Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  “Your insurance agent—” the Pillar began, but this time his wife interrupted him.

  “Are you friends of Clea Whipple’s?” Virginia said from the front seat, her color returning. “Is she home again? Oh, Stephen, did you hear that? We haven’t seen Clea for over twenty years. Except in the movies, of course.”

  Movie, Sophie wanted to say, since Clea had only made one, but the last thing she wanted was more conversation with the Pillars. She began to back away. “She’s home, but only until Sunday. Now, please, don’t let me keep you.”

  “Well, that’s so exciting.” Virginia trilled. “Is she still married to that handsome Zane Black? We watch him every night on the news.” Sophie turned to make her escape, and Virginia raised her voice to compensate. “You tell her Virginia Garvey said hi!”

  “They’ve got movie equipment,” Stephen bellowed. “And they’re filming on public land which is clearly illegal.”

  “A movie?” Virginia’s face lit up and her voice rose to a shout. “Oh, wait, tell me—”

  Sophie reached the other side of the road, pretending not to hear. Ahead of her, a torn and faded campaign poster fluttered on a tree: Tucker for Mayor: More of the Same.

  “Dear God, I hope not,” she said under her breath. She got in the car and maneuvered it back on the road while Stephen Garvey glared at her and Virginia fluttered her hand. The front fender scraped against the tire as she searched for the lane to the farm, touching her lip with the Kleenex to see if the bleeding had stopped.

  “What a butthead that guy was,” Amy said. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Sophie looked for the Whipple mailbox. “I’ve got a smashed car, a moving violation, a sister who screws up my getaway, and a dead white male telling the whole damn town we’re making a movie.” She slowed as the bridge loomed ahead, and scowled over the steering wheel. “And we must have missed the turnoff for the farm because we’re almost in town now.”

  “No, there’s the mailbox.” Amy pointed with her broken sunglasses. “Turn left.”

  Sophie turned down the farm lane Clea had promised them was a good half-mile long. “This place gives me the creeps. . . .” Her voice trailed off as the dusty yard of a dilapidated farmhouse came into view. “Didn’t Clea say the farmhouse was a long way off the road?”

  “Maybe they moved the road,” Amy said as they pulled up in front of the house. “It’s been twenty-four years since she’s been back.” She peered through the windshield at the farmhouse. “Understandably.”

  Sophie tried to be fair as she turned off the ignition. The paint was peeling in dingy white strips from the side of the clapboards, and the gutter hung loose across the front of the peaked roof, but the house wasn’t a complete loss. There was a wide front porch across the entire front with a swing. And there was . . .

  Sophie looked around the dusty, barren yard. Nope, the porch was about it. “Great place to film. Yeah, we can trust Clea. I smell trouble.”

  Amy sniffed the air. “That’s dead fish. Must be the river.”

  She opened her car door as the screen door banged, and Clea Whipple came out onto her porch, her lush body straining at her bright blue sundress, her white-blonde hair almost incandescent in the sun. She shaded her cameo-perfect face with her hand and called, “You’re late.”

  “And hello to you, too,” Sophie said, and got out of the car to unload their supplies, starting with their cooler. It was full of Dempsey life essentials—lemonade and Dove Bars—and she was in need of immediate essential comfort.

  Amy went toward the house with the camera. “Isn’t this going to be wonderful?”

  Sophie looked at Clea, the most self-absorbed woman in the universe, staring blankly back at her from the derelict front porch. “Oh, yeah,” she said as she hauled the cooler out of the car.

  Nothing but good times ahead.

  Eight miles up the road, in Temptation’s marble-and-sandstone courthouse, Mayor Phineas T. Tucker wondered not for the first time why he was cursed with a council made up of a blowhard, a doormat, a high-school English teacher, the town coroner, an amateur actor, and his mother. The combination was depressing to contemplate even with the blowhard and the doormat missing, so while Hildy Mallow waxed poetic over the aesthetic benefits of reproduction vintage streetlights, Phin leaned back from the oak table to distract himself with his council secretary’s legs.

