Charles Baxter: Saul and Patsy

“Have it your way,” Saul said. “So, how much are the stones? Their price, I mean.”

“I could sell you this one for four dollars.” She pointed at a gray, nondescript rock.

“That’s a lot of money for a rock. Do you have anything else for sale?”

“Yes,” the little girl said. “The number five.”

“Excuse me?”

The girl’s face had settled down into dailiness, and she looked bored again. She turned a page of her book with a self-satisfied flick of her hand. “I own all the rights to the number five,” she said smugly. “You can buy the rights from me if you want to use the number five this afternoon and tomorrow morning.”

“You’re crazy,” Saul said. The adjective just slipped out before he remembered that he shouldn’t say things like that to children.

“That’s what you think,” the girl said. “You’re the crazy one. I’m as sane as a sunbird.”

“My apologies. What happens if I use the number five without getting your permission? What then, little girl?” When he saw her expression of contempt, he added, “I’m just asking.”

“It won’t work,” she said. “You can try to use the number five, but it won’t work. It’ll be wrong. All your arithmetic will be false, and you’ll be mistaken, and you will fail.”

“That’s a new one. Where’d you get the rights to the number five?” Saul asked.

“They gave it to me,” she told him.

“Who’s this ‘they’?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you. That would be telling. They’re pretty scary.”

“I bet they are. Okay,” Saul said. “I think I see what’s going on here. So, I guess I’ll have one cup of your lemonade, please, and that rock, the one that mends broken hearts, and the use of the number five for this evening and tomorrow morning.”

“That’ll be seven dollars,” the little girl said.

“Seven dollars! Too much, I say,” said Saul. “Five dollars. Take it or leave it.” Maybe he would get a column out of this, an exposé of lemonade stands.

“Oh, all right,” the girl grumbled. She slapped her neck, as if a mosquito had bitten her there. She poured Saul his lemonade, handed him his rock, and dropped his five-dollar bill into the cardboard box. Saul took his first sip of the lemonade. It was wonderful, just the right combination of sweetness and sourness, the best lemonade he had had in a long time.

“Do you live around here?” he asked. “Here? In River Pines Estates?”

“Yeah.” She waited, as if in thought. “But I won’t tell you where.”

“Did you make this lemonade?” He took another sip. “It’s wonderful.”

“Thank you. My mom and I made it out of lemons,” she said, “plus the secret ingredient. Do you have children?” She was gazing at the Chevy.

“I have a daughter,” Saul said, “four years old, and a son. Theodore.”

“Who’s that in the car?”

Saul didn’t turn around to look. “Nobody. There’s nobody there.”

The little girl made a face at the car, a disagreeable and taunting expression, the way she’d look at any boy she didn’t know.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. She leaned back and closed her eyes in a deliberately languorous manner seemingly imitated from the paintings of Balthus. Saul, alarmed by this preadolescent display, put the little girl’s stone in his pocket, finished his lemonade, gave her the Dixie Cup, and returned to the Chevy. Then he drove home, having turned the rearview mirror upward so that he wouldn’t be distracted by whatever might have been back there.

At home, later that evening, after singing to Theo and reading Emmy a story, he put the stone — surrounded by bubble wrap — into a mailing box, which he addressed to his mother, together with a note telling her to keep the enclosed on her dresser. Maybe he should return and buy one for his brother and another for Brenda Bagley. Yes, he would do that. Secretly he had admired the little girl, who had found her vocation— salesmanship that thrived on indifference, peddling worthless commodities, infused with auras, to strangers — and, gazing down the hallway to where Patsy was sitting with Theo asleep in her lap, he thought with gratitude of his own skills and gifts, such as they were.

Charles Baxter

SAUL and PATSY

Charles Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of seven previous works of fiction, including the 2000 National Book Award finalist The Feast of Love.