Enchanted Again (10 page)

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said Bruce knowingly, as if his uncertainty, in and of itself, were a statement of fact. Another trickle of snickers could be heard along the bar.

“Oh, just shut up, you fools!” said Maggie suddenly. She tossed the towel down and made to turn away, but Claire stopped her.

“Maggie, should I be letting him in my house to fix my water heater?” she asked. “I didn’t want to say anything before, but he does kind of give me the creeps.”

Maggie looked at her squarely. “I have known Dan all my life,” she said solemnly. “Believe me when I tell you, he is truly harmless.”

“Are you sure?” Claire asked.

“I would trust him a lot further than I would trust Bruce here,” Maggie said with a deliberate glare at Bruce, who accepted this as good-naturedly as if Maggie had handed him a compliment.

Claire was mildly comforted by this, but nevertheless found herself thinking about “Desperate Dan” all that afternoon and later that night. Was it true that he had never been with a woman? Is that why he stared at her with that strange, concentrated gaze? Did he look at all women like that, or was there something about her in particular that aroused his interest? She shuddered when she recalled what Bruce had said.
Desperate Dan, the dirty old man!
That keen stare he fixed on her really did project a sort of desperation from behind the eyes. But did desperation automatically signify perversion? She slept poorly, tossing and turning until early morning, when at last she fell into a deep slumber.

She was startled out of her sleep by a sharp knocking.

Confused, she reluctantly pulled herself up and peered out the window. Desperate Dan stood on her stoop, waiting. She came suddenly awake, stumbling around her bedroom in search of a robe. The knocking came again, louder and more urgently this time. In her dazed state Claire found it alarming. Finding a bulky robe at last, she rushed toward the front door while putting it on and pulling the ties tightly about her waist. She threw open the door just as Dan was about to knock a third time.

His eyes took in her appearance from head to toe while she struggled for the appropriate words. “I’m sorry. I guess I overslept.” She wondered what time it was. He simply stared at her in silence.

“Um, okay, well…I guess I should show you where the water heater is,” she said, feeling annoyed with him already. She turned and gestured suddenly for him to go ahead of her. She felt almost frantic to get his eyes off of her. Dan moved ahead of her gracefully, carrying a large tin box full of tools in one hand as he went. “The stairs to the basement are just down the hall to the right,” she informed him.

“I know,” he said simply.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, you probably worked here before…with the previous tenants.” She felt stupid saying this. He didn’t reply.

“I can’t seem to get the water hot enough, and the small amount of heating it provides doesn’t last very long at all,” she continued nervously as she followed him down the stairs.

“I know,” he said again. He turned and fixed his disturbing gaze on her face. “I can take it from here,” he told her. He continued to stare at her as he waited for her to leave.

“Okay,” she said. She noticed her voice had a shrill edge to it. “Okay then,” she said again, a little more smoothly. “I’ll just go back upstairs then.” Still he just looked at her. “Okay,” she said yet again and turned to leave. To her embarrassment he did not move a muscle until she was all the way up the stairs and through the doorway. He just watched her as she went, and it took all her effort not to break into a run to get up the stairs and away from his gaze. When at last she had escaped his penetrating eyes she shut the door behind her and collapsed against it. No wonder they called him names, she thought. He deserved it.

She dressed quickly, aware that Dan could be coming up the stairs any moment. No doubt he would stare just as openly and calmly if he found her half-naked as he did when she was clothed. The thought of this caused a strange thrill to shoot through her and she shuddered in horror. But she dressed even faster.

In the end, she had time to make coffee and breakfast and still had fifteen minutes more to wait for Dan to finish with the water heater. During this time she was peculiarly aware of him in her basement. It was disturbing to know that he was likely more familiar with her new home than she was. She waited anxiously for him to finish. She felt unable to begin her day while he was there. At last she heard him trudging up the stairs. She paused nervously, uncertain as to whether she should meet him at the top of the stairs or wait for him to find her in the kitchen. She picked up her checkbook and then set it back down on the counter. Then she picked up a cup of coffee and tried to take a sip but it felt too awkward so she simply held the cup and waited. He was taking his own sweet time about it and she sighed with exasperation as she waited for him.