  Rachel Garvey had excellent legs. Of course, with only twenty years on them, they were too young for him no matter what his mother and hers thought, but they were still fine to look at.

  “. . . and since their beauty would discourage vandalism, the extra cost will pay for itself over time,” Hildy finished, confusing Phin until he remembered that Hildy was talking about streetlights and not Rachel’s legs.

  “That may be a little optimistic.” Liz Tucker’s voice was as cool as her champagne-tinted hair. “Of course, our alternative is those horrible modern lights that would clash with the nineteenth-century architecture.”

  Phin winced. The only nineteenth-century architecture in Temptation was in the wealthy part of town. Grateful that only a few citizens were sitting in the front row listening to his mother forget the little people once again, Phin sat up to head her off before she could offer them cake.

  “Yeah, but the good streetlights would go everywhere, right?” Frank Lutz said before Phin could intervene.

  “Right,” Phin said.

  “Okay.” Frank sat back and ran his hand over his matinee-idol hair, clearly relieved that the new development he’d built on the west side of town would have class lighting, too. “I’m for it. Let’s vote.”

  “Can we do that without Stephen and Virginia?” Liz said, and Hildy straightened her cardigan and said, “Certainly. If we all agree, we’ll have a majority no matter how they voted. And we all agree, right?”

  She stared pointedly at the fourth member of the council, Dr. Ed Yarnell, who gazed back, unfazed, armored with thirty years of council experience. If Phin thought about Ed too much, it depressed him, knowing that thirty years down the line he could be Ed: bald, sixty-something, and still staring at the same WPA mural of Justice Meeting Mercy. It was not how he wanted to spend his sixties. Hell, it wasn’t how he wanted to spend his thirties. He glanced guiltily at the sepia-toned photos of three of the four previous mayors—Phineas T. Tucker, his father; Phineas T. Tucker, his grandfather; and Phineas T. Tucker, his great-grandfather—all staring down their high-bridged noses, with cold eyes, at their latest and laziest incarnation.

  “Then we’ll vote,” Hildy said.

  “Call the roll, Rachel,” Phin said, and Rachel called Lutz, Mallow, Tucker, and Yarnell and got four yeses. “Motion passed. What’s next?”

  “The water tower,” Liz said, and Hildy said, “I don’t see why—” and then the double doors from the marble hall opened and the Garveys came in.

  “There was an accident.” Virginia plopped herself down in her chair, looking like a wad of bubblegum with big hair. “Hello, baby,” she said to Rachel, reaching across to pat her daughter’s hand. “This car came out of nowhere and didn’t stop. Two women, a snippy little redhead, Stephen says, and a nice brunette who was sweet to me. Curly hair. Low-class. They’re staying at the Whipple farm. And they’re making a movie. . . .”

  Phin watched Liz draw back, probably because “low-class” was such a low-class thing to say. “I’ll never understand why Stephen married one of his counter clerks,” he’d heard her tell his father once. “His mother must be revolving in her grave.”

  “Enough,” Stephen said now. “We’ve held up this meeting by coming late, let’s not waste more time with gossip.”

  “Are you all right?” Liz asked, and Virginia nodded.

  “Wait a minute, they’re making a movie?” Hildy said, and Virginia transferred her nod to her.

  “The water tower is on the table,” Phin said, deep-sixing his own interest in the news so he could get the meeting over with. If somebody really was
making a movie, the whole town would have the details by nightfall anyway. “Stephen, you put it on the agenda.”

  “I certainly did.” Stephen collected himself. “That water tower is a disgrace.”

  “Well, white looks so drab a few weeks after we paint it—” Hildy began.

  “I have an appointment at four-thirty at the Whipple farm, and a rehearsal at six,” Frank told Phin under his breath as Hildy elaborated on the “drab” problem. “Carousel. I’m the lead.” Phin nodded as he spoke, trying not to picture forty-two-year-old Frank walking through a storm with his head held high.

  “—and so I thought it would look better in peach,” Hildy finished.

  Stephen said, “Hell, Hildy, it’s not your laundry. It’s a water tower, it’s supposed to be white—all water towers are white.”

