Читать книгу Little Town, Great Big Life - Curtiss Matlock Ann - Страница 9

Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain

THE MORNING RUSH STARTED. TING-A-LING WENT the bell over the door. Brrring went the cash register.

“Mornin’, Belinda. Hey, Arlo. Get up, get up, you sleeepy-heads! I’ll take three lattes and two Little Debbies to go. Hurry up, I’m already supposed to be in Duncan.”

“Just a large coffee this mornin’. Black. Get up, get up, you sleepyhead. Get up and get your body fed! Uhmmm…second thought—I’ll take a honey bun, too.”

“Hey, y’all. Get up, get up, you sleeeepyheads! Oran, you got my wife’s prescription? I’ll be back in a minute…wanna get a coffee.”

“Two large Coca-Colas to go, and here, four packages of peanuts, too. I’m gettin’ my body fed. You know, it’d be great if y’all would serve sausage biscuits.”

“Whoo-hoo! Everybody get up, get up…and get your bod-y fed!”

“What is this all about?”

“Didn’t you hear ol’ Winston this mornin’? Well, he…”

Whatever happened in town, and of any interest anywhere, would be told and discussed first, or at least second, down at Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain. Built in 1909, it had escaped two tornadoes, a small fire and been in continuous operation by the same family since its beginning in a tent during the land run. It had been written up in every insurance magazine in the state, been filmed for two travel shows, included as a backdrop in one movie and featured in OklahomaToday magazine. The previous year Belinda Blaine had succeeded in getting the store on the state register of historic buildings. Now the building bore a bronze plaque that Belinda polished once a week.

The original black fans turned slowly from the tin-lined ceiling winter and summer, lemonade and cold sweet tea were still made from scratch and sundaes were still served in vintage glass fountain dishes at the original granite counter. Old Coke, Dr. Pepper, headache powder and tonic signs graced the walls, along with a number of autographed pictures of notable people who reportedly had dropped in, such as Governor “Alfalfa Bill” Murray and Mifaunwy Dolores Shunatona, Miss Oklahoma 1941 and the country-music stars the Carter Sisters, Hoyt Axton and Patsy Cline.

The Patsy Cline one was a fake. Fenster Blaine, who had been working all alone one day in 1962, decided to tear the photograph from a country-music magazine and sign it himself, and tell everyone that Patsy had come in. A number of people at the time had recognized his handwriting, but as the years had passed, the photograph remained on the wall and the truth was lost.

The store was a favorite hangout for teens after school and the first place that parents allowed their young daughters to go when beginning to date. It hosted Boy Scouts and Brownies, the Methodist Ladies’ Circle and Baptist Women on a regular basis. Romances had begun, marriages had ended, business and political deals, large and small, had been struck, at least three holdups had happened, along with several heart attacks, fist-fights and two deaths.

Pharmacist Perry Blaine, Belinda’s father, had been gone several years now, but a good replacement had at last been found in Oran Lackey, who could not only dispense modern medicines, like Viagra and Cialis, on an up-to-the-minute computerized system, but he also knew the ages-old art of compounding medicinals such as cough-suppressant lollipops and natural hormone creams, just as Perry had done. Because of this ability, the store was growing an ever-enlarging mail-order business and even made some veterinary medicines. They also carried vitamins, herbs and homeopathic remedies, all of which were coming back around in popularity.

Vella Blaine had installed Oran in the apartment above the drugstore, enabling him to be available day and night. Some people wondered why in the world Oran would take on such a job, when he could have gone with Walgreens over in Lawton and not had to work nearly so hard. Oran, who had been a medic in the army and gone through some tough times in Somalia and Afghanistan—fights hardly anyone back home knew about but which had left him with chronic fatigue and a bad limp—was a shy, solitary man who did not like the bustle of a large pharmacy. He came from Kansas City and had absolutely no family. He had found one when he came to Blaine’s Drugstore. Not only the Blaines but the entire town needed and wanted him. He knew all of his customers by name, and was privy to many intimate details of their lives. He had on numerous occasions saved people money and possibly from death by his careful monitoring of their medications. He had embarrassed quite a few doctors and made them hopping mad because he found their mistakes. He had, very quietly and as only Belinda knew, put one unscrupulous doctor out of business.

