Naked Once More (24 page)

On the morning of the third day her burst of energy vanished, leaving her in a state of utter depression known in its full agony only to writers. Her brain was a collection of dead gray cells, her body was a disgusting organism, and the entire world held not a single ray of joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude; nor peace, nor help for pain. She had not the faintest idea what Ara was going to do next.

She glanced at the papers on her desk and shuddered. This was definitely not the time to read them over. If she did, they would probably join the debris on the floor. She had been in this state before and she knew (though it was hard to believe) that after a few hours of exercise, or relaxation, or food, or drink, or any combination thereof, they would not read as if they had been written by a monkey pounding the keys of a typewriter.

The sun was shining. Jacqueline observed this phenomenon with faint surprise and an even fainter touch of optimism. Maybe she wouldn’t cut her throat just yet. Maybe there was some mail for her. A check, even. That thought gave her enough strength to stagger upstairs, shower, and dress.

After leaving the cottage she stood breathing deeply of the winy autumn air. Non-writers would never understand how real the imaginary world of a book could become, excluding all outside stimuli, consuming its creator. Nothing mattered, except the idea.

She had it now—twenty-odd pages, approximately half the outline. Now… Jacqueline blinked at the chrysanthemums blooming in rich profusion in the flower beds beside the walk. They needed staking. And the beds ought to be weeded.

She shook her head. No, that wasn’t it. Mail. That was what she had started out to get.

By the time she had unlocked the padlock and let herself out the gate, her brain was more or less functioning. There was some reason why she wanted her mail, aside, of course, from the ever-important question of money.

No one was at the desk and no one—for which she thanked heaven—was watching television. Jacqueline pounded on the bell. Her impatience was rewarded; instead of Mollie, Tom came out of the door that led to their living quarters. His handsome face was frozen in a frown.

When he saw Jacqueline he tried, without much success, to look pleasant. “Hello, Mrs. Kirby. There’s quite a bit of mail here for you. Mollie was supposed to take it to you, but she’s not feeling so hot today.”

“Poor thing.” Jacqueline made no move to take the sizable bundle Tom held out. “Has she consulted her doctor? One needn’t simply grit one’s teeth and endure for three months; there are shots and things.”

Tom stared at her. “How did you know? It’s only been a few weeks since—”

“My dear!” Jacqueline dismissed the question with an airy wave of her hand. “You must keep her out of the kitchen, Tom. I can remember when the mere sight of two fried eggs, looking up at me like huge, quivering, yellow eyes, would make my stomach turn over.”

“Uh—right. Speaking of food, I’d better get back to the kitchen myself. Are you having lunch with us, Mrs. Kirby?”

“I’m not sure. But I would join you in a glass of wine if you insisted.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have time.”

“My dear young man, there isn’t a customer in sight, except perhaps little me. Besides, I want to talk to you about that unpleasant affair the other night.”

She attached herself to his arm as he tried to edge past her. Tom gave in. “All right. Just give me a minute to make sure everything is going as it should.”

He settled her at a table. Jacqueline watched him walk off—shoulders straight, head poised—with a smile that did her no credit. She had been trying to pin him down for days, and he—she felt sure—had been equally intent on avoiding her. Score one for her.

She began to sort her mail. Dear old Chris had come through as promised; here was the check from England. The note enclosed with it said he was having a wonderful time and hoped she was the same. Translated, what it meant was that he would leave her alone if she would do the same for him.

A number of other letters had been forwarded by Chris’s secretary. A second group had been sent on by Booton, and a third by her publisher. A few had local postmarks; several had neither postmark nor stamp. They had obviously been hand-delivered.

Jacqueline’s smile turned wicked as she glanced through these last. An invitation from the local branch of Women in Art and Literature, to join their group (dues twenty-five dollars) and address a forthcoming meeting. “Please prepare a brief speech of approximately one hour.… Our limited budget does not allow us to offer an honorarium, but several of us would be delighted to have lunch with you after your speech.” Another invitation to speak to the Friends of the Library, on “How I Get My Ideas.” Tea and cookies would be served.

