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“I gotta give it to Mr. Randolph later, when Trotter isn’t around,” she explained to the blinking owl eyes. “Look, I gotta go to the bathroom. You go help Trotter get Mr. Randolph into the house. Oh—and tell Agnes to go home. I’ll see her tomorrow.”
But Agnes was waiting for her in Trotter’s hallway, lounging against the stairs. “Find what you was looking for?”
“No luck.”
Agnes looked down at Gilly’s jeans. “Then what’s bulging your pocket?”
“OK. I found some, but I didn’t find much.”
“How much did you find?”
“Hell, Agnes, I don’t know.”
“I’ll help you count.”
“I swear, Agnes, I’ll help you rearrange your nose if you don’t get out of here. I promised I’d give you something for helping, and I will, but I can’t now, and if you don’t understand that, you’re in worse shape than I thought.”
Agnes stuck out her bottom lip. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be caught right now.”
“I know, Agnes, and I won’t forget that. But if you hang around now, we’ll both be caught. So get out, and keep your mouth shut.”
Without waiting for further sulks, Gilly pushed past Agnes and ran up the staircase. She shut her door and pulled the bureau in front of it. Then she took out the special drawer and began to tape the money to the bottom with a sinking heart. Thirty-four dollars. Thirty-four measly dollars. Forty-four, counting the ten she had already. It had seemed like more in William’s fist and bulging in her jeans. She counted it again to make sure. No, there was no more. Five five-dollar bills and nine ones. It had seemed like more because of all the singles. She laid out a one to give to Agnes, then reluctantly swapped it for a five. Agnes would not be bought off cheaply, she knew. If only she had done it by herself. It cost too much to use people. Why had she thought she couldn’t do it alone? She had been in too big a hurry. She should have taken more time, planned more carefully. Now she had gotten both Agnes and W.E. involved and all for a measly forty-four—no, thirty-nine—dollars. Then remembering the weight of W.E. on her neck and shoulders and the pain as he yanked her hair in terror, she started to count out another dollar, but that would leave her only thirty-eight. It would take a lot more to get even as far as the Mississippi River. She returned W.E.’s dollar to the stack.
She would have to search again, but she would go back by herself the next time. As soon as she figured out a plan.
Dust. The thought hit her after supper when they were all sitting in the living room watching the evening news. Suddenly she saw it, lying like a gray frost upon the TV set. Dust! She would go on a campaign, dusting first this house and then the other. She jumped to her feet.
“Trotter!”
Slowly Trotter shifted her attention from Walter Cronkite to Gilly. “Yeah, honey?”
“Mind if I dust in here?”
“Dust?” Trotter spoke the word as though it were the name of an exotic and slightly dangerous game. “I guess not.” Her gaze slid back toward the screen. “Whyn’t you wait till we’re through watching TV, though?”
Gilly jiggled her foot through a Central American earthquake and the bribery trial of a congressman from who cared where.
She couldn’t stand waiting. She ran into the kitchen. She now knew how she could get the money on her own and every minute seemed to matter. Under the sink were some old rags—and could you believe it?—a quarter bottle of furniture polish. She poured some on one of the rags which she had carefully dampened just as Mrs. Nevins always did and proceeded to clean the never-used dining room with its dark, heavy table and six chairs.
One side of the rag was black in two swipes, but Gilly turned it over and poured out more polish. The steady wiping and polishing with the “clean, dry cloth” fell into a rhythm that began to calm her inner frenzy. By the time she got to the picture over the buffet, she not only cleaned out the niches of the carved frame but she hunted up Windex and paper towels to wash the faces and so forths of the baby angels who were tripping around on clouds with only a ribbon or a stray wing to cover their private parts (as Mrs. Nevins used to call them).
Meantime in the living room, the volume of Trotter’s voice told Gilly that Walter Cronkite had called it a day, but she no longer needed to rush. Gently she wiped off the last streak of Windex.
By supper the next night she had finished cleaning everything but the living-room chandelier. And how could one do that without a stepladder?
“Oh, forget it, Gilly, honey. The place looks beautiful. No one’s going to notice the chandelier,” said Trotter.
“I will,” said Gilly. “I gotta have a tall stool or a stepladder or something. Then I could do the top kitchen cabinets, too.”
“Mercy. Next thing I know you’ll be wiping me right out with all the rest of the trash.”
William Ernest looked up from his meat loaf in alarm.
Mr. Randolph was chuckling. “There is no danger of that, Mrs. Trotter.”
“Well, you know what the Good Book says, Dust to dust…”
“No!” squeaked William Ernest. “You ain’t dusty!”