Most people had pretty much forgotten that Vella and Perry had two daughters. Their eldest, Margaret, who had grown up the favored and really beautiful one, had left town some twenty-three years ago in the Ford Mustang her parents had given her as a high-school-graduation present. She had gone all the way to Atlanta, which she apparently considered far enough away and where she had built a good career as a travel specialist. Margaret had come home only three times. The last time had been when Perry Blaine had died. She attended the funeral and the reading of the will, got her inheritance in cash and picked up a few mementoes her mother thought she should have and left again, this time going all the way to a new home in Miami.

Belinda was the daughter who had stayed. Except for a year and a half away in college—she had quit during her sophomore year—she had lived all her life in Valentine. This was not something she had planned, although she did say, and without apology, that she never had desired to live anywhere else. She had begun working in the store at nine years old. She thought it silly to go out and struggle to find a job when she had a perfectly good one handed to her. Belinda had never possessed much ambition, and she was not ashamed of this. She considered herself a smart woman, and found ambition highly overrated.

Belinda’s keen intellect—she had surprised everyone by being valedictorian of her graduating class and the second highest in academics for the entire state that year—combined with a blunt nature, had tended in her early years to discourage male attention. She had seen the unhappiness in her parents’ marriage and calculated that her chances of following in their footsteps were high, so she felt she would do best to avoid such a union. Also, she did not care to change herself to accommodate a man, and this, as far as she could see, was the foolish thing that women kept doing.

Then one fall evening, as she was driving home, Lyle Midgette came by in his brand-new police car and pulled her over for speeding, and actually gave her a ticket. None of the other officers, not even the sheriff, ever gave her a ticket. Lyle was such a pleasant, even-tempered man that no insult she threw at him affected him. And even further, after that he went to following after her like a puppy dog.

Lyle had moved up from Wichita Falls to take the deputy position in the sheriff’s office. He was a man dedicated to law enforcement, something of the complete opposite of Belinda, who lived by her own rules. He was also a Greek god in his tan deputy sheriff’s uniform. The instant Belinda saw him, against all of her good sense, she had fallen into such lust as she had never known. For Lyle’s part, he often said that the minute he laid eyes on Belinda, he fell in love.

Belinda asked him if he did not mind that she was of a womanly shape. He said straight out, “Oh, that’s what I like. You remind me of my mother.”

Another woman might have been offended. Belinda was practical. She asked to be introduced to his mother, who lived all the way down in Wichita Falls—another really good thing, as far as Belinda was concerned.

As it happened, Lyle was the only boy after four older sisters, who all spoiled him so much that he had not had to walk a step before the age of three. And his sisters, as well as his mother, were all full-figured like Belinda, which proved to her that humans were given to liking what they knew, just as she liked the drugstore.

At the time of their meeting, Belinda, having existed primarily within her mind, had little idea of her sensual, womanly side. That changed with Lyle’s abundant attentions. She quickly came into full bloom. One day she found the Home Shopping Network, Delta Burke lingerie for womanly figures and Nina dyeable pumps, and her life changed forever. Valentine was fifty miles from a mall, but everything that you could want—and that you might not want others to know you bought—came right to Belinda via Buddy, the UPS driver.

As it turned out, having known and served most of her customers for all of her life, Belinda already knew their most intimate likes and dislikes. She began buying for them as well as for herself, and pretty soon she not only had a good personal shopping business going but was supplying the drugstore with all manner of unique specialty and gift items. She installed an entire perfume counter with locally hard-to-find scents such as Coco, Interlude and Evening in Paris. She stocked the favored brand and color dye for every woman in town who did her own hair, and every preferred shade of cosmetic and fingernail polish. The store’s profits soared. Belinda discovered yet another talent—making money hand over fist, and with little effort at all.

Three years ago, Belinda had finally allowed Lyle to talk her into marriage. They had a small but lovely church ceremony, and in the end Belinda was secretly thrilled. But she insisted on keeping her own name. She felt to change would cause all manner of complications at this late stage of her life. Everyone knew her as Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, not to mention that she was of a size to wear a DD cup bra. The name of Midgette just did not fit her at all. It didn’t even fit Lyle, who was six-two, but one could not change what one had been born with. One could only seek to make the best of it.

When Winston came into the drugstore, everyone went to clapping and cheering him.

