The Stranger

“Mal, it’s a little awkward to discuss this right now. I’m at a party. With Freddy. It’s a political thing.”

“Oh. Oh…well.”

“What’s wrong?” Mindy could tell that Mallory was upset. “Can’t we talk about this later?” She lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “You know this kind of thing intimidates me, Mal. But I’m doing pretty well, I think. I just can’t let myself get upset now.”

“Yes, of course, later is fine.” Mallory’s voice resumed its normal, brisk, cheerful tones. “I’m sorry. I didn’t remember that the party was today. Good for you, honey. I’m really proud of you for deciding to go after all.”

Mindy remembered sheepishly that she’d told Mallory she might plead a headache, or the flu, and skip the party. She was so afraid of letting Freddy down. She was so afraid that someday, at one of these functions, the mist would fall from his eyes and he’d see her as she really was.

Too young, too gauche, too shy. Pretty enough to be a trophy wife, but not worthy in any other way.

In the end, a liability.

“Thanks,” she said self-consciously. “Well, I guess I’d better go see what Freddy’s up to.”

“Of course.” Mallory was back in cheerleader mode. “I’ll bet you look like a million bucks, kiddo. Now you go out there and just be yourself. Show them how sweet and smart you are. Before this party is over, they’ll all love you just as much as Freddy does.”

As Mindy put her phone away, she watched Freddy and his friend the judge, who had been joined by three other suave people with drinks in their hands and clever laughter on their lips. She tried to convince herself that Mallory was right. They would love her, too…love her just as much as Freddy did.

But that was the question, really, wasn’t it? How much did Freddy love her? When the time came, would it be enough?

FORGET FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, Mallory thought as she opened the last of the day’s mail. Thursday the twenty-second was every bit as evil.

So far her day had consisted of two obnoxious publisher’s reps, one carton of damaged books, three hefty returns, one irate mother who apparently didn’t know that a CD called All Night Long might contain sexual content, and a call from Valley Pride Property Management Inc., notifying her that they planned to raise her rent.

But she could handle all that. She’d been a bookseller for almost two years now, and she could count on one hand the days that hadn’t included similar frustrations.

In fact, ever since last week’s call from the blackmailer, she’d decided that, as long as she didn’t hear from him, every day was a good day.

But the piece of mail she held in her hand clearly hadn’t come from any blackmailer. This new insult was even more personal. It shouldn’t really upset her at all—she’d been half expecting it for weeks. And yet, strangely, it did, if only because it reminded her what a fool she’d once been.

She slid her forefinger under the flap of the big, showy, pink-flowered envelope, already sure what it was. It was a supertacky wedding invitation—the kind Mallory would never encourage Mindy to select—and it was addressed in an almost illegible curlicue calligraphy.

Which meant that her ex-husband Dan and his pretty fiancée, Jeannie, who was nineteen but clearly had the taste of a middle-schooler, were actually getting married.

And they wanted Mallory to show up and watch.

The arrogant bastard. Mallory tossed the invitation, which was embossed with silver wedding bells that looked like scratch-off squares on lottery tickets, onto the counter. She’d show up, all right. She’d sit in the front, and when they asked if anyone knew any reason why these two should not be joined together, she’d stand up and say, I do! Dan Platt is a hard-core sleazeball, she’d say, and even this ditzy little airhead deserves better.

Out of nowhere, a new suspicion skittered across her mind. Her blackmailer with the metallic voice couldn’t have been Dan, could it? When they’d been married, Dan had never had enough money. And he had always resented the way her family spoiled Mindy. He’d called her “the little princess.”

And, since he was one of the Heyday Eight’s customers, he might have known about Mindy’s involvement.

But this was ridiculous. Dan was definitely a jerk, but he wasn’t a blackmailer. She was just getting paranoid. She’d noticed it the very first day. Every male customer—or female customer, for that matter, if she had a deep voice—made her nervous. Everyone from the postman to the sales reps, from the mayor to the cop who patrolled Hippodrome Circle looked suspicious.

Was it you, she’d ask mentally? Or you? Or you?

“Mallory, stop daydreaming and get me a copy of The Great Gatsby.” Aurora York was suddenly standing in front of the counter, the blue feather on her pill-box hat trembling, which always meant Aurora was in a temper. “I need to show that fool Verna Myers something.”

