“Here,” she said, trying to soften her voice some. “This is brand new and lovely and part of the famous Every Child’s Omnibus series.”
She stopped herself again. The name would mean nothing to the boy. In any case, he simply fixed his eyes on the book until she flipped open the cover, took out the checkout cards from their stiff paper pocket, stamped in the due date on each, and re-inserted one into the pocket, while laying aside the second for filing. When she picked up Every Child’s Omnibus of Wisdom and held it out, he raised his hands to receive it readily enough. Just then the phone rang.
The phone stood on a half-size file cabinet behind Mildred and, still offering the book, she twisted round to reach for the receiver. The caller was not, as she hoped, Will Dubykky, whom Mildred dared think of as a possibility, but Deputy Sheriff Dodd. He wanted a book about Wyatt Earp, because he had heard that Wyatt Earp had actually served as a lawman in Mineral County. Mildred was familiar with the subject. She informed him crisply, because he was not a man she wanted to encourage through long conversation, that Wyatt Earp had indeed been a marshal in Nevada, but it was in Nye County, not Mineral County. In the course of her remarks, she felt a little tug at her extended hand, and released her hold on the book. The deputy’s questions disposed of a minute later, she swiveled back. Matthew Gans, Jr., was gone.
Mildred looked around her library. It was a long single room of tables and wall shelves where there was nowhere to hide. The boy had vanished, and with him Every Child’s Omnibus of Wisdom. He was the first to check it out. Mildred’s smooth, powdered forehead creased. And, Mildred realized, the list of names was gone, too.
Did she smell something musty, like decay? She sniffed deeply. Yes … maybe, but she was startled out of that line of thought. A gust of wind swiped at the windows, scratching and rattling the panes. She pressed a palm to her heart to calm it.
That door bell, Mildred mused, disgruntled and more than a little spooked now, I’ll have to get it replaced with something louder or people will be sneaking in on me all the time. Like that boy.
Now, what nice man should do it for her?
TO MILDRED’S DELIGHT, Will Dubykky did call later in the day. He was calling, he told her, simply to be sure that everything was all right with her. Such an attentive man! Of course, everything was all right, if a little lonely.
What else?
He took the hint. They agreed upon dinner in the restaurant of the El Capitan, the biggest casino in town. To Mildred, this was daring, just a little. The El Cap boasted the county’s only fine dining and was beyond her means except for really special occasions. But not beyond Will’s. Like her, he was of the professional class, yet unlike her he was a type of professional who actually made a lot of money. An attorney-at-law. Also, it was a Thursday night, not a day that Mildred normally allotted to dining out, yet again this was Will, and so the departure from her routine moved Mildred to romantic thoughts. Maybe Will was finally getting interested in being something more to her than an ersatz uncle.
On the way to the El Cap, after locking the library’s front door, having carefully negotiated the three concrete steps to the sidewalk, she nearly toppled off her high heels. The wind was becoming especially fierce. One glance at the mountains to the west of town and it wasn’t so hard to imagine a hurricane about to strike. The Wassuk Range rose straight up thousands of feet from the desert floor like gargantuan waves about to overwhelm the feeble human settlement, an illusion enhanced by the cap of snow on them, like foam on breaking surf.
Mildred hurried downtown, unable to stop herself reflecting on what a shame it was that Will was not more like Matt Gans, the teacher. Matt was handsome, lively. Dashing, even. Such a big wide smile he had, she had been all but blinded by the whiteness of his teeth. Will posed a contrast. Not that Will was a bad-looking man. Not at all! But where Matt was muscular-manly, Will was slender. Where Matt was animated, Will was impassive. Where Matt glowed with health, Will hinted of having some disability that diminished his vitality, perhaps related to wounds he had received in Korea. Pizzazz was not a word she could associate with him. Unflappable, maybe: the unflappable William Dubykky. Not so romantic, that.
Mildred sought the protection of the commercial buildings on Main Street, squinting against the grit in the air while gusts manhandled her. Once in front of the hardware store, she slowed her pace, enjoying the relative calm and the air’s May softness. The snow in the mountains was beginning to melt. This meant that the winds carried some moisture with them, bringing an unusual fullness and tactile intimacy to the otherwise chalky high desert air.
She glanced at her watch, then checked it against the clock in the window of the jewelry store. She was a little early for the date, so she stopped and examined the rings and necklaces in the window display. She tried to keep her eyes off the earrings, especially the ones that were real earrings, the ones on slender posts, naked and silver, as opposed to the clasps. How her mother had ranted when Mildred returned home from the University of Nevada two years earlier. Pierced ears! Oh, horrors! The memory still made her blush. But it had been a little funny, too, when her mother, transported by rage, lost control of her syntax. “No daughter of mine—tricked out like a floozy—painted toes next—clasps like a good Lutheran woman—sitting on men’s laps—hophead beatniks!” Overcome by the shame of it, her mother retreated to the recliner oppressed by a headache. Really, it was 1960. Tastes were changing. Couldn’t she see that?
Mildred’s only set of earrings, modest silver maple leaves on posts and not at all anything racy like gold hoops, disappeared from her dresser soon afterward. Mildred had not dared buy anything else like them. The piercings in her ears had all but closed up.
Still, she could—she thought of Misty Gans, Matt’s wife. Misty had pierced ears and wore little garnet earrings. Very elegant. But of course the Ganses came from Los Angeles. They were sophisticated. The image of Matt came back to her, the twinkle of interest in his soft blue eyes.
Stop it, she chided herself, just stop. A married man! And they’d had only that one rencontre.
As for Will, his eyes were—well, there was certainly no twinkle to them. They were unreadable, usually. So dark brown that in all but the brightest light they seemed black. And that fact, against the habitual pallor of his face, gave them the appearance of bottomless depth. If Will hadn’t had such an interesting, dry sense of humor, those eyes might be frightening. And if he hadn’t been so caring. Since he had arrived in town after the Korean War, introducing himself as a friend of Mildred’s father, who had not survived the conflict, Will regularly looked in on her and her mother. A good friend, and never an undertone of illegitimate interest, even though at sixteen she fancied herself pert as a poppy. Since then she had grown up, been to college, and matured in her interests, while Will, in the way of older men, remained simply older. She would welcome a little illegitimate interest from him now and less of the “old family friend.” Still, he was only a possibility. There were other eligible men in Hawthorne of the right class and age, although, admittedly, far from a crowd of them.
Putting her hand over her pillbox hat, she bowed her head and dashed across Main Street, not easy to do on heels, exposed to wind and oncoming cars. Inside the El Cap, the air was blessedly still and cool, smelling of dust, cigarettes, lacquer, and alcohol. The penny and nickel slots already held up a solid wall of gamblers. Marge Dressler, an old high school classmate, hovered near to keep them stocked with change from the coin machine strapped over her groin. Marge’s eyes rested on Mildred for an instant then moved away, her face contemptuous.
That didn’t fool Mildred one bit. The coin machine wasn’t the only money associated with Marge’s crotch, a fact well known around town. It was simply spiteful envy on Marge’s part. Mildred was a professional, and Marge had nothing but her hands and her sex to make a living.