The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel Read Free Page B

humor.
    “You ladies going to the fair?” he asked, though
he was careful to make it clear the question was no invitation.
    The teacher shook her head. “Not tonight. Summer
school tomorrow. Probably Friday, if I bother.”
    Her companion didn’t answer.
    Yard swiveled around on his stool, leaned back
on one elbow, paunch separating the buttons of his checkered shirt
“Better watch it there, Tina. Casey’s on vacation these days, and
when he’s not making love to his damn flowers, he’s hunting for
human action.”
    Tina Elby raised a thick eyebrow. “Casey?”
    Casey’s smile felt strained, and he looked back
to his glass.
    He wasn’t in the mood for any of Yard’s teasing,
but it was his own fault for opening his big mouth in the first
place.
    “It’s his job, you see,” Yard continued,
deepening his voice. “He sees all you beautiful women on his rounds
every morning, he saves it all up for his free days.”
    “Yard,” he said quietly, “knock it off.”
    Chase ignored him. “You don’t know him the way I
do. We all know him as a superior postman, a gardener without peer,
a man who paints his whole house every time it gets a spot of mud.
But beneath that innocent white hair lies the cunning brain of a
lustful, debauched, and I might say extraordinarily experienced,
man of the world.”
    “Yard.”
    A sideways glance at the table caught Tina
grinning, and at the same time the grin told him she knew what Yard
was doing. It should have made him feel better. It didn’t. It only
stirred a blush somewhere beneath his chin, a blush that would
eventually darken his cheeks and made his hair seem all the lighter
if his friend didn’t soon shut his mouth.
    “Prick,” the other woman said flatly.
    Yard blinked.
    Tina frowned. “Norma, he’s only kidding, for
Pete’s sake. “Casey doesn’t mind, do you, Case?”
    Caught between a gape and a laugh, he managed a
quick nod, then a shake of his head, then a “No, I don’t care, let
him talk, I’ll tell his wife.”
    “Screw it, he’s still a prick,” Norma Hobbs
muttered darkly, shoving her empty glass stein against the wall to
join several others. She turned her head. “And that one’s a creep.
A so-called man who talks to stupid goddamn flowers. Nothing but
goddamn weeds, plow ’em the hell under.”
    “Oh Jesus.” Tina’s expression was at once
apologetic and helpless, but Yard had already turned his back, and
all Casey could do was smile and shrug and tum away himself.
    He came in twice a week, usually Wednesday and
Friday, nursed two drinks and left. Sometimes Tina was here, most
of the time she wasn’t, and it suited him during her absence to
develop conversations that would lead them from the bar to a table,
and eventually to dinner. He had no illusions. She was attractive;
he was plain. She was gone most of every summer, traveling around
the country, seeing the world on package deals and her savings; he
didn’t like flying, and spent his free time in his garden. She was
friendly, but had never hinted; he was courteous, and didn’t know
what to do next.
    For him the situation was perfect.
    Suddenly Norma lurched to her feet and swayed
against the table. “Gotta go home,” she announced angrily. “Son of
a bitch, gotta go home.”
    Tina was up just as fast, and with a mouthed sorry about this guys, followed her friend out the door.
    Another cheer from the back.
    Molly asked them loudly to keep it down, she was
going deaf.
    “You know,” Yard said without turning his head,
“if you try real hard, you might get to know her better in a
hundred years or so.”
    “Who, Molly?”
    “The teacher, stupid.”
    Casey cupped his glass between his palms. “I
like Norma better. She hates men.”
    “Nope. Only her husband, because he left
her.”
    “Jesus, Yard, he didn’t leave her, for Christ’s
sake. He had cancer. He died. Jesus.”
    Chase shrugged and shook his head; it was all
the same to him — he wasn’t concerned with the bitch,