The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [37]
He never once had another woman because he never once wanted one. And not even in fantasy could she entertain the thought of another man. She paid for paints and canvases and he would paint in occasional spurts of great energy. The walls of the clapboard house were covered with his work to the point where every room but one looked like an art gallery.
The exception was the bedroom. Only one canvas hung there, the blank one he had given her on their first meeting. She had hung it that first night, centered over her bed. She had never taken it down.
“It’s a shame he couldn’t have cooled his heels for another month,” Olive said now. “As of Decoration Day we go on summer hours. I’d had it in mind to see if you’d want to work full time starting then. Our summer schedule’s about standard for New Hope. Tuesday through Sunday, eleven to ten, sometimes later on Saturdays if the crowds hold up. Like everybody else we close Mondays. I generally work most of Saturday and Sunday and split shifts on weekdays with whoever works for me.
“I can use you a minimum of forty hours a week, maybe a little more if you want extra work. And I’ll raise you to two fifty an hour. Not out of the goodness of my heart. I pay more during the season because it’s more work. In the good months you’re busy all day long. The scum of the earth streams in and out of the shop in a neverending stream. They may not buy much of anything, but they’re there. Forty hours at two-fifty an hour is a hundred a week before deductions, and if you can’t live on that you’ve got a problem.”
“I can live on that easily.”
“That’s starting Decoration Day. In the meantime it’s pointless to extend the hours. It would just give you more time to sit around waiting for something to happen. What I will do is raise your hourly rate to two fifty immediately. That’s not charity either, it’s an inducement to keep you working for me for the next six weeks. It’s not hard to find summer help around here. There’s nothing easier. What’s hard is to find anybody who’s any good, or if you do they pack up and go to Woodstock in the middle of July and leave you stranded. If you don’t plan on staying through Labor Day, I’d like you to tell me now.”
“I’ll stay. Definitely.”
“Fair enough. In the meantime you can work four days instead of three. That would be twenty-four hours. On Saturdays and Sundays you can open at eleven I’ll take over at two. That’s six more hours making it thirty hours comes to seventy-five dollars a week. Can you get by on that?”
“Yes.”
“Barely, but you can make it.”
“The thing is—”
“What?”
“I’ve almost felt guilty working for you this winter. There are days when the shop doesn’t take in enough to pay my salary, and I don’t want—”
“You don’t want to be a charity case. Well, I don’t want to be a home for stray cats, as far as that goes. I don’t make a profit on weekdays off-season. I stay open because it does a business good in the long run to have regular hours and keep to them. If people never know whether you’ll be open or not they give up after a while and stop coming around.
“This is the most amateur town in the world, Linda. The English are supposed to be a nation of shopkeepers. Well, New Hope is a town of shopkeepers, but ninety percent of them are doing it as a hobby. They don’t have to make a living, but they’re sick of playing solitaire and not bright enough for anything else, so they come here and open some artsy-fartsy shop and try not to lose more money than they can afford. As long as the stock dividends or the alimony or daddy’s check comes in every month they’ve got nothing to worry about.”
She refilled the coffee cups, gave Linda a cigarette and took one herself. She said, “Well, I’m an amateur myself. I opened the Lemon Tree because I thought it would be something interesting to do. I like to watch people. I think they’re the most amusing animals on God’s earth. The locals give you more long-range laughs but the tourists