“Well, yes,” the Pillar said. “But that doesn’t—”
Three: Make the mark feel superior. “Of course, you’re probably never confused.” Sophie smiled up at him, no mean trick since they were the same height. She widened her eyes. “I bet you always know where you’re going.”
“Well, of course,” the Pillar said, relaxing now. “However—”
“And now we’ve stopped you in the middle of all this heat,” Sophie went on, apology thick in her voice. She nodded to the Pillar’s trembling hands. “And we’ve upset you.” Four: Give the mark something. “We really should let you go on. Standing here waiting for the police isn’t going to do any of us any good.” She smiled again at the Pillar, who began to smile back, looking a little confused.
“Well, that’s true,” he said. “It could be hours before Wes or Duane comes by.”
Great. He knew the cops by their first names. Sophie kept her smile in place. Five: Get what you want and get out. “Amy, do you have the insurance information?”
The Pillar looked past her to Amy, and his face darkened. “What is that?”
Sophie turned around to see Amy checking the camera.
“That’s a video camera,” the Pillar said, sputtering. “What are you doing?”
“Making a movie, obviously.” Amy looked at him with patent scorn. “And I’m telling you, you better have insurance because this is a classic car and it’s not gonna be cheap to restore.”
The Pillar flushed in fury, and Sophie thought, Oh, thanks, Ame. She moved to block Amy and sidetrack any debate over the classic status of an ‘86 Civic. “So we’ll just—”
“This is outrageous.” The Pillar expanded as he blustered. “You ran a stop sign. My wife is very upset. What kind of movie are you making? You can’t do that here.”
“Your wife?” Sophie abandoned the con for the time being and looked past him to see a faded-blonde woman leaning against the back fender of the other car, her chubby face a pasty white. “What are you doing over here if she looks like that?” Sophie turned her back on him and pointed her finger at Amy. “Do not talk to this man. Hand him the information, roll up that window, get the car off the road, and wait for me.”
“Your lip’s bleeding,” Amy said, and handed her a Kleenex.
Sophie took it and blotted her lip as she walked around the still-protesting Pillar and crossed the road. The poor woman had made her way to the Caddy’s passenger door, and Sophie bent to look in her eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“Oh.” The woman seemed dazed, her pale blue eyes blinking up at Sophie in the sun as she plucked at the collar of her Pepto-Bismol pink suit, but her pupils looked all right. And there wasn’t a hair on her head out of place, although that might have been the hairspray.
Sophie took her arm anyway. “You’d better sit down.” She opened the passenger door, and the woman got in obediently. “Put your head between your knees.” Sophie blotted her lip again. “Take some deep breaths.”
The woman put her forehead on her plump knees, which she kept clamped together, and began to gasp.
“Not that deep,” Sophie said, before she hyperventilated. “If you spread your knees apart, you can get your head lower.”
“Virginia, what are you doing?”
Virginia straightened with a jerk, and Sophie turned on the Pillar in exasperation. “She’s trying to get some blood back to her head.” If I was married to you, I’d keep my knees together, too. “Did my sister give you the insurance information?” she asked, and then saw the paper trembling in his hand. “Fine. I understand that you want to get your wife home, and that’s no problem for us.” He started to protest, and she added, “We’ll be at the Whipple farm until Sunday. After that we’ll be back in Cincinnati.”
“Your insurance agent—” the Pillar began, but this time his wife interrupted him.
“Are you friends of Clea Whipple’s?” Virginia said from the front seat, her color returning. “Is she home again? Oh, Stephen, did you hear that? We haven’t seen Clea for over twenty years. Except in the movies, of course.”
Movie, Sophie wanted to say, since Clea had only made one, but the last thing she wanted was more conversation with the Pillars. She began to back away. “She’s home, but only until Sunday. Now, please, don’t let me keep you.”
“Well, that’s so exciting.” Virginia trilled. “Is she still married to that handsome Zane Black? We watch him every night on the news.” Sophie turned to make her escape, and Virginia raised her voice to compensate. “You tell her Virginia Garvey said hi!”
“They’ve got movie equipment,” Stephen bellowed.
“And they’re filming on public land which is clearly illegal.”
“A movie?” Virginia’s face lit up and her voice rose to a shout. “Oh, wait, tell me—”
Sophie reached the other side of the road, pretending not to hear. Ahead of her, a torn and faded campaign poster fluttered on a tree: Tucker for Mayor: More of the Same.
“Dear God, I hope not,” she said under her breath. She got in the car and maneuvered it back on the road while Stephen Garvey glared at her and Virginia fluttered her hand. The front fender scraped against the tire as she searched for the lane to the farm, touching her lip with the Kleenex to see if the bleeding had stopped.
“What a butthead that guy was,” Amy said. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Sophie looked for the Whipple mailbox. “I’ve got a smashed car, a moving violation, a sister who screws up my getaway, and a dead white male telling the whole damn town we’re making a movie.” She slowed as the bridge loomed ahead, and scowled over the steering wheel. “And we must have missed the turnoff for the farm because we’re almost in town now.”