He did not call out to her but came directly into the kitchen. He stood in the doorway and looked at her. Without even realizing she was doing it, Claire began grinding her teeth.

“Finished?” she asked, tipping the cup over her bottom lip casually, but somehow missing her mark and spilling coffee down the front of her shirt. She laughed nervously. “Oops.” He merely stared at her and waited.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, wiping the coffee away with a towel. She felt strangely mutinous against his unrelenting gaze all of a sudden and fought off the urge to stick her tongue out and cross her eyes.

“I had the part, so just the labor…say, seventy dollars,” he said blandly.

“Well, uh, I think I should pay for the part, too. I mean, even though you had it already doesn’t mean it didn’t cost you something when you bought it.” He didn’t reply to this, but just kept looking at her thoughtfully, so she continued, “What if you need that same part for someone else’s water heater?”

“All right,” he said agreeably. “Another eighteen dollars or so for the part makes it eighty-eight.” His eyes never glanced away from her face, not even when he spoke.

“Okay then.” She tried to sound as unperturbed as he was, but her hand was trembling as she began writing out a check. Every movement felt awkward. She could feel her face turning red in response to his unwavering gaze. She wanted to tell him how rude it was to stare. She scribbled her name on the check and with an exaggerated flourish ripped it away from the pad. But in the next instant she saw that she had performed this last gesture a little too aggressively, tearing the top edge off the check and leaving it without a number or a date. She held it up with a little laugh of disbelief. “Oops,” she said again. Dan shifted his weight from one foot to the next and continued to watch her with interest.

She filled out another check, removing it from the pad with much more care this time, all the while filled with annoyance and thinking, “Desperate Dan, the dirty old man.” She recited the little rhyme over and over in her mind as she wrote, achieving from this some small measure of revenge against him for the discomfort he was causing her. She could not wait for him to be away from her, but felt strangely morose when he was finally gone.

With Dan and his unsettling stare still affecting her, Claire drove out to meet the typist Maggie had recommended. Brenda was a wholesomely feminine woman whose primary function was taking care of her husband and their two children, but who was excited by the prospect of making some money while she did it. She explained to Claire that she had learned to type in high school and had honed her skill over the years by communicating online through instant messages. She bragged that everyone she chatted with online, whether professionally or personally, always remarked on how quickly she was able to send a reply. Claire tried to appear properly impressed by this, even though it didn’t matter to her how long Brenda took to type the documents since she was being paid by the page. She informed Brenda that the most important thing was that the typing be accurate.

“That’s the other thing,” Brenda continued enthusiastically. “No matter how casual the chat, I never leave out punctuation or caps like other people do. I always write everything out exactly the way it is supposed to be.” Claire smiled. This would not have held much water with an interviewer in Chicago but here in Anamoose it was pretty impressive indeed. And Claire was impressed. She marveled that this ordinary housewife, whiling away the more tedious hours in an online chat room, had the conscientiousness to care whether she capitalized and punctuated.

Brenda was putting together refreshments for her guest in between disruptions from her children or the necessity to scold them from time to time, so Claire settled in for a lengthy chat. Dan was still on her mind and she wondered how she could maneuver the conversation in his direction. She wanted to know what Brenda thought of him. It was a given that Brenda knew him; everyone knew everyone in Anamoose.

“How do you like Anamoose so far?” Brenda asked her.

“Oh, I love it!” Claire responded, surprising herself a little with the realization that she was not just being polite. It was true. She had never been happier; except for the unrelenting attentiveness she continued to get from Desperate Dan. “I’m nearly settled into the house and have already been working on repairs.” She paused a moment, hoping Brenda would ask about the repairs so she could bring up Dan.

“Oh?” replied Brenda. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Only the water heater,” Claire said, discarding the matter with a little wave of her hand. She moved guardedly toward the topic she really wanted to discuss. “
Dan
fixed it for me.”

Brenda stopped what she was doing and looked at Claire a moment. Claire felt that Brenda knew what she was getting at, but Brenda seemed suddenly cautious.