Mallory smiled at her favorite customer, glad to have something fun to take her mind off the annoyances of the day. And any meeting of Aurora’s book club, Bookish Old Broads Incorporated, or Bobbies, as they called themselves, was bound to be fun.

The group met here every Thursday at six, for cookies and coffee and spirited debate. Last Thursday, Verna Myers, who worshipped at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary feet, had been so enraged when Aurora criticized Tender is the Night that she had stood up, sputtering indignantly, and yanked the feather right out of Aurora’s hat.

A hush had fallen over the entire bookstore. No one, but no one, touched Aurora’s feathers. Wally said later that he’d been expecting a catfight. But Aurora was a lady. Instead of scratching Verna’s eyes out, she had merely taken her copy of Tender is the Night, torn out a page from the middle, and used it to wipe the cookie crumbs from her mouth.

Frankly, Mallory had been surprised to see Verna show up again this week. But Verna probably enjoyed the rows as much as Aurora did. And, since the wealthy old ladies always paid for anything they ruined, it was lucrative for Mallory, so everybody came out a winner.

“Gatsby? I’ll go look,” Mallory said obediently. No one who knew Aurora really minded her bossy tone. Underneath the haughty Queen Victoria exterior beat one of the kindest hearts in Heyday.

But wouldn’t you know it? She was completely out of Gatsby. The high-school seniors were writing research papers on Fitzgerald this year, and they’d all come rushing in at the last minute and picked her shelves clean.

She had her own copy upstairs. Rather than disappoint Aurora, Mallory decided to go get it.

“Wally, will you watch the register for a minute?”

Wally, who was shelving CDs, his favorite task, frowned. He was an artist—a budding film director, at least in his own mind—and he thought handling money was crass. But he was deeply in hock to the photography store down the street, so he didn’t dare annoy the one employer in town who would put up with his attitudes, not to mention his multicolored hair.

“Sure,” he mumbled, and began to shuffle in her direction.

Mallory’s shop was actually two storefronts combined into one large bookstore on the bottom. On the upper floor, though, the building was divided into two snug but charming apartments with porches overlooking the tree-lined, curving Hippodrome Circle. Mallory lived in one. The other had been empty ever since Christmas, when her neighbor, a local chef, had taken a job at a fancy restaurant in Richmond. She still missed the great aromas that had always seeped from his apartment to hers.

Both apartments were accessed by the same outside staircase, so Mallory exited the bookstore, drank in a little of the sparkling Virginia spring air, and then climbed up to see if she could hunt down Gatsby in the jungle of books in her living room.

She kept admirable order downstairs—customers had to be able to find books before they could buy them. But up here, where she stored everything that wouldn’t fit in the shop, as well as her own ever-growing collection of books, the situation was a mess.

Gatsby…Gatsby… When had she last read Gatsby? Probably around the holidays…which meant it would be beneath the “summer reading list” books that had just been delivered, but not so far down as the “back to school” books from last fall.

It took forever, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard footsteps on the outside staircase. Wally, undoubtedly panicked by being stranded with the Bobbies, must have left the register untended—the ultimate no-no—and come up here to drag her back downstairs.

She grabbed Gatsby, knocking over three Pilchers and a du Maurier in the process, and hurried to the door. “Darn it, Wally, I’m coming,” she called. “Now get back down there before someone robs us blind.”

But it wasn’t Wally.

The lovely spring sunlight, so bright in her many-windowed living room, didn’t quite penetrate this narrow hallway that ran behind both apartments. She blinked as her pupils tried to adjust, but she couldn’t make out the person’s face.

His back was to the open stairway door, and the sun haloed around him, leaving just a black silhouette, like a moving shadow. Still, she saw that he was tall, much taller than Wally. More substantial. Wally had a boy’s shoulders. This squared-off breadth belonged to a man.

With no warning, fear tingled across her scalp, and she instinctively took a step backward, toward the shelter of her own doorway. This was Heyday, where dim corridors rarely posed a threat to anyone, and she was no coward, but ever since that call…

Things had changed.

Once again she asked herself…could this be the man, the faceless blackmailer with a distorted metallic voice?

But then the man spoke and the fear disappeared, replaced by a sudden, flaring fury.

He said just one word. Just her name.

“Mallory.” The word was uttered softly, almost apologetically, as if he knew how she would hate seeing him and wished he could spare her the pain.