Winston made a courtly bow. “Thank you…thank you. I commend your good taste.”

At his voice, Belinda laughed right out loud, so rare a happening that she received a number of curious looks.

Winston said, “I guess I accomplished somethin’ this mornin’. I got a full laugh out of Miss Belinda Blaine.”

“Oh, yeah, you made me laugh,” she said, with the image in her mind of dropping the pregnancy-test kit in the toilet.

As Winston held court at his usual table, surrounded by a knot of other gossipy old farts, Belinda brought him a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.

When her mother had left on her European vacation, she had said to Belinda, “The store and Winston are in your hands. Don’t let either of them die on me while I’m gone.”

Her mother had meant it as a joke, but they both knew there was a kernel of truth in the sentiment. The store and all who came in it made up their lives.

The day became quite dreary, and the midmorning lull started early. She had sent Arlo to the storeroom to unpack boxes. All was silent from there. The low drone of the television sounded from the rear of the pharmacy.

Taking a feather duster, Belinda strolled along the health and intimate products section, whacking here and there, until she came to the pregnancy-test kits. She scratched the back of her head.

They had three different brands. It had been the $6.99 one that she had dropped into the toilet. The $9.99 product guaranteed to give easy-to-read results.

Could she read it in the toilet, should she drop it? She really hated flushing money away.

Just as she reached for the box, the bell rang out over the front door. She snatched back her hand as if from a flame and went to whacking the duster. At the end of the aisle, a familiar figure passed.

“Emma! Hey, girlfriend! What are you doin’ out this mornin’?”

“I’ve got to get my hair color.” Emma pointed at her head as if for evidence.

“Well, come on over and get a cup of coffee on the house,” Belinda called, and headed for the soda fountain counter.

What a treat! Emma Berry was her best friend, although somehow the two of them had not seen much of each other the past winter. Emma was deeply into her art—she designed greeting cards and stationery that sold in the drugstore—and into her family, which had increased with a new daughter-in-law the past fall.

And things had just sort of changed, as things often did…but in that instant of seeing her friend, Belinda thought: I will tell her.

Emma brought the box of L’Oréal light ash blond to the cash register and dug money out of her purse with pretty manicured hands.

Belinda handed back change, saying, “Latte or coffee? On the house.”

“Oooh, latte.” Emma scooted her small frame up onto a stool at the counter. “I only like yours.”

Belinda stuck a large cup beneath the aromatic, steaming machine, while Emma chattered on about needing caffeine because she had been up that morning since half past six, when, over the radio alarm in the new coffeemaker, she heard Winston shouting and then found out that John Cole was already heading off to work.

“Don’t put any whipped cream on it. Did you hear Winston this mornin’?”

Belinda, who had paused with the whipped cream can pointed, said, “Oh, yes, I heard.” She brought the steaming cup to Emma at the counter. Her thoughts were in something of a tangle, wondering why anyone would want a coffeemaker with a radio in it at the same time that she tried to figure out how to bring up the subject of her worries.

“I’m afraid he’s gonna have a heart attack,” Emma said. “Can I have a spoon?”

Belinda handed her one. “Winston? Well, we all are. He is ninety-two.”

“No. John Cole. Really? I didn’t know he was that old. He’s workin’ twelve- and fourteen-hour days…again,” Emma added with pointed annoyance.

Belinda thought, John Cole…Winston…John Cole again. Conversation with Emma was apt to be a little convoluted.

“I’ve learned by now, though, that I cannot control him,” Emma said, aiming for resignation, although she did not quite reach her mark.

Belinda agreed, and the two women tossed around comments about how everyone had their own lives to lead, the sort of practical statements that everyone knows but forgets when trying to help other people live their lives.

Then Belinda leaned forward on the counter. “I’ve been goin’ to call you.”

“You have?”

Belinda nodded, then found herself averting her gaze. “Uhhuh. I…” It was just silly. She should not speak of it.

Just then the bell over the door rang out. Both women looked over. If Belinda had not already stopped talking, she would have then, because the person who came in was Gracie Berry, Emma’s daughter-in-law.

Emma waved and called out, “Hi, honey!”

Belinda felt her spirit dipping as she watched the women hug.

