set to rights here, but for the time being I'm going to live over the store. Everything's in cardboard cartons. God, I hate cardboard cartons. Who would you say—”

“Not
that
big,” Polly protested. “My goodness!”

“Okay,” Gaunt said cheerfully, putting the thick slab of chocolate cake on one of the plates. “This one will be mine. Eat, Rowf, eat, I say! Like this for you?”

“Even thinner.”

“I can't cut it any thinner than this,” he said, and sliced off a narrow piece of cake. “It smells heavenly. Thank you again, Polly.”

“You're more than welcome.”

It
did
smell good, and she wasn't on a diet, but her initial refusal had been more than first-meeting politeness. The last three weeks had been a stretch of gorgeous Indian summer weather in Castle Rock, but on Monday the weather had turned cool, and her hands were miserable with the change. The pain would probably abate a little once her joints got used to the cooler temperatures (or so she prayed, and so it always had been, but she was not blind to the progressive nature of the disease), but since early this morning it had been very bad. When it was like this, she was never sure what she would or would not be able to do with her traitor hands, and her initial refusal had been out of worry and potential embarrassment.

Now she stripped off her gloves, flexed her right hand experimentally. A spear of hungry pain bolted up her forearm to the elbow. She flexed again, her lips compressed in anticipation. The pain came, but it wasn't as intense this time. She relaxed a little. It was going to be all right. Not great, not as pleasant as eating cake should be, but all right. She picked up her fork carefully, bending her
fingers as little as possible when she grasped it. As she conveyed the first bite to her mouth, she saw Gaunt looking at her sympathetically.
Now he'll commiserate,
she thought glumly,
and tell me how bad his grandfather's arthritis was. Or his ex-wife's. Or somebody's.

But Gaunt did not commiserate. He took a bite of cake and rolled his eyes comically. “Never mind sewing and patterns,” he said, “you should have opened a restaurant.”

“Oh, I didn't make it,” she said, “but I'll convey the compliment to Nettie Cobb. She's my housekeeper.”

“Nettie Cobb,” he said thoughtfully, cutting another bite from his slice of cake.

“Yes—do you know her?”

“Oh, I doubt it.” He spoke with the air of a man who is suddenly recalled to the present moment. “I don't know
anyone
in Castle Rock.” He looked at her slyly from the corners of his eyes. “Any chance she could be hired away?”

“None,” Polly said, laughing.

“I was going to ask you about real-estate agents,” he said. “Who would you say is the most trustworthy around here?”

“Oh, they're all thieves, but Mark Hopewell's probably as safe as any.”

He choked back laughter and put a hand to his mouth to stifle a spray of crumbs. Then he began to cough, and if her hands hadn't been so painful, she would have thumped him companionably on the back a few times. First acquaintance or not, she
did
like him.

“Sorry,” he said, still chuckling a little. “They
are
all thieves, though, aren't they?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Had she been another sort of woman—one who kept the facts of her own past less completely to herself—Polly would then have begun asking Leland Gaunt leading questions. Why had he come to Castle Rock? Where had he been before coming here? Would he stay long? Did he have family? But she wasn't that other sort of woman, and so she was content to answer his questions . . . was delighted to, in fact, since none of them were about herself. He wanted to know about the town, and what the flow of traffic
was like on Main Street during the winter, and if there was a place nearby where he could shop for a nice little Jøtul stove, and insurance rates, and a hundred other things. He produced a narrow black leather notebook from the pocket of the blue blazer he wore and gravely noted down each name she mentioned.

She looked down at her plate and saw that she had finished all of her cake. Her hands still hurt, but they felt better than they had when she arrived. She recalled that she had almost decided against coming by, because they were so miserable. Now she was glad she'd done it, anyway.

“I have to go,” she said, looking at her watch. “Rosalie will think I died.”

They had eaten standing up. Now Gaunt stacked their plates neatly, put the forks on top, and replaced the top on the cake container. “I'll return this as soon as the cake is gone,” he said. “Is that all right?”

“Perfectly.”

“You'll probably have it by mid-afternoon, then,” he said gravely.

“You don't have to be
that
prompt,” she said as Gaunt walked her to the door. “It's been very nice to meet you.”

“Thanks for coming by,” he said. For a moment she thought he meant to take her arm, and she felt a sense of dismay at the thought of his touch—silly, of course—but he didn't. “You've made what I expected to be a scary day something of a treat instead.”

“You'll be fine.” Polly opened the door, then paused. She had asked him nothing at all about himself, but she
was
curious about one thing, too curious to leave without asking. “You've got all sorts of interesting things—”

“Thank you.”

“—but nothing is priced. Why is that?”

He smiled. “That's a little eccentricity of mine, Polly. I've always believed that a sale worth making is worth dickering over a little. I think I must have been a Middle Eastern rug merchant in my last incarnation. Probably from Iraq, although I probably shouldn't say so these days.”

“So you charge whatever the market will bear?” she asked, teasing just a little.

“You could say so,” he agreed seriously, and again she was struck by how deep his hazel eyes were—how oddly beautiful. “I'd rather think of it as defining worth by need.”

“I see.”

“Do you really?”

“Well . . . I
think
so. It explains the name of the shop.”

He smiled. “It might,” he said. “I suppose it might, at that.”

“Well, I'll wish you a very good day, Mr. Gaunt—”

“Leland, please. Or just Lee.”

“Leland, then. And you're not to worry about customers. I think by Friday, you'll have to hire a security guard to shoo them out at the end of the day.”

“Do you? That would be lovely.”

“Goodbye.”

“Ciao,”
he said, and closed the door after her.

He stood there a moment, watching as Polly Chalmers walked down the street, smoothing her gloves over her hands, so misshapen and in such startling contrast to the rest of her, which was trim and pretty, if not terribly remarkable. Gaunt's smile grew. As his lips drew back, exposing his uneven teeth, it became unpleasantly predatory.

“You'll do,” he said softly in the empty shop. “You'll do just fine.”

Polly's prediction proved quite correct. By closing time that day, almost all of the women in Castle Rock—those who mattered, anyway—and several men had stopped by Needful Things for a quick browse. Almost all of them were at some pains to assure Gaunt that they had only a moment, because they were on their way to someplace else.