“Is he?” Mr. Gaunt’s voice had taken on that nagging, tired edge again. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and they never left Alan Pangborn. “Well, do you want to know a secret, Cora? I don’t much care for smart people, and I hate a tough sell. In fact, I loathe a tough sell. I don’t trust people who always want to turn things over and look for cracks before they buy them, do you?”

Cora said nothing. She only stood with The King’s sunglasses case in her left hand and stared blankly out the window.

“If I wanted someone to keep an eye on smart old Sheriff Pangborn, Cora, who would be a good choice?”

“Polly Chalmers,” Cora said in her drugged voice. “She’s awful sweet on him.”

Gaunt shook his head at once. His eyes never left the Sheriff as Alan walked to his cruiser, glanced briefly across the street at Needful Things, then got in and drove away. “Won’t do.”

“Sheila Brigham?” Cora asked doubtfully. “She’s the dispatcher down at the Sheriff’s Office.”

“A good idea, but she won’t do, either. Another tough sell.

There are a few in every town, Cora-unfortunate, but true.”

Cora thought it over in her dim, distant way. “Eddie Warburton?”

she asked at last. “He’s the head custodian at the Municipal Building.”

Gaunt’s face lit up. “The janitor!” he said. “Yes! Excellent!

Fifth Business! Really excellent!” He leaned over the counter and planted a kiss on Cora’s cheek.

She drew away, grimacing and rubbing frantically at the spot.

A brief gagging noise came from her throat, but Gaunt appeared not to notice. His face was wreathed in a large, shining smile.

Cora left (still rubbing her cheek with the heel of her hand) as Stephanie Bonsaint and Cyndi Rose Martin of the Ash Street Bridge Club came in. Cora almost bowled Steffie Bonsaint over in her hurry; she felt a deep desire to get home as fast as she could. To get home and actually try those glasses on. But before she did, she wanted to wash her face and rid herself of that loathsome kiss. She could feel it burning in her skin like a low fever. Over the door, the silver bell tinkled.

While Steffie stood by the window, absorbed in the shifting patterns of the old-fashioned kaleidoscope she had found, Cyndi Rose approached Mr. Gaunt and reminded him of what he had told her on Wednesday: that he might have a Lalique vase to match the one she had already bought.

“Well,” Mr. Gaunt said, smiling at her in a can-you-keep-a-secret sort of way, “I just might. Can you get rid of your friend for a minute or two?”

Cyndi Rose asked Steffie to go on ahead to Nan’s and order coffee for her; she would be right along, she said. Steffie went, but with a puzzled look on her face.

Mr. Gaunt went into the back room and came out with a Lalique vase. It did not just match the other; it was an identical twin.

“How much?” Cyndi Rose asked, and caressed the sweet curve of the vase with a finger which was not quite steady. She remembered her satisfaction at the bargain she had struck on Wednesday with some rue.

He had only been planting the hook, it seemed.

Now he would reel her in. This vase would be no thirty-one-dollar bargain; this time he would really sock it to her. But she wanted it to balance off the other on the mantelpiece in the living room; she wanted it very badly.

She could hardly believe her ears at Leland Gaunt’s reply.

“Because this is my first week, why don’t we call it two for the price of one? Here you are, my dear-enjoy it.”

Her shock was so great that she almost dropped the vase on the floor when he put it in her hand.

“What… I thought you said…”

“You heard me correctly,” he said, and she suddenly found she could not take her eyes away from his. Francae was wrong about them, she thought in a distant, preoccupied sort of way. They’re not green at all. They’re gray. Dark gray. “There is one other thing, though.”

“Is there?”

“Yes-do you know a Sheriff’s Deputy named Norris Ridgewick?”

The little silver bell tinkled.

Everett Frankel, the Physician’s Assistant who worked with Dr.

Van Allen, bought the pipe Brian Rusk had noticed on his advance visit to Needful Things for twelve dollars and a prank to be played on Sally Ratcliffe. Poor old Slopey Dodd, the stutterer who attended speech therapy on Tuesday afternoons with Brian, bought a pewter teapot for his mom’s birthday. It cost him seventy-one cents… and a promise, freely given, that he would play a funny trick on Sally’s boyfriend, Lester Pratt. Mr. Gaunt told Slopey he would supply him the few items he would need to play this trick when the time came, and Slopey said that would be rub-rub-real g-g-ggood. June Gavineaux, wife of the town’s most prosperous dairy farmer, bought a cloisonne vase for ninety-seven dollars and a promise to play a funny trick on Father Brigham of Our Lady of Serene Waters. Not long after she left, Mr. Gaunt arranged for a somewhat similar trick to be played on the Reverend Willie.

It was a busy, fruitful day, and when Gaunt finally hung the CLOSED sign in the window and pulled the shade, he was tired but pleased. Business had been great, and he had even taken a step toward assuring himself he would not be interrupted by Sheriff Pangborn. That was good. Opening was always the most delightful part of his operation, but it was always stressful and could sometimes be risky, as well. He might be wrong about Pangborn, of course, but Gaunt had learned to trust his feelings in such matters, and Pangborn felt like a man he would do well to steer clear of… at least until he was ready to deal with the Sheriff on his own terms.

Mr. Gaunt reckoned it was going to be an extremely full week, and there would be fireworks before it was over.

Lots of them.

It was quarter past six on Friday evening when Alan turned into Polly’s driveway and cut the motor. She was standing at the door, waiting for him, and kissed him warmly. He saw she had donned her gloves for even this brief foray into the cold and frowned.

“Now stop,” she said. “They’re a little better tonight. Did you bring the chicken?”

He held up the white grease-spotted bags. “Your servant, dear lady.”

She dropped him a little curtsey. “And yours.”

She took the bags from him and led him into the kitchen. He pulled a chair out from the table, swung it around, and sat on it backwards to watch her as she pulled off her gloves and arranged the chicken on a glass plate. He had gotten it from Cluck-Cluck Tonite.

The name was country-horrible, but the chicken was just fine (according to Norris, the clams were a different story). The only problem with take-out when you lived twenty miles away was the cooling factor… and that, he thought, was what microwave ovens had been made for. In fact, he believed the only three valid purposes microwaves served were re-heating coffee, making popcorn, and putting a buzz under take-out from places like CluckCluck Tonite.

“Are they better?” he asked as she popped the chicken into the oven and pressed the appropriate buttons. There was no need to be more specific; both of them knew what they were talking about.

“Only a little,” she admitted, “but I’m pretty sure they’re going to be a lot better soon. I’m starting to feel tingles of heat in the palms, and that’s the way the improvement usually starts.”

She held them up. She had been painfully embarrassed by her twisted, misshapen hands at first, and the embarrassment was still there, but she had come a long way toward accepting his interest as a part of his love. He still thought her hands looked stiff and awkward, as if she were wearing invisible gloves-gloves sewn by a crude and uncaring maker who had pulled them on her and then stapled them to her wrists forever.