  Hildy sniffed. “The water tower in Groveport is blue.”

  “Well, my God, Groveport.” Keeping one eye on the four constituents in the front row, Stephen turned back to Phin. “A competent, concerned mayor would do his civic duty here. We have family values to protect.”

  Here we go again, Phin thought. There had been a time when Stephen’s blatant pandering had enraged him, but after nine mind-numbing years as mayor, nothing made him lose his temper anymore. He let Stephen wind down, and then he said, “Hildy, I agree that only people with dirty minds would think it looks like anything but a water tower, but there appear to be a lot of people with dirty minds. We’re going to have an accident any day now, what with all the people pulling off the highway with their Polaroids. It’s a safety issue.” Phin tried to look sympathetically into Hildy’s eyes.

  Hildy looked at him as if he were a Republican.

  “This is a disgrace,” Stephen said, playing to the front row again. “You call this leadership?”

  “I’ve got an appointment and then rehearsal,” Frank announced. “I’m playing Billy Bigelow. Carousel. I can’t be late.”

  For this I spent six years in college, Phin thought. “Let’s vote.”

  “You gotta have a motion,” Rachel said, still bent over her pad.

  “I move we repaint the water tower back to the old red-and-white we always had,” Stephen said. “School colors. That’s what it should have been all—”

  Phin sighed. “Just move we repaint the water tower, Stephen.”

  “I move we repaint the water tower red and white,” Stephen said.

  “I second,” Virginia said from beside him, pleased with herself.

  The vote went three to three, with Stephen, Virginia, and Liz voting for the new paint job, and Hildy, Ed, and Frank—“I’m putting a sign out there for the theater, good advertising”—voting to keep the peach.

  “Did you ever think about being anything but a yes-woman?” Hildy snapped at Virginia, who straightened and fussed with her jacket.

  “Virginia votes her conscience, Hildy,” Stephen said.

  “The motion is tied,” Rachel said over Hildy’s snort. “The vote goes to the mayor. Tucker.”

  “Yes,” Phin said. “Sorry, Hildy.”

  “Motion passes, four to three,” Rachel said, and Hildy smacked her notebook down on the table, and said, “So now I have to do this all over again.”

  “Just tell the Coreys to charge the new paint at Stephen’s,” Phin told her. “They know what to do.”

  “Funny how Garvey’s Hardware is getting twice as much business because of this.” Hildy sat back and crossed her arms. “Clear conflict of interest, if you ask me. He shouldn’t have been voting.”

  “That’s a good point,” Frank said, visibly struck by the argument. Whenever Frank had a thought, it was visible. “Why didn’t you refuse to sell her the peach paint?” he asked Stephen.

  “I sold Hildy the paint,” Rachel said as her father began to sputter with indignation. “It was, like, all my fault.”

  Five different council members fell all over themselves telling Rachel it certainly wasn’t her fault, while Ed sat silent and smiling at her, and Phin marveled at the way big blue eyes and taffy-blonde hair could snow the hell out of people.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now anyway,” Rachel said. “I got the vote recorded.”

  “If there’s no new business—” Phin began, but Stephen said, “Wait. We need to talk about this movie.”

  “Well, Stephen, I tried to talk about it—” Virginia began, and Stephen spoke over her.

  “Not gossip. We need to consider the impact on the town. The pitfalls.” He looked slyly at Phin from the corner of his eyes, and Phin thought, What are you up to now? “The dangers,” Stephen went on. “We’re a town that believes in family values, and after all, you remember Clea.”

  Phin definitely remembered Clea. The last time he’d seen her in the flesh, he’d been twelve and she’d leaned over to give him the money on his paper route. He’d looked down her blouse and fallen off his bike and ended up with nine stitches in his chin, but it had been worth it. He was fairly sure she’d jump-started his puberty.

  “I don’t see any dangers.” Frank stood up to go. “And I have to leave. I’m late.”

  “Sit down,” Stephen said. “Some of us think of other things besides acting.” He sent a dismissive glance at Phin. “Or playing pool.”