Jacqueline gave herself the mean satisfaction of tearing up the pretty little note, with its borders of pansies, that invited her to speak on how she got her ideas. If people only knew how that question maddened writers! Jacqueline still didn’t know the answer. If she did, she wouldn’t be wondering how Ara was going to outfox her sinister, beautiful rival and escape from the temple of the Dark God. A writer didn’t need “an” idea for a book; she needed at least forty. And “get” was the wrong word, implying that you received an idea as you would a gift. You didn’t get ideas. You smelled them out, tracked them down, wrestled them into submission; you pursued them with forks and hope, and if you were lucky enough to catch one you impaled it, with the forks, before the sneaky little devil could get away.

Jacqueline scraped the pile of scraps into her palm and added them to the chaos in her purse. Maybe she would talk to the ladies after all. That diatribe was too good to waste—if she could only impale it before it got away. The poor ladies couldn’t help it; they didn’t know any better.

She was still reading the local mail when Tom returned with the requested glass of wine and a cup of coffee for himself.

“Everything all right?” she asked. “If you’re short-handed, I could—”

“Wash lettuce?” He grinned at her. Apparently he had decided she was well-meaning, if peculiar—which was precisely the impression Jacqueline had hoped to convey. He was gorgeous when he looked morose and sulky; when he smiled, he was absolutely breathtaking. Jacqueline had developed immunity with age and experience, but she knew how a younger woman would have responded to those eyes and those teeth, those elongated dimples, that flash of deviltry in the dark eyes. Wash lettuce? You betcha, honey, or anything else you want.

However, no such vulgar thought could linger long in the mind of Jacqueline Kirby, who was neither young nor susceptible to gorgeous young men with downtrodden, homely, pregnant wives. “I feel I ought to apologize about the other night,” she said.

“Carter, you mean? It wasn’t your fault, Mrs. Kirby. I should probably thank you for stimulating business. We’ve already had a couple of reporters. Don’t worry,” he added. “I’ve warned the staff. None of us would betray your whereabouts, but I don’t suppose they would have much difficulty finding out where you are staying.”

“So far nobody’s bothered me. Mr. Carter didn’t come back here, I hope?”

“He did not. I hear he left town rather suddenly, between midnight and morning. I doubt he’ll be back. I know his type; you see a number of them, in this business. Big talk, foul mouth, no guts.”

“He picks on people who are smaller than he is,” Jacqueline agreed. “He wouldn’t have the nerve to tackle you.”

Tom shrugged in affected modesty. The movement made all the muscles in his chest ripple. He glanced at his watch.

Jacqueline sensed he was about to make good his escape, so she wasted no more time. “I want to talk to you about Kathleen Darcy.”

His answer was a little too prompt; he must have been expecting the question. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I barely knew her. She was older—”

“Three years, I believe.”

“I’m flattered, Mrs. Kirby.” His forced smile belied the words. “How did you find out my age?”

“I met one of your classmates at the Elite a few days ago. It’s a small town; you can’t blame people for gossiping.”

His face twisted. “Damn! Are they still telling that old lie about me and Kathleen? There was nothing to it. I was a sophomore in high school when she was a senior. You know what the age difference means at that stage in life. Later, I—well, I ran into her now and then. She’d say hi, and sometimes we’d talk for a few minutes. She talked to everybody. It didn’t mean a thing.”

Maybe not to you, Jacqueline thought. But what about her? The fact that she used you as the model for her hero doesn’t prove you were lovers, but it certainly doesn’t prove you weren’t. The old lie he mentioned was new to her, no one at the Elite had spoken of it. He was a little too quick to deny something of which he had not been accused.

“I’m looking for ideas,” she explained. “Hoping she might have spoken to a friend about her plans for the next book.”

“Oh, that.” Tom’s face cleared. “We didn’t talk about her books. I mean—we hardly talked at all. I’d be the last person to know anything that could help you. Excuse me now; we’re getting busy.”

Eight customers. She supposed that might be considered busy.

She went back to her mail. The thick sheaf of letters forwarded by Booton made her wish she hadn’t refused his offer to have his secretary weed out the trash. Yet she would have hated to miss the offer from the sensitive who had been in touch with Kathleen Darcy and who had written, under her direction, not one sequel but six. She was willing to let Jacqueline have the first of these for a mere half million.