“We’re drivin’ down to Dallas,” Emma told Belinda. “Gracie has a meetin’, and afterward we’re goin’ shoppin’.”

“Ah-huh,” said Belinda, her gaze moving back and forth between the two women.

It was somewhat astonishing how much the women, not at all blood kin, favored each other. Emma was fair and Gracie dark, but they were of the same petite size, and possessed of the same sort of innocence and liveliness.

Belinda offered to put Emma’s latte in a foam cup to go and asked if Gracie would like something to drink.

“Thank you. I think I would like a latte, too.” Gracie had a very polite and precise way of speaking. She was from “up north,” as everyone said, a beautiful, very stylish young woman.

Belinda turned to the rear counter and focused on carefully filling the foam cups and putting on the lids.

She waved away Emma’s offer of payment. “You two have a great day.”

“We will…thanks!”

Standing there with her hands flat on the counter, Belinda watched through the glass as the two women disappeared down the sidewalk. Then she gave a great sigh. She felt like a tiny speck on the great big planet.

Fayrene Gardner came blowing in the door, then paused to shake her plastic rain cape.

“Hi, Fay. Wet out there?”

As expected, the woman shot Belinda a frown. She hated the short version of her name.

“Hello, Belinda.” Spine straight, she looked forward and flounced—there was no other way to describe Fayrene’s walk—her skinny frame directly to the pharmacy counter, calling in a faint and wavering voice, “Oran?”

The lanky pharmacist came shooting out from the back. “Good mornin’, Miss Fayrene. What can I do for you today?” he asked with such a tender and delighted expression that Belinda had to turn away, rolling her eyes.

Shy Oran loved bold Fayrene, who was way too dense to see it. Or if she did, she discounted the man’s feelings. She never was interested in a quality man. Thank goodness, was Belinda’s opinion. Occupying herself straightening the nearby perfume counter, she listened without any shame nor reaction to Fayrene’s annoyed glances.

“I think I need…” Fayrene looked at Belinda and dropped her tone lower, causing Oran to lean over close. Belinda heard about every other word. “…to…off…sleepin’ pills…some natural…I could…”

“Well, yes,” Oran said soothingly and with some eagerness. Since he had come to work at the drugstore, he had been trying to help Fayrene, who kept getting dependent on one prescription drug after another.

Finding the sight of the two together annoying, Belinda left the perfume counter and went to the soda fountain register, opened it and began counting the cash, something she often did to settle herself.

Going out the door, Fayrene called out to Belinda, “When you speak to your mama, you be sure and tell her how much we all miss her.”

“I’ll do that.” There were some people you just wanted to smack.

Only seconds on the heel of that thought came the sound of squealing tires and a scream.

Belinda hurried toward the door, but Oran was already ahead of her and sprinting outside with his paramedic bag swinging from his hand.

Belinda saw Fayrene’s legs on the wet pavement and people coming from everywhere. She ducked back into the drugstore, got an umbrella and hurried out again to hold the umbrella over Fayrene and Oran and a man she did not recognize, who came from the café.

Talk about never a dull minute.

The phrase was repeated half a dozen times during the lunch hour. The conversation was now divided between Winston’s morning reveille, the rain, which had entered the picture, and Fayrene getting hit by a car. Between making three chicken-salad sandwich lunches, four hot barbecues and a number of jalapeño-cheese nachos, Belinda downed two extra-strength aspirin for a headache that had reached pounding proportions. Glancing over at Oran, who was still sitting at a table drinking his second hot coffee, she shook two more aspirin into her palm, grabbed a small glass of ice water and took both to him.

“Doctor, tend thyself.”

He had really been shook up. Luckily there had only been a tiny bit of blood on Fayrene’s skinned knee, and Oran had been able to press a bandage over it almost without looking. Belinda thought the torn fabric of Fayrene’s pants had shook him up the most. That and the handsome stranger who had come to lift Fayrene and carry her back to the café, leaving Oran staring after them.

Oran gazed at the pills in her hand as if he didn’t know what they were, but then he took them. Handing her back the glass of water, he gave her a crooked grin.

As Belinda returned behind the soda fountain counter, a voice hollered out for service over at the pharmacy. She was relieved to see Oran’s lanky body rise and hear him answer in an exaggerated drawl, “Keep your shirt on. This ain’t New York City.”

