One Door From Heaven

machinery, soon broke again into that crackbrained-clown grin, and said cheerily, "Fill 'er up?" Assured that they wanted the tank topped off, he cranked a handle on the pump, disengaged the hose spout from the nozzle boot, and turned toward the Fleetwood, whereupon both he and his smile froze.
        As it became clear that this seasoned pump jockey wasn't sure where to service the big motor home, Cass telegraphed What's wrong with this bozo? by way of a glance at her sister. She took the hose from Earl with the polite explanation that she, being a fussbudget loath to get a scratch on the paint around the fuel port, would be happier if she could tend to the task herself.
        Polly flipped open the hinged lid of the port, twisted the cap off the tank, and stepped back as her sister jammed the spout into the Fleetwood, all the while surreptitiously keeping an eye on Earl, who, thinking that she was preoccupied, boldly aimed his trick watch at two windows of the motor home, twice glancing at the face of the timepiece as though reading something in its glossy black surface- which made him unique among men, who invariably checked out Polly's ass when they thought she wasn't looking, even gay men burning not with desire but with envy.
        She might have judged him to be a harmless crank, a once-proud gasoline merchant made dolly by the vast open spaces of Nevada, by the frighteningly huge sky that hung so fiercely starred over the black land, by too little human contact or by too much contact with too many prairie rustics, or even by Maureen, that sweet peach. But even cranks, eccentrics, and certifiably insane men checked out her butt when they had a chance, and the more often she saw that teeth-drying grin of his, the less it reminded her of a clown, psychopathic or otherwise, and the more she flashed to the velociraptors in those Jurassic Park movies. The thought had formed, however odd, that Earl was something she had never before encountered.
        Out of the night came Old Yeller, running, agitated as she had never been before, straight to Polly or rather straight to Polly's left sandal, which she seized by the acrylic heel and which she tried to shake as a terrier might shake a rat. Polly blurted out the name of a famous movie star she'd known when married to the film producer Julian Flackberg; the star was a dreadful actor as well as a deeply vile human being, and sometimes Polly used his famous name in place of an obscenity, usually in place of a four-letter word meaning "dung." Startled, Cass called to the dog, Polly tried to pull her foot away without hurting either the animal or herself, Old Yeller likewise seemed to be trying to avoid causing injury as she vigorously chewed on the footwear without even the softest of growls, and Smilin' Earl Bockman, believing himself to be unobserved in this uproar, aimed the wristwatch at the pooch and peered anxiously at the timepiece, as if it were an analytic device that could tell him whether or not the animal was rabid.
        In trying to yank her foot away from Old Yeller, Polly pulled it out of the sandal, and the dog at once made off with the prize, stopping at the front corner of the motor home to look back and to adjust her grip until the shoe dangled from her mouth by one thin strap. The dog swung the sandal teasingly back and forth. Cass said, "She's inviting you to play," and Polly said, "Yeah, well, the way I interpret it, even cute as she is, she's asking me to drop-kick her over that string of Christmas lights," and for once Earl's maniacal smile almost seemed appropriate.
        With the hose nozzle set securely in the fuel port and with at least five minutes required to fill the big tank, Cass's hands were free, and Polly had complete confidence in her sister's ability to deal with the likes of Earl Bockmnn, even if he might have this day received word from the Guinness Book of World Records that he had displaced the late Jeffrey Dahmer in the category of Most Severed Heads Kept in a Single Refrigerator. Hobbling, she pursued Old Yeller around the front of the Fleetwood, to the starboard flank, where the dog bounded through the open door and up the steps, into the motor home.
        By the time Polly got inside, the sandal lay discarded on the floor of the lounge, directly under the only interior light that had been left burning, while in the kitchen area just beyond the lounge, the dog sprang onto the dining-nook booth, craned her