He shrugged. “Stories, I guess. Just started this one called Richard the Third.”
“Oh, I love Shakespeare,” she said. “?‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for—’?” She broke off then, putting her hand to her mouth and looking slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I guess I got a little carried away. I almost gave away the ending.” Even though he had a thick Southern accent and a cheap suit, Susannah noticed that the customer was quite handsome in a rough, manly sort of way. She would have never thought by looking at him that he had any interest in Elizabethan drama, or, for that matter, that he’d ever read anything other than newspapers and maybe a cheap thriller or two. Her current suitor, Sandy Saunders, was the exact opposite of everything this man seemed to be. An insurance salesman for Mutual of Omaha, Sandy spent almost every dime he made from his commissions on the latest fashions and playing big-shot at the Candlelight Supper Club with a couple of his chums on the city council. Anytime he took her out on a date, it seemed as if his main objective was to stick her fingers in his mouth, which she thought was sweet the first time he did it, but had since turned creepy. Though he was attractive enough, his looks had never transcended the boyish stage and now, at thirty, were already starting to fade due to his constant carousing. Too, he was somewhat erratic, and could get angry over the most ridiculous things. For example, he’d been nursing a resentment against the mayor and the city engineer ever since they’d hired Jasper Cone to look over the town’s outhouses. Then, a couple of weeks ago, he shut up about them and began focusing all his rage on Jasper instead, saying the most cruel and hateful things about the pathetic little man. Still, that wasn’t what stopped her from fully committing herself to Sandy. Books were her greatest passion, and she could never get serious about a man who didn’t read, let alone marry one. To do so, she felt, would be like hitching her star to a fence post that just happened to breathe air and draw a paycheck. In the two years he had been courting her, he had yet to finish Treasure Island, which was the book he’d bought when he came in the shop to ask her out the first time. She sensed the customer watching her as she glided her fingers along a shelf, and it made her tingle slightly. Had Sandy ever aroused such a feeling in her? No, she thought regretfully, no matter how hard he sucked on her fingers. She pulled out two leather-backed volumes: a slightly scuffed but tight copy of Great Expectations and a pristine Collected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. “Try these,” she told Cane, “and if you don’t like them, you can bring them back.”
He glanced at them and nodded (he would have accepted anything she handed him, even a cookbook written in Italian or a walking guide to Great Britain), then followed her to the front of the store, watching her hips slightly sway as she walked. Pulling out a wad of cash, he laid a twenty on the counter, and she began wrapping the books in a sheet of white paper. He glanced around the store again, trying to build up the courage to ask her out to dinner. Wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers, he realized that he was more nervous than he’d been when he and his brothers walked into their first bank back in Farleigh. Just then he saw Cob limping by the window. Christ, looked for him all morning, and now he shows up. “I’m much obliged,” he told her, snatching the parcel out of her hands.
“Wait. What about your change?”
“Keep it,” he said as he hurried out the door.
“Goddamn it, where have you been?” he asked Cob when he caught up with him. “I thought something happened.”
“No, I was just with the sanitation inspector.”
“Who?”
“Some guy I met this morning when I sittin’ on a bench eatin’ doughnuts.”
Cane waited until some people passed by, then pulled Cob by the shirtsleeve into an alley. “What did you tell him your name was?” he said urgently.
“Junior Bradford.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. He did most of the talking. His name’s Jasper.”
“So what is he again?”
“The sani…the sanitation inspector.”
“What the hell’s that? Is he some kind of lawman?”
“No, I don’t think so. He goes around trying to catch people doin’ their business in other people’s wells.”
“Are you sure?” Cane said. It sounded a bit unbelievable to him; maybe someone had just figured out how gullible his brother was and decided to pull his leg.
“Yeah, I was with him all morning. He’s a nice feller.”
“Christ, who in the hell would take a shit in somebody’s drinking water?”
“I don’t know, but there must be a lot of them doin’ it, the way he talks.”
“And that’s a job, what he does?”
“I guess so,” Cob said. “He seems to think it is anyway. You ain’t mad at me, are ye?”