“Was Fayrene hurt bad?” asked Iris MacCoy, who was waiting on an order of half a dozen barbecue sandwiches and the same number of fountain drinks to take back to MacCoy Feed and Grain.

“No, ma’am,” said Arlo, passing over two sizable cardboard carry containers. “I put in extra bags of potato chips.”

Arlo’s gaze lingered on Iris’s chest, which was where most men’s eyes lingered. Iris was a stunning woman. Belinda knew that Iris was over fifty years of age, and had more refurbishment on her than a 1960 Corvette.

“Well, I saw the whole thing,” said Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, scooting her small frame up on a stool, sitting half on and half off. Julia was postmistress and a woman who lived life in perpetual motion.

“I had just come out of the P.O. on my way down here. The car didn’t hit her—Fayrene hit it. She ran right out in the street. She had her hood up to protect her hairdo—you know how she is about her hair. She was no more lookin’ where she was goin’ than the man in the moon. She never is, and is always crossin’ in the middle of the block. Maybe this will teach her a lesson. We have crosswalks for a reason. Here’s your mail.”

Julia passed a wad of mail held by a rubber band across the counter to Belinda. “I saw you hadn’t come by your box yet today. I know you are just swamped here with your mother on vacation. Thought you might want to see you got another postcard from her, but she didn’t really say anything. Just that she’s havin’ a good time, and what she writes every time—Love to Valentine.”

Iris said, “That pavement is really slick from the rain. We haven’t had any all winter, and now it’s just dangerous out there. I about slipped comin’ in here. And, Belinda, I just love your reports from your mother. Please tell her I’m missin’ her.”

At this, Belinda gave a polite nod.

Iris gave her and then everyone else at the soda fountain a feminine little wave as she left. The eyes of the three men followed her, and old Norman Cooper, of all people, jumped up and ran after her, saying, “Let me help you get all that to your car, Iris.”

Belinda found the postcard. It was an aerial photograph of Paris, France. She took it over and stuck it on the bulletin board, below the previous two, one from New York City, another from London.

Julia, looking up at the menu on the wall as if she had not seen it every day of her adult life, finally said, “I guess I’ll have a chicken salad on lettuce, no bread, and a sweet tea with lemon—two slices. I can do the sugar. I jogged an extra mile this mornin’. Make it to go. I need to get back. Norris didn’t come in today.”

As Belinda turned to get the order, she noted that Julia’s gaze dropped to her hips with a distinctive disapproving look. Julia went at keeping in shape as if it would give her a ticket to heaven.

Belinda knew that she had something Julia would never have: six years of youth, womanly breasts and total guilt-free eating of anything she wanted.

“Did you see that guy who picked up Fayrene and carried her back to the café?” Julia asked.

“I saw him, but I haven’t heard who he is. Jaydee said he thought maybe the guy missed the bus to Dallas…that he saw him earlier in the café. Lucky for Fayrene.” She glanced over to the pharmacy, where Oran was waiting on Imperia Brown, who had all three of her children down with the flu.

Julia said, “No…he’s some guy Woody brought into the café this mornin’. Where Woody met him, nobody seems to know, and Woody won’t say. You know how he can be—that inscrutable old wise black man routine.”

Belinda, closing the plastic container of chicken salad and resisting licking her finger, asked if the stranger had a name.

Julia eagerly filled in with all she knew. The man’s name was Andy Smith, and he had a very cool British-type accent but was from Australia. Bingo Yardell had asked him. Bingo had also asked what had brought him to town, but he had been distracted working the counter and had not answered. “He knows how to brew a proper cup of tea. Bingo Yardell was in there havin’ breakfast this mornin’, when this woman came in off the Dallas bus and ordered a cup of hot tea. She made a big deal out of the café needin’ to have china teapots, not those little metal deals. I have thought that, too, ever since Juice and I went to New York for his grocers’ convention and stayed on the concierge floor. Every mornin’ the hotel served a layout, and they had tea in china pots. It really does make all the difference. And this Andy fella was able to make the woman a proper cup of tea.”

Belinda set the woman’s foam cup of cold tea on the counter. “I doubt there’s a large call for hot tea over at the café.”