  “Yeah, like painting the water tower twice to double your profit,” Frank said.

  “There is that,” Hildy said.

  “Could you forget that so we can speak to the issues?” Stephen said.

  “I think that making double your profit at the expense of the taxpayers is an issue,” Frank said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll give you the damn paint!” Stephen said, and Phin said, “Thank you, Stephen, we accept. Now if there’s nothing else—”

  “This movie.” Stephen put his hands on the table. “Clea made that one movie, remember? We don’t want that kind of movie made here.”

  “Always Tomorrow.” Virginia nodded. “But I really think the nudity in that was for artistic purposes, and it wasn’t very much. And she died in the end so she was punished.”

  Phin spared a brief thought as to what it must be like to be married to Virginia if she thought nudity was punishable by death, but then Stephen caught his attention again.

  “No, not Always Tomorrow,” Stephen was saying, and Frank said, “Oh,” and sat down again.

  Virginia looked mystified; Rachel looked intrigued; Liz and Hildy looked at the ceiling; and Phin remembered Coming Clean, a plotless, straight-to-video movie set in a car wash that Clea undoubtedly did not have on her résumé since she’d been billed as “Candy Suds.” He didn’t know how Stephen had gotten hold of it; Phin had only seen it because Ed had it in his extensive pornography collection.

  “Stephen, I doubt she’s shooting porn here,” Phin said, and Rachel said, “Clea Whipple made a dirty movie? Fabulous.”

  Stephen nodded. “There. See? That’s what I’m talking about. Family values. We let Clea make this kind of movie here, and our children will think it’s all right because we approved of it. And those women with the camera looked loose.”

  Excellent, Phin thought. At last, some good news.

  His mother shot him a sharp look.

  “We should have a policy on this,” Stephen went on. “We won’t give a filming permit to anyone unless they sign a no-nudity clause.”

  “How many movies do you think Temptation is going to get?” Phin said, but Frank said, “Hey, it could happen. Although, with a no-nudity clause—” He shook his head. “That’s too strict, Stephen. We don’t want to stifle the film industry here.”

  Stephen zeroed in on Phin. “Responsible leadership demands responsible legislation. It’s our civic duty—”

  The problem, Phin thought—not for the first time, as Stephen ranted on—wasn’t that Stephen was a fathead and Virginia was a gossip, it was that Stephen was a driven fathead with a large conservative following, and Virginia talked to everybody. Phin could hear her now: “Well, of course Phin’s a lovely boy, but he
was actually for pornography, can you imagine?” Yeah, that would get out the votes in November.

  On the other hand, there were some things that Phin was willing to fight for. “I’m against censorship, Stephen,” he said, interrupting the older man in mid-tirade. “It comes with owning a bookstore. No banned books.”

  “How about a pornography clause?” Virginia said. “That’s not nudity, and it’s not censorship because pornography is bad. We have to protect our children.” She gave Rachel her usual obsessively loving smile, including Phin in it, too, as her future son-in-law. Such a nice couple, her smile said. What lovely grandchildren they’ll give me. And they’ll live right next door.

  Phin’s answering smile said, Not a chance in hell, while Rachel gazed at Justice and Mercy, pretending she’d never heard of pornography or sex, or Phin, for that matter.

  Phin said, “And how would we define ‘pornography’?”

  “Everybody knows pornography when they see it,” Stephen said.

  “There’s some difference of opinion on that,” Phin said. “I don’t think we should make law on ‘Everybody knows.’ ”

  “Stephen may be right,” Liz said, and Phin thought, Oh, hell, Mom, shut up. “We have an obligation to the citizens of Temptation.” She cast a calculating look at the four citizens in the audience, undoubtedly sizing up the situation in terms of getting her son reelected in November. “We could pass a no-pornography ordinance, and stipulate that ‘pornography’ is to be defined by the council.”

  “I think that’s unconstitutional,” Phin said. “You can’t make a law that gets defined later. People have to know what they’re breaking.”

  “It’s not a law,” Stephen said. “It’s an ordinance. I move that Temptation adopt an antipornography ordinance.”