“No, there’s the mailbox.” Amy pointed with her broken sunglasses. “Turn left.”
Sophie turned down the farm lane Clea had promised them was a good half-mile long. “This place gives me the creeps...” Her voice trailed off as the dusty yard of a dilapidated farmhouse came into view. “Didn’t Clea say the farmhouse was a long way off the road?”
“Maybe they moved the road,” Amy said as they pulled up in front of the house. “It’s been twenty-four years since she’s been back.” She peered through the windshield at the farmhouse. “Understandably.”
Sophie tried to be fair as she turned off the ignition. The paint was peeling in dingy white strips from the side of the clapboards, and the gutter hung loose across the front of the peaked roof, but the house wasn’t a complete loss. There was a wide front porch across the entire front with a swing. And there was ...
Sophie looked around the dusty, barren yard. Nope, the porch was about it. “Great place to film. Yeah, we can trust Clea. I smell trouble.”
Amy sniffed the air. “That’s dead fish. Must be the river.”
She opened her car door as the screen door banged, and Clea Whipple came out onto her porch, her lush body straining at her bright blue sundress, her white-blonde hair almost incandescent in the sun. She shaded her cameo-perfect face with her hand and called, “You’re late.”
“And hello to you, too,” Sophie said, and got out of the car to unload their supplies, starting with their cooler. It was full of Dempsey life essentials —lemonade and Dove Bars— and she was in need of immediate essential comfort.
Amy went toward the house with the camera. “Isn’t this going to be wonderful?”
Sophie looked at Clea, the most self-absorbed woman in the universe, staring blankly back at her from the derelict front porch. “Oh, yeah,” she said as she hauled the cooler out of the car.
Nothing but good times ahead.
Eight miles up the road, in Temptation’s marble-and-sandstone courthouse, Mayor Phineas T. Tucker wondered not for the first time why he was cursed with a council made up of a blowhard, a doormat, a high-school English teacher, the town coroner, an amateur actor, and his mother. The combination was depressing to contemplate even with the blowhard and the doormat missing, so while Hildy Mall
ow waxed poetic over the aesthetic benefits of reproduction vintage streetlights, Phin leaned back from the oak table to distract himself with his council secretary’s legs.
Rachel Garvey had excellent legs. Of course, with only twenty years on them, they were too young for him no matter what his mother and hers thought, but they were still fine to look at.
“... and since their beauty would discourage vandalism, the extra cost will pay for itself over time,” Hildy finished, confusing Phin until he remembered that Hildy was talking about streetlights and not Rachel’s legs.
“That may be a little optimistic.” Liz Tucker’s voice was as cool as her champagne-tinted hair. “Of course, our alternative is those horrible modem lights that would clash with the nineteenth-century architecture.”
Phin winced. The only nineteenth-century architecture in Temptation was in the wealthy part of town. Grateful that only a few citizens were sitting in the front row listening to his mother forget the little people once again, Phin sat up to head her off before she could offer them cake.
“Yeah, but the good streetlights would go everywhere, right?” Frank Lutz said before Phin could intervene.
“Right,” Phin said.
“Okay.” Frank sat back and ran his hand over his matinee-idol hair, clearly relieved that the new development he’d built on the west side of town would have class lighting, too. “I’m for it. Let’s vote.”
“Can we do that without Stephen and Virginia?” Liz said, and Hildy straightened her cardigan and said, “Certainly. If we all agree, we’ll have a majority no matter how they voted. And we all agree, right?”
She stared pointedly at the fourth member of the council, Dr. Ed Yarnell, who gazed back, unfazed, armored with thirty years of council experience. If Phin thought about Ed too much, it depressed him, knowing that thirty years down the line he could be Ed: bald, sixty-something, and still staring at the same WPA mural of Justice Meeting Mercy. It was not how he wanted to spend his sixties. Hell, it wasn’t how he wanted to spend his thirties. He glanced guiltily at the sepia-toned photos of three of the four previous mayors —Phineas T. Tucker, his father; Phineas T. Tucker, his grandfather; and Phineas T. Tucker, his great-grandfather— all staring down their high-bridged noses, with cold eyes, at their latest and laziest incarnation.
“Then we’ll vote,” Hildy said.
“Call the roll, Rachel,” Phin said, and Rachel called Lute, Mallow, Tucker, and Yarnell and got four yeses. “Motion passed. What’s next?”
“The water tower,” Liz said, and Hildy said, “I don’t see why—” and then the double doors from the marble hall opened and the Garveys came in.
“There was an accident.” Virginia plopped herself down in her chair, looking like a wad of bubblegum with big hair. “Hello, baby,” she said to Rachel, reaching across to pat her daughter’s hand. “This car came out of nowhere and didn’t stop. Two women, a snippy little redhead, Stephen says, and a nice brunette who was sweet to me. Curly hair. Low-class. They’re staying at the Whipple farm. And they’re making a movie....”