“That’s what Fayrene said, but Carly said she serves it right often to customers over there in the cold months—mornin’s like this one was, a cup of hot tea is nice. Tea has a lot of anti-oxidants.” The postmistress put her mouth to the straw and sucked deeply, as if eager to get antioxidants that very moment.

“It’s got somethin’ everyone likes.” Belinda cast an eye to the cold-tea pitcher. All the talk was making her want some.

“Well…” Julia laid the exact change on the counter and picked up her lunch. “I gotta get back. I’ll be listenin’ to your report this afternoon. I like to hear about your mother’s trip. Be sure to tell her to keep writin’ home…and tell her to write somethin’ interestin’ on the postcards.”

“Wait a minute, and I’ll give you her e-mail address so you can write her yourself.”

“Oh, Lordy, I don’t mess with that e-mail. I work for the U.S. Postal Service. You just tell her for me, ’kay?” The woman went out the door.

Belinda said under her breath, “I don’t have another blessed thing better to do than send messages from ever’body and their cousin to my mother.”

Nadine called with an excuse again. Her voice, as usual, came so faintly over the telephone that Belinda strained to hear.

“I’m sorry I missed the lunch hour, Miz Belinda. I had a flat tire.”

“I really need you tomorrow, Nadine,” Belinda said with a sternness that she hoped would motivate. She could fire the young woman, but a replacement was likely to be worse.

As she wiped up the counters and appliances, she heard in memory her mother’s voice: I am so tired of this store, you can just shoot me now.

Belinda had never believed her mother when she said this. It had always seemed that the store was her mother’s life. Both her parents had seemed happier at the store than anywhere else. It had been at home with family that all the problems went on.

Belinda, too, loved the store, and had for the past couple of years wanted her mother to turn over the full running of it to her. Be careful what you ask for.

She would have bitten her tongue off before admitting it, but after ten days of running it alone, she was thinking, I am so tired of this store, you can just shoot me now.

Belinda tossed her apron on the stool and headed for the storage room, where she found Arlo sitting, as she had known he would be, on a box, reading a comic book. He didn’t bother to jump up, simply cast her a questioning expression. She told him to go take care of the soda fountain and that he needed to slice another lemon. Then she called him back and gave him the comic book he had laid aside.

Following him out of the storage room, she went to her office, which was nothing more than a partitioned area sandwiched between the back door and the restrooms. She had it fixed up nicely, though, framed art on the walls, and the most stylish in desks and computer setups—although the very day her mother had left for Europe, she’d had Arlo exchange her modern desk for her mother’s old heavy one. This was the desk that had belonged to Belinda’s father, and, before that, the two uncles who had founded the drugstore.

Now the desk belonged to her, Belinda thought, sitting herself behind it. At least until her mother returned.

The radio was already on from that morning. She turned the volume up slightly and pulled her carefully typed notes in front of her.

Each Wednesday, Belinda did a radio advertising spot for Blaine’s Drugstore called About Town and Beyond, in which she told all the social news and light gossip, and ended with a health or fashion tip. The following Sunday, the same piece she gave over the radio would appear in print in the Valentine Voice.

Even Belinda, who was not easily surprised, was amazed at the things people would tell out of the great desire to hear their name on the radio or see it in the newspaper. It was curious that these same people would readily talk about the intimate details of a relationship to all and sundry, but would not for love nor money mention trouble with constipation. Speaking publically of sex was acceptable and speaking of constipation considered dirty. What a world.

Jim Rainwater’s voice announcing her upcoming spot came over the airwaves, followed by an advertisement for the Ford dealership out on the highway. Belinda opened the desk drawer to get a piece of gum.

Her eye fell on her mother’s package of cigarillos.

She hated it when her mother smoked them. But now Belinda quite deliberately pulled out one of the narrow little cigars. She searched back in the drawer, finding a box of matches. She put the cigarillo between her lips, struck the match on the box and lit the tobacco, puffing expertly.

Belinda had smoked for a couple of years in her early twenties. She was one of those few very fortunate souls who did not get addicted. One time a cousin had done a study of the family and found that not one Blaine woman could ever be said to have had an addiction of any sort, excepting having the last word.

The cigarillo’s pungent taste caused a few coughs, but she took another puff and blew out a good stream of smoke. She could see what her mother saw in smoking one of these.

Just then the telephone on her desk rang. Jim Rainwater said, “Ten seconds.”