The rest of the letters sent on by Booton appeared to be “fan” mail, and was probably the expected mixture of abuse and congratulations. They could wait. Jacqueline returned to the letter she had been reading when Tom interrupted her. It was a pleasant change from the other local invitations. It did not ask her to prepare a speech. In fact, Jan offered to do something for her, instead of the other way around.

Jacqueline waved the waitress away and settled back to finish her wine. Now that her professional conscience had been appeased by several days of hard work on the outline, she could turn her attention to a problem that interested her even more. For the past three days she had been too preoccupied to think of her friends here in Pine Grove, but the telephone messages Mollie had dutifully recorded proved some of them had been thinking about her. Craig Two had called; so had St. John, not once but several times. Poor old froggie, Jacqueline thought. I hope the old lady isn’t driving him crazy.

She crammed the mail into her purse and heaved it onto her shoulder, not without difficulty; it felt as if it weighed forty pounds, instead of the usual twenty.

A stroll down the sunny street restored her to what she liked to think of as her normal state of benevolence toward mankind. She stopped to chuck a doughy-faced baby under the chin. When she turned into the walk that led to the bookstore, she saw Jan’s cat energetically digging up one of the flower beds, and paused to say good morning. The animal was unimpressed by her courtesy; he turned his back, squatted, and went about his business. Jacqueline went about hers.

Jan was seated at her desk. A ray of sunlight touched her bent head, but it woke no reflection in the lifeless white hair. It had to be a wig. Perhaps the accident that had scarred her face had done equally savage and irreparable damage to her scalp.

She didn’t appear to be particularly pleased to see Jacqueline, but the latter was unperturbed. When she set out to be gracious, charm oozed from every pore. “I didn’t get your kind note until a few minutes ago, Jan. I’ve been working night and day; then, this morning, the creative font just dried up, the way it does sometimes, and when I went to get my mail there was your note and I thought, why not drop in and see if she’ll join me for lunch? Please do.”

“I’ve already had lunch,” Jan said. She exaggerated slightly; the glass of milk on the desk was half-full and there were several uneaten sandwiches on her plate. “Thanks just the same.”

“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. Is there someplace around here where I could get a sandwich? I’m getting a little tired of the inn.”

The approach was so obvious Jan couldn’t help smiling. “You’re welcome to join me, if you like tuna salad. There’s coffee already made—”

The cat door swung in, followed by the cat itself. It was licking its chops. “He knows the word ‘tuna,’ ” Jan said, laughing, as Jacqueline turned to stare in mild disbelief. “The extra sandwich is his, actually, but we’d both be delighted to share.”

“How can I resist an invitation like that?”

Jacqueline felt she had been genuinely accepted when Jan asked if she would mind getting herself a cup and plate from the kitchen. This room was behind one of the doors at the back of the shop; it was obviously an addition to the original building, a bright modern room with a bay window overlooking a neat little garden. Jacqueline noticed that the appliances were of the best quality, and that a number of devices had been added to make it possible for Jan to operate them herself. The other door in the back wall must lead to an adjoining bedroom and bath. Stairs wouldn’t be easy for Jan; everything she needed was on the first floor. Jacqueline couldn’t help wondering where the money had come from. Bookstores were not high-income-producing businesses.

When she returned to the shop, Jan had moved her chair to face the table in front of the fireplace. The cat had taken its customary place, on one of the overstuffed chairs; its green eyes were fixed on the plate of sandwiches, now on the table. Jacqueline took the other chair, and Jan said, “Help yourself. Sorry it’s not as fancy as the inn.”

“I can hardly complain, when I invited myself,” Jacqueline said. “This looks wonderful; I’ve been living on cheese and crackers and Fig Newtons for days.”

“How is it going?”

“As a book usually goes, in fits and starts. I hit a snag this morning; my mind suddenly went blank.”

Jan nodded. “It happens. What do you do to break the block?”

“Take time off, walk, clean house… barge in on a friend without an invitation.” Something in Jan’s expression gave her a flash of insight. “You know whereof I speak, don’t you? Do you write?”