Phin watched Liz draw back, probably because “low-class” was such a low-class thing to say. “I’ll never understand why Stephen married one of his counter clerks,” he’d heard her tell his father once. “His mother must be revolving in her grave.”
“Enough,” Stephen said now. “We’ve held up this meeting by coming late, let’s not waste more time with gossip.”
“Are you all right?” Liz asked, and Virginia nodded.
“Wait a minute, they’re making a movie?” Hildy said, and Virginia transferred her nod to her.
“The water tower is on the table,” Phin said, deep-sixing his own interest in the news so he could get the meeting over with. If somebody really was making a movie, the whole town would have the details by nightfall anyway. “Stephen, you put it on the agenda.”
“I certainly did.” Stephen collected himself. “That water tower is a disgrace.”
“Well, white looks so drab a few weeks after we paint it—” Hildy began.
“I have an appointment at four-thirty at the Whipple farm, and a rehearsal at six,” Frank told Phin under his breath as Hildy elaborated on the “drab” problem. “Carousel. I’m the lead.” Phin nodded as he spoke, trying not to picture forty-two-year-old Frank walking through a storm with his head held high.
“—and so I thought it would look better in peach,” Hildy finished.
Stephen said, “Hell, Hildy, it’s not your laundry. It’s a water tower, it’s supposed to be white— all water towers are white.”
Hildy sniffed. “The water tower in Groveport is blue.”
“Well, my God, Groveport.” Keeping one eye on the four constituents in the front row, Stephen turned back to Phin. “A competent, concerned mayor would do his civic duty here. We have family values to protect.”
Here we go again, Phin thought. There had been a time when Stephen’s blatant pandering had enraged him, but after nine mind-numbing years as mayor, nothing made him lose his temper anymore. He let Stephen wind down, and then he said, “Hildy, I agree that only people with dirty minds would think it looks like anything but a water tower, but there appear to be a lot of people with dirty minds. We’re going to have an accident any day now, what with all the people pulling off the highway with their Polaroids. It’s a safety issue.” Phin tried to look sympathetically into Hildy’s eyes.
Hildy looked at him as if he were a Republican.
“This is a disgrace,” Stephen said, playing to the front row again. “You call this leadership?”
“I’ve got an appointment and then rehearsal,” Frank announced. “I’m playing Billy Bigelow. Carousel. I can’t be late.”
For this I spent six years in college, Phin thought. “Let’s vote.”
“You gotta have a motion,” Rachel said, still bent over her pad.
“I move we repaint the water tower back to the old red-and-white we always had,” Stephen said. “School colors. That’s what it should have been all—”
Phin sighed. “Just move we repaint the water tower, Stephen.”
“I move we repaint the water tower red and white,” Stephen said.
“I second,” Virginia said from beside him, pleased with herself.
The vote went three to three, with Stephen, Virginia, and Liz voting for the new paint job, and Hildy, Ed, and Frank —“I’m putting a sign out there for the theater, good advertising”— voting to keep the peach.
“Did you ever think about being anything but a yes-woman?” Hildy snapped at Virginia, who straightened and fussed with her jacket.
“Virginia votes her conscience, Hildy,” Stephen said.
“The motion is tied,” Rachel said over Hildy’s snort. “The vote goes to the mayor. Tucker.”
“Yes,” Phin said. “Sorry, Hildy.”
“Motion passes, four to three,” Rachel said, and Hildy smacked her notebook down on the table, and said, “So now I have to do this all over again.”
“Just tell the Coreys to charge the new paint at Stephen’s,” Phin told her. “They know what to do.”
“Funny how Garvey’s Hardware is getting twice as much business because of this.” Hildy sat back and crossed her arms. “Clear conflict of interest, if you ask me. He shouldn’t have been voting.”
“That’s a good point,” Frank said, visibly struck by the argument. Whenever Frank had a thought, it was visible. “Why didn’t you refuse to sell her the peach paint?” he asked Stephen.
“I sold Hildy the paint,” Rachel said as her father began to sputter with indignation. “It was, like, all my fault.”
Five different council members fell all over themselves telling Rachel it certainly wasn’t her fault, while Ed sat silent and smiling at her, and Phin marveled at the way big blue eyes and taffy-blonde hair could snow the hell out of people.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now anyway,” Rachel said. “I got the vote recorded.”
“If there’s no new bus
iness—” Phin began, but Stephen said, “Wait. We need to talk about this movie.”
“Well, Stephen, I tried to talk about it—” Virginia began, and Stephen spoke over her.
“Not gossip. We need to consider the impact on the town. The pitfalls.” He looked slyly at Phin from the corner of his eyes, and Phin thought, What are you up to now? “The dangers,” Stephen went on. “We’re a town that believes in family values, and after all, you remember Clea.”
Phin definitely remembered Clea. The last time he’d seen her in the flesh, he’d been twelve and she’d leaned over to give him the money on his paper route. He’d looked down her blouse and fallen off his bike and ended up with nine stitches in his chin, but it had been worth it. He was fairly sure she’d jump-started his puberty.