She brought her notes in front of her, turned off the radio and took one more good puff. Through the telephone receiver came the drugstore’s theme music and Jim Rainwater’s voice. “This week’s About Town and Beyond, with Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, your hometown store.”

“Good afternoon, ever’one.” Her voice was a little husky from the cigarillo. She liked it.

“This week over here at Blaine’s hometown drugstore we have fifteen percent off all Ecco Bella natural cosmetics, a buy-one-get-one-free special on vitamin C for those late-winter colds and a superspecial of buy two little travel packets of aspirin and get a third free. Many of you may remember—my daddy used to say that there was no better a remedy than aspirin.

“Now, for our Around Town news. Willie Lee Holloway and his dog, Munro, took the title of Best in Show the past Saturday at the Women’s Auxiliary Annual Community Dog Show, for the fourth straight year! I won’t say who said it, but there was at least one jealous whiner who said Munro should step down.

“Munro, honey, you just go on competing as long as you are able. Don’t let people who are jealous hinder you.

“And now, I’m sorry to give the news to the ladies, but our favorite UPS man, Buddy Wyatt, has become engaged. The fiancée’s name is Krystal Lynn Howard, and she is manager at McDonald’s on the turnpike and also attends junior college as a business major. The wedding is tentatively planned for late September.

“Ummmm…” For a moment, she found herself distracted by the cigarillo, for which she had no ashtray. “I want to assure everyone that Fayrene Gardner, who ran into a car this morning while crossin’ Main Street in the middle of the block, only got a scraped knee, praise God. She was well tended by Blaine’s own druggist and paramedic, Oran Lackey.

“Now, for Beyond. For those of you who may have been dead and escaped hearing, my mother is vacationin’ in Europe, along with Lillian Jennings. Here is her latest letter home:

“Bonjour, mes amis,”

(A number of listeners were a little awed at Belinda’s fluid pronunciation of the French; Belinda frequently watched a foreign language show on PBS.)

“We arrived yesterday afternoon at our destination at last. Things are different over here. I saw armed military at the airport. I’m talking machine guns…or whatever they are called these days. I could not decide if I felt more secure or worried that I might at any moment be gunned down. People are very friendly, though.

“My daughter Margaret did us proud—this place is as beautiful as she had promised. We are about fifteen minutes from Nice. That is Neece for those of you who may not know. It is on the Riviera, playground for the rich and famous. Oh, at the airport, Lillian thought she saw Frank Sinatra, but I kind of doubt it. How would we even recognize him at his age? Is he dead yet?

“The weather is real nice in Nice, slept under blankets but already getting warm today.

“Au revoir,

“Love, Vella Blaine, who does not wish anyone was here.

“That’s it from Mama…. Now, I want to speak a plain word about constipation. Don’t turn the dial. Ladies, regular eliminations of body waste is the best beautifier for complexion, hair and attitude. Increase your energy and your sexual stamina, too, by getting yourself regular. Come see me down here at Blaine’s Drugstore, and I’ll fix you up with some natural remedies. There is just no need to suffer.

“That’s it from Blaine’s Drugstore, providing the best of the old and the new, and we will always beat the big discount drugstores on price. Back to you, Jim.”

“Thank you, Miss Belinda,” she heard him say just as she clicked off, and in a tone that made her think he was red as a beet.

She saw she had dropped ash on the desk and remembered why she disliked smoking. It was just dirty. With relief, she found an ashtray in the rear of the center drawer, then relaxed back in the chair for a couple more puffs, since she did have it lit.

“You look like Aunt Vella, sittin’ there.” Arlo’s head poked around the partition.

“I presume you didn’t abandon the cash register just to make that observation.” She vigorously tamped the cigarillo into the ashtray.

“Huh?” He looked confused.

“What did you want?”

“Oh. Yeah…Inez Cooper is out here at the herbs and vitamins. She wants to know if there’s somethin’ she could slip her husband to make him stop smokin’.”

“Tell her I’ll be right there.” She tossed the package of cigarillos into the trash can, followed by the ashtray.

Passing the soda fountain counter, she told Arlo, “Soon as you get a chance, I want you to switch the desks back around. Put Mama’s desk back in her place, and move mine back into my office.”

She could tell she had confused him again.