Farish, perversely, had also ignored the practical dangers of storing crystal in such a nasty damp place. Danny had been in the lab with Farish one rainy day in March when the stuff refused to crystallize because of the humidity. No matter how they fooled with it, it stuck together and caked on the mirror under their fingertips in a sticky, solid patty—useless.
Danny—feeling defeated—had a little bump to steady his nerves, and then threw his cigarette out the window and started the car. Once he was out on the street again, he forgot his real errand (his grandmother’s bill to mail) and took another spin by the funeral home. But though Catfish was still sitting in the limo, the girl wasn’t, and there were too many people milling around on the front steps.
Alexandria: flat and desolate, a circuit of repeating street signs, a giant train set. The sense of unreality was what got you after a while. Airless streets, colorless skies. Buildings empty, only pasteboard and sham.
————
Grace Fountain, rather self-consciously, came up the front steps and in the front door of Edie’s house. She followed the voices and the festive tinkle of glass through a hallway narrowed by massive glass-front bookcases to a crowded parlor. A fan whirred. The room was packed with people: men with jackets off, ladies with pink faces. On the lace tablecloth stood a bowl of punch, and plates of beaten biscuits and ham; silver compotes of peanuts and candied almonds; a stack of red paper napkins (
Mrs. Fountain, clutching her purse, stood in the doorway and waited to be acknowledged. As houses went, Edie’s house (a bungalow, really) was smaller than her own, but Mrs. Fountain came from country people—“good Christians,” as she liked to point out, but hill folk all the same—and she was intimidated by the punch bowl, by the gold silk draperies and the big plantation dining table—which, even with a leaf out, sat twelve, at least—and by the overbearing portrait of Judge Cleve’s father which dwarfed the tiny mantel. Around the perimeters of the room stood at taut attention—as if at a dancing school—twenty-four lyre-back dining chairs with petit-point seats; and, if the room was a bit small, and a bit low in the ceiling, to accommodate so much large dark furniture, Mrs. Fountain felt daunted by it all the same.
Edith—with a white cocktail apron over her black dress—spotted Mrs. Fountain, laid down her tray of biscuits and came over. “Why Grace. Thank you for stopping by.” She wore heavy black eyeglasses—men’s glasses, like those that Mrs. Fountain’s deceased husband, Porter, used to wear; not very flattering, thought Mrs. Fountain, for a lady; she was also drinking, from a kitchen tumbler wrapped at the bottom with a damp Christmas napkin, what appeared to be whiskey with ice.
Mrs. Fountain—unable to restrain herself—remarked: “Looks like you’re celebrating, having all this big party over here after the funeral.”
“Well, you can’t just lay down and die,” snapped Edie. “Go over and get yourself some hors d’oeuvres while they’re hot, why don’t you.”
Mrs. Fountain, thrown into confusion, stood very still and allowed her gaze to wander unfocused over distant objects. At last she replied, vaguely: “Thank you,” and walked stiffly to the buffet table.
Edie put her cold glass to her temple. Before this day, Edie had been tipsy less than half a dozen times in her life—and all of those times before she was thirty, and in vastly more cheerful circumstances.
“Edith, dear, can I help you with anything?” A woman from the Baptist church—short, round in the face, a good-natured little fluster in her manner like Winnie the Pooh—and, for the life of her, Edith couldn’t recall her name.
