It was with surprise that Edie found herself softening to Mr. Dial’s manner—which was most agreeable, particularly as he seemed convinced that the accident could in no way have been her fault. And when he gestured out to the new Cadillac parked at the curb (“just a courtesy … thought you might need a loaner for a couple of days …”) she was not nearly so hostile at the sly liberty as she would have been even a few minutes before, and walked out with him, obligingly, as he went over all the features: leather seats, tape deck, power steering (“This beauty’s just been on the lot for two days, and I have to say that the minute I saw it, I thought: now
On he talked. Edie’s pain pill was wearing off. She tried to cut him short but Mr. Dial—pressing his advantage (for he knew, from the tow-truck driver, that the Oldsmobile was bound for the junk-yard)—began to throw out incentives: five hundred dollars knocked off the list price—and why? Palms spread: “Not out of the goodness of my heart. No maam, Miss Edith. I’ll tell you why. Because I’m a good businessman, and because Dial Chevrolet wants your business.” In the rich summer light, as he stood explaining why he would also extend the extended warranty, Edie—with a stab of pain in her breastbone—had a sharp ugly nightmare-flash of impending old age. Aching joints, blurry eyes, constant aspirin after-taste in the back of the throat. Peeling paint, leaky roofs, taps that dripped and cats that peed on the carpet and lawns that never got mowed. And time: time enough to stand in the yard for hours listening to any con artist or shyster or “helpful” stranger who drifted down the pike. How often had she driven out to Tribulation to find her father the Judge chatting in the driveway with some salesman or unscrupulous contractor, some grinning gypsy tree pruner who would later claim that the quote was per
With an increasingly black and hopeless feeling, Edie listened. What was the use of fighting? She—like her father—was a stoic old pagan; though she attended church as a civic and social duty, she did not actually believe a word of what was said there. Everywhere were green graveyard smells: mown grass, lilies and turned dirt; pain pierced her ribs every time she took a breath and she could not stop thinking of the onyx and diamond brooch inherited from her mother: which she’d packed, like a stupid old woman, in an unlocked suitcase which now lay in the unlocked trunk of a wrecked car, across town.
And somehow Mr. Dial’s companionable presence was a strange comfort: his flushed face, the ripe smell of his aftershave and his whinnying, porpoise laugh. His fussy manner—at odds with the solid ripeness of his chest beneath the starched shirt—was queerly reassuring.
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