“Yes, it would be Dan to fix it,” she said simply.

“Is Dan your fix-it guy, too?” Claire asked.

“We’ve hired him for things Ben can’t do,” Brenda said. Did Claire imagine it, or was there a defensive tone—almost as in an admission of some kind—in this statement from Brenda?

Claire bit her lip. “He’s a strange man, that Dan,” she ventured.

“How so?” Brenda asked, looking at her again.

“I don’t know…kind of creepy, you know, the way he stares.” She said this with a nervous little laugh.

“Dan is really a very kind and sweet man,” Brenda said rather abruptly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Well, I find it unnerving,” Claire insisted, disappointed that Brenda, like Maggie, didn’t seem to want to say anything disapproving about Dan. She decided she would have to discuss Dan with the men of Anamoose to get to the truth about him. Perhaps the women felt sorry for him.

“Do you really?” Brenda asked with a little smile.

Claire decided it was best to change the subject. She brought out the project she wanted Brenda to type and their discussion remained on the documents until Claire left.

After one last stop at Maggie’s diner Claire promised herself she would spend the rest of the day working at home. Stepping into the Widow, she was once again surprised and delighted when she received the nods and words of welcome from the inhabitants therein.

“How’s the water heater?” Maggie asked her.

“I haven’t tried it out yet,” Claire said, thinking of Dan instead of the water heater. “We’ll see.”

Maggie leaned in conspiratorially. “And no trouble from Dan?” she teased.

“No,” Claire said, adding before she could stop herself, “Just that creepy stare.”

Maggie’s eyes suddenly took on a dreamy expression. “Those blue eyes are intense, aren’t they?” she said.

“Yes,” agreed Claire. “Does he…look at everyone like that?”

“The people he looks at, yes,” Maggie said. She leaned in closer. “Harmless!” she said with emphasis and then walked off to pick up a plate of food for a customer.

Claire swiveled her bar stool so that she could glance around the room. No sign of the young man, Bruce, who had claimed to know something about Dan. Then all of a sudden she spotted Dan himself, sitting alone at a table in a far corner of the room. His gaze was on her and their eyes met. She waved without smiling. He gave her a slight nod and continued to stare. She turned her stool back around so she was facing front again. She tried to remember how long she had been talking to Maggie before and exactly what she had said. She realized with relief that Maggie had known Dan was there and that was why she had discreetly lowered her voice during most of their conversation, causing Claire to inadvertently do the same. She felt an overpowering urge to turn and look at Dan again but resisted it. She no longer felt like eating, so she thanked Maggie for her help and left the restaurant.

When she arrived home, Claire found inside her mailbox a package wrapped neatly in brown paper and tied with brown twine. There was no postage or even an addressee. Someone had placed the package in her mailbox by hand. She carried it into the house and pulled off the brown packaging paper hastily. As she opened it she thought of Dan. She sensed the package came from him.

Beneath the brown wrapper was a plain white cardboard box, just under a foot long and about four inches wide and deep. Claire opened the box with interest. She gasped when she looked inside.

It was immediately obvious that the gift had been made by hand. But that was far from the most startling thing about it. Inside the box was a sculptured replica of the male genitalia, somewhat enlarged, and expertly carved from a cream-colored substance that was solid but clearly pliable. The workmanship and detail was impressive. At the very base of the sculpture there was a large metal nut and bolt fixed securely, suggesting that the sculpture was perhaps detached from something else, and not merely an object unto itself.

Claire stared at the contents of the box in disbelief. She was aghast. Utterances of outrage lodged in her throat, nearly strangling her. She knew for a certainty that Dan had done this.
Desperate Dan, the dirty old man.
This was going too far, she thought angrily. This was not acceptable. She picked up the telephone, prepared to call the police. The phone shook excessively with the trembling of her hand and she hesitated as she stared at it. A long moment passed. Very slowly she put the phone back on its receiver. She began pacing up and down alongside the table upon which the white box sat, its contents within untouched. She was completely unnerved and hadn’t the slightest idea what to do.