The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [164]
Linda explained that she couldn’t take money for any of them and that they were one to a customer. The woman assured her that she hadn’t been trying to make off with another free one and ultimately left saying that she would donate the price of the painting to charity.
The shop was empty of customers, and Linda was grateful. She sat down and put her head in her hand. She thought she knew why Olive wanted her to give the paintings away and only wished it were not so depressing. It would have been bad enough if people would just take the things and be grateful, but they always wanted to talk about it and she couldn’t bring herself to explain the situation.
On a better day she would have invented a story. But this was not one of her better days. There had been few enough of those lately. Everything got to her.
Tanya, for example. Tanya had a boyfriend, and that almost certainly meant that Tanya had a lover; the girl was hardly the sort given to long courtship or platonic relationships. Bill Donatelli had been replaced while his body was still warm.
Well, she admitted, that was not quite true. And Tanya was not yet living with the new one. She was still sleeping nights in her room at the Shithouse. She had moved back in after that one night in Linda’s bed—and how she could have managed that was another thing Linda did not understand. In a while Tanya might move in with her new lover, or he might move in with her, but for the time being Tanya slept alone.
But why did this bother her? A new love was just what Tanya needed, and it was healthy that she was able to accept it. Linda had no loyalty to Bill Donatelli’s memory. So why should she find the sight of the two of them, arm in arm and obviously delighted with one other, so personally disturbing?
She thought of Tanya and Bill and Olive and Clem. She thought of love and death and how the two seemed to go together in a hideous progression. Love and Death walked arm in arm, as obviously delighted with each other as Tanya and the boy with the mustache.
The phone rang. Hugh. He had just finished work for the day. The book was going well; it was going better than that; he was just pages from the end and would finish it tomorrow. And a premature celebration was just what he was in the mood for, and would she have dinner with him?
“I can’t,” she said; “I have to work tonight.”
Well, how about a late dinner? Or just a few drinks after she closed for the night?
“I’m exhausted already. I wouldn’t be good company.”
But there was something he wanted to discuss with her, something that wouldn’t work at all over the phone. Couldn’t he just see her for half an hour? He could even come to the shop if she wanted.
She gritted her teeth. People just wouldn’t leave you alone. Over the telephone, face to face, anywhere. They wouldn’t leave you alone. You couldn’t give them free paintings and shove them out the door. You couldn’t turn down a dinner or a drink or a marriage proposal, couldn’t get them off the phone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice firmer than she had intended. “Not tonight. It’s impossible; everything is impossible.”
She broke the connection before he could force any more words into her head. There were too many words there already. She couldn’t handle the ones she had.
She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want to be his wife or Karen’s mother. She didn’t want to be anybody’s anything.
People never left you alone.
“Wasn’t that a dynamite dinner, Petey?”
“Just sensational.”
“I’m still a little hungry, though. Maybe we could go out for a milk shake. Would you like that?”
“Well—”
“A milk shake’s just what I want.”
A milk shake was not just what he wanted. What he wanted, what he really wanted, was to go somewhere private and vomit up the mountain of food he had just finished stuffing down his throat. It would be such an overwhelming sensual pleasure to vomit. He had never before appreciated the potential enjoyment of nausea.
“Then