No jokes were made about Sally's legs or Sally's anything if Lester Pratt happened to be in The Clip joint (and he went there at least once every three weeks to have the bristles of his crewcut sharpened). It was clear to most of those in town who cared about such things that he believed Sally farted perfume and shit petunias, and you didn't argue about such things with a man who was put together like Lester. He was an amiable enough guy, but on the subjects of God and Sally Ratcliffe he was always dead serious. And a man like Lester could pull off your arms and legs before putting them back on in new and interesting ways, if he wanted to.
He and Sally had had some pretty hot sessions, but they had never gone All the Way. Lester usually returned home after these sessions in a state of total discomposure, his brain bursting with joy and his balls bursting with frustrated jazz, dreaming of the night, not too far away now, when he wouldn't have to stop. He sometimes wondered if he might not drown her the first time they actually Did It.
Sally was also looking forward to marriage and an end to sexual frustration... although these last few days, Lester's embraces had seemed a little less important to her. She had debated telling him about the splinter of wood from the Holy Land she had purchased at Needful Things, the splinter with the miracle inside it, and in the end she hadn't. She would, of course; miracles should be shared.
It was undoubtedly a sin not to share them. But she had been surprised (and a little dismayed) by the feeling of jealous possessiveness which rose up in her each time she thought of showing Lester the splinter and inviting him to hold it.
No! an angry, childish voice had cried out the first time she had considered this. No, it's mine! It wouldn't mean as much to him as it does to me! It couldn't!
The day would come when she would share it with him, just as the day would come when she would share her body with himbut it was not time for either of those things to happen yet.
This hot October day belonged strictly to her.
There were only a few cars in the faculty lot, and Lester's Mustang was the newest and nicest of them. She'd been having lots of problems with her own car-something in the drive-train kept breaking down-but that was no real problem. When she had called Les this morning and asked if she could have his car yet again (she'd only returned it after a six-day loan at noon the day before), he agreed to drive it over right away. He could jog back, he said, and later he and a bunch of The Guys were going to play touch football.
She guessed he would have insisted that she take the car even if he had needed it, and that seemed perfectly all right to her. She was aware-in a vague, unfocused way that was the result of intuition rather than experience-that Les would jump through hoops of fire if she asked him to, and this established a chain of adoration which she accepted with naive complacency. Les worshipped her; they both worshipped God; everything was as it should be; world without end, amen.
She slipped into the Mustang, and as she turned to put her purse on the console, her eye happened on something white sticking out from beneath the passenger seat. It looked like an envelope.
She bent over and plucked it up, thinking how odd it was to find such a thing in the Mustang; Les usually kept his car as scrupulously neat as his person. There was one word on the front of the envelope, but it gave Sally Ratcliffe a nasty little jolt. The word was Lovey, written in lightly flowing script.
Feminine script.
She turned it over. Nothing written on the back, and the envelope was sealed.
"Lovey?" Sally asked doubtfully, and suddenly realized she was sitting in Lester's car with all the windows still rolled up, sweating like mad. She started the engine, rolled down the driver's window, then leaned across the console to roll down the passenger window.
She seemed to catch a faint whiff of perfume as she did it. If so, it wasn't hers; she didn't wear perfume, or make-up either. Her religion taught her that such things were the tools of harlots. (And besides, she didn't need them.) It wasn't perfume, anyway. just the last of the honeysuckle growing along the playground fence-that's all you smelled.
"Lovey?" she said again, looking at the envelope.
The envelope said nothing. It just lay there smugly in her hands.
She fluttered her fingers over it, then bent it back and forth.
There was a piece of paper in there, she thought-at least oneand something else, too. The something else felt like it might be a photograph.
She held the envelope up to the windshield, but that was no good; the sun was going the other way now. After a moment's debate she got out of the car and held the envelope up in front of the sun. She could only make out a light rectangle the letter, she thought-and a darker square shape that was probably an enclosed photo from (Lovey) whoever had sent Les the letter.
Except, of course, it hadn't been sent-not through the mails, anyway. There was no stamp, no address. Just that one troubling word.
It hadn't been opened, either, which meant... what? That someone had slipped it into Lester's Mustang while Sally had been working on her files?
That might be. It might also mean that someone had slipped it into the car last night-even yesterday-and Lester hadn't seen it.
After all, only a corner had been sticking out; it might have slid forward a little from its place under the seat while she had been driving to school this morning.