'Salem's Lot(11)

'The paper said there were some pretty lurid prison scenes, too. Boys getting together with boys.'

'Oh, Mother, for Christ's sake.' She helped herself to one of her mother's cigarettes.

'No need to curse,' Mrs Norton said, unperturbed. She handed the book back and tapped the long ash on her cigarette into a ceramic ash tray in the shape of a fish. It had been given to her by one of her Ladies' Auxiliary friends, and it had always irritated Susan in a formless sort of way. There was something obscene about tapping your ashes into a perch's mouth.

'I'll put the groceries away,' Susan said, getting up.

Mrs Norton said quietly, 'I only meant that if you and Floyd Tibbits are going to be married - '

The irritation boiled over into the old, goaded anger. 'What in the name of God ever gave you that idea? Have I ever told you that?'

'I assumed - '

'You assumed wrong,' she said hotly and not entirely truthfully. But she had been cooling toward Floyd by slow degrees over a period of weeks.

'I assumed that when you date the same boy for a year and a half,' her mother continued softly and implacably, 'that it must mean things have gone beyond the hand?holding stage.'

'Floyd and I are more than friends,' Susan agreed evenly. Let her make something of that.

An unspoken conversation hung suspended between them.

Have you been sleeping with Floyd?

None of your business.

What does this Ben Mears mean to you?

None of your business.

A re you going to fall for him and do something foolish?

None of your business.

I love you, Susie. Your dad and I both love you.

And to that no answer. And no answer. And no answer. And that was why New York - or someplace - was impera?tive. In the end you always crashed against the unspoken barricades of their love, like the walls of a padded cell. The truth of their love rendered further meaningful discussion impossible and made what had gone before empty of meaning.

'Well,' Mrs Norton said softly. She stubbed her cigarette out on the perch's lip and dropped it into his belly.

'I'm going upstairs,' Susan said.

'Sure. Can I read the book when you're finished?'

'If you want to.'

'I'd like to meet him,' she said.

Susan spread her hands and shrugged.

'Will you be late tonight?'

'I don't know.'

'What shall I tell Floyd Tibbits if he calls?'

The anger flashed over her again. 'Tell him what you want.' She paused. 'You will anyway.'

'Susan!'

She went upstairs without looking back.

Mrs Norton remained where she was, staring out the window and at the town without seeing it. Overhead she could hear Susan's footsteps and then the clatter of her easel being pulled out.

She got up and began to iron again. When she thought Susan might be fully immersed in her work (although she didn't allow that idea to do more than flitter through a corner of her conscious mind), she went to the telephone in the pantry and called up Mabel Werts. In the course of the conversation she happened to mention that Susie had told her there was a famous author in their midst and Mabel sniffed and said well you must mean that man who wrote Conway's Daughter and Mrs Norton said yes and Mabel said that wasn't writing but just a sexbook, pure and simple. Mrs Norton asked if he was staying at a motel or  -

As a matter of fact, he was staying downtown at Eva's Rooms, the town's only boardinghouse. Mrs Norton felt a surge of relief. Eva Miller was a decent widow who would put up with no hanky-panky. Her rules on women in the rooms were brief and to the point. If she's your mother or your sister, all right. If she's not, you can sit in the kitchen. No negotiation on the rule was entertained.

Mrs Norton hung up fifteen minutes later, after artfully camouflaging her main objective with small talk.

Susan, she thought, going back to the ironing board. Oh, Susan, I only want what's best for you. Can't you see that?

6

They were driving back from Portland along 295, and it was not late at all - only a little after eleven. The speed limit on the expressway after it got out of Portland's suburbs was fifty-five, and he drove well. The Citro?n's headlights cut the dark smoothly.

They had both enjoyed the movie, but cautiously, the way people do when they are feeling for each other's boundaries. Now her mother's question occurred to her and she said, 'Where are you staying? Are you renting a place?'

'I've got a third-floor cubbyhole at Eva's Rooms, on Railroad Street.'

'But that's awful! It must be a hundred degrees up there!'

'I like the heat,' he said. 'I work well in it. Strip to the waist, turn up the radio, and drink a gallon of beer. I've been putting out ten pages a day, fresh copy. There's some interesting old codgers there, too. And when you finally go out on the porch and catch the breeze . . . heaven.'

'Still,' she said doubtfully.

'I thought about renting the Marsten House,' he said casually. 'Even went so far as to inquire about it. But it's been sold.'

'The Marsten House?' She smiled. 'You're thinking of the wrong place.'

'Nope. Sits up on that first hill to the northwest of town. Brooks Road.'