Isn't It Romantic?

“And me without a crowbar,” Owen said.

The Reverend considered the crew of patches in his van and said, “I just can’t shake the feeling that Charles Darwin had no idea what he was talking about.”

A half a mile ahead of them, Dick was floorboarding his truck down a country road towards Seldom. He gave his passenger a stony glare. “Iona’s a helluva gal,” he said.

“I agree.”

“A fella’d be a damn fool not to fall in love with her if she took a shine to him.”

“How is it that Owen puts it? We are on the same page?”

“Well then,” Dick said, and just stared ahead for a minute.

“What is happening at a shower?” Pierre finally asked.

Dick read his overly interested face and said, “I’ll just let you live with your fantasy.”

Natalie was in Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house, sitting on her bed in a pink silk georgette slipdress with shirring detail. She stared in perplexity at the many gifts she’d been given: hair products, a box of truffles, a stack of Tupperware bowls, six steak knives, a wine decanter in the shape of a mallard, a pink quilted scrapbook, The Joy of Cooking, and three strands of Onetta’s hard-to-find barbed wire pounded onto a board. Were she in France, she thought, she’d have guessed she was getting married.

Iona was in her own room, turning in front of the dresser mirror to see the fit on her stonewashed jeans and wondering if a sequined black plunge-front bra would seem too wanton even to a European. She changed into a white silk camisole while humming Rodgers and Hart’s “Isn’t It Romantic?” The house was quiet, except for some discreet sounds from downstairs as Mrs. Christiansen stacked things in the dishwasher. Iona heard a car door slam and hurried to the window. She parted the curtain.

At Owen’s gas station, Dick swerved his truck into a gas lane and Pierre got out. The hullabaloo inside Owen’s bungalow was still as loud as a Manchester United football game, and Pierre was heading toward the hue and cry when he saw the Ram’s engine was still running. He asked, “Are you not rejoining the party?”

“I’m a little tired,” Dick said.

Pierre smiled as he saw his way to Iona simplified. He looked at his Piaget watch but wasn’t sure if he’d set it right. “What hour have you now?”

“After midnight.”

“Well, goodbye then,” Pierre hurriedly said, shook the cattleman’s hand in a French farewell, and slammed the Ram’s door. Watching Dick head north toward his ranch, away from Natalie, Pierre raked back his lion’s mane of hair, straightened his black bow tie, and then walked kitty-corner to Mrs. Christiansen’s house.

Natalie strolled by Mrs. Christiansen’s tomato plants, one hand lightly flitting over the leaves, the night of the yard soft as silk to her skin. Cicadas were shrill in the trees. She inhaled the hay-scented air like nourishment. Envied the silence that only she disturbed. Worked out in her mind the question, Who do you love?

28

When no one, he was sure, was watching, Pierre Smith hustled from behind a shade tree to the side of Mrs. Christiansen’s grand, three-story rooming house and looked at the upstairs windows. All were still lighted. In one he thought he saw a wide shape pirouetting while she toyed with her hair. Ursula’s room. And then he thought he heard the kitchen’s screen door creak shut as if a wandering roomer had entered the building from the vegetable garden. He went to the trellis he’d destroyed Thursday night and found Carlo Bacon hadn’t yet repaired it. He sidestepped along the house, looking up, until he found a gutter downspout. He shinnied up.

Meanwhile, Dick Tupper ended his dupery and headed back into Seldom, turning off the ignition for the final half block and letting his truck silently glide, its tires popping gravel, until it halted in Mrs. Christiansen’s alley. He checked his handsome face in the mirror, smoothed his mustache, and shut the driver’s side door so quietly it was softer than the crunch of celery at a ladies’ tea. And then he crept up to the kitchen porch steps, just missing Natalie as she ascended the servants’ staircase to her room. He peeked through the fly-specked screen door and saw Mrs. Christiansen humming as she put away wine glasses in a cupboard. She and Dick both heard a wrenching metal noise as a faraway downspout gave way. They heard a whump as Pierre hit the ground, flat on his back.

Mrs. Christiansen said to herself, “My goodness, what was that?” She scuttled out to the front porch.

While she was away, Dick sneaked in through the screened kitchen door and found the servants’ staircase. He took off his faux crocodile cowboy boots and walked up with them joined in one hand.

Outside, on the front porch, Mrs. Christiansen was looking down at the downspout that had so mysteriously crashed. She couldn’t see Pierre hiding under her juniper bushes. She said to herself, “This house is falling apart.”

Pierre was trying to get deeper into the junipers when he found an open basement window. What luck! Squeezing headfirst through the window, he fell into stacked cans of housepaint that thunked and rang on the basement floor. Had Mrs. Christiansen been near, she’d have heard him mutter “Mmpff.” But she was inside the house.

Natalie Clairvaux was prettily sitting on her bed, facing herself and her conscience in the pier glass mirror. She silently rehearsed what she was going to say. She revised it. She supplied histrionic gestures. She changed her mind. She posed differently.

Dick was sneaking from door to door in the upstairs hallway, holding his boots in one hand. All the numbers were gone. He stopped before one maple door and touched his fingertips to the glue spot. He peered closer, as if he could read a faint trace of the numeral. Was it number four? Cautiously opening the door, he drooped in despair. “Closet,” he said.

Another maple door opened behind him. Owen’s Aunt Opal walked out of her room, binding her terrycloth robe around her, and Dick hid inside the closet. She shut her door just as he did, and then she went downstairs by the front staircase.

Still waiting impatiently, Iona and Natalie both opened their doors to peek out. Seeing only each other, they quickly ducked back inside, slamming their doors closed.

Crawling up the wooden basement stairs on his hands and knees, Pierre hit the kitchen door with his head, inching it ajar. A stripe of Mrs. Christiansen appeared as she got a flashlight from under the kitchen sink.

Opal called, “Marvyl?”