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  "Sherri Kerri," Quill mused. "Sure, be glad to. As soon as I get time."

  "Make time," Marge said. "Soon as she gets enough women together for exercise class, I can boost the rent a little. Carol Ann Spinoza's already signed up, but she don't have to pay."

  A brief silence reigned. The Hemlockians at the table knew perfectly well why Carol Ann Spinoza didn't have to pay for her exercise classes. She was the village tax assessor. She was also the nastiest human being in Tompkins County, and that included Pig Joe the hog fanner. No one said anything about Carol Ann because of Horvath, who would run into her soon enough.

  "Carol Ann's taking an exercise class?" Meg asked cautiously.

  "Yeah, but it's at seven in the morning," Marge said. "I figure you two can take the one at eight..." She blushed a little. "I'm takin' that one. And you need it, too, Adela. You get much fatter and none of them fancy hats you wear are gonna fit."

  "Adela never gains weight in her head," Elmer said loyally. He folded his napkin and pushed back his chair. "C'mon, wife. We've gotta get going. Great lunch, Meg. And Hagar...

  My name is Horvath," Horvath said. "Hagar is the name of a cartoon char—"

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  Elmer rolled blithely on. "I wanna see you at the next Chamber of Commerce meeting. Saturday morning. Ten o'clock." He cocked his forefinger in imitation of a long-defunct TV-series character. "Be there, or I should say, be here. We're holding the meetings at the Inn again, you know. So you'll be sure of Meg's good food. Aloha."

  Horvath nodded and beamed. Quill was beginning to recognize the beam as camouflage. It gave the man time to negotiate the bewildering linguistic maze of colloquial English.

  "You got anything on, Quill?" Marge asked abruptly. "Want to show you something about the gym right now."

  "I'm not really too busy until later this afternoon," Quill said. "We've got some guests checking in around four o'clock." Too late. She stopped herself and went into reverse. "That is, John and I have a meeting... don't we, John?" She faltered and said in a feeble way, "You don't want to show me the gym now, do you?"

  "No time like the present." Marge heaved herself to her feet. "Meet you in fifteen minutes at the gym. Bring your workout stuff."

  "I don't have any workout stuff," Quill said.

  "Then buy some. Horvath here's gonna give you enough money to buy a whole closetful of sweatpants. Esther's stocking a whole new line in her dress shop. Sheni's got a few things for sale right now, anyway. Meg? What about you?"

  "Um, Andy and I are due in Syracuse, Marge." She shook her head. "Sorry, if we didn't have this meeting

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  already set up, I'd love to go. Nothing like a good workout on a hot August afternoon."

  "It's air-conditioned, isn't it?" Quill said.

  "Sweat's good for ya," Marge said briefly. "See you there, Quill."

  "Marge, really, I don't think..."

  Marge gave her the Look. The Look had quelled uppity dairy farmers, recalcitrant bankers, and aggressive insurance brokers. Quill didn't have a chance.

  John shook his head, smiling. "Get some sneakers, Quill, and an old T-shirt and some shorts. I'll go with you."

  Quill sighed and muttered.

  "What was that?" Marge demanded. Her head swiv-eled on her neck like a gun turret on a tank.

  "I said, 'Fine!' " Quill shoved back her chair and stood up. "Horvath, if you would care to come with me, you'd be welcome."

  "I am still a little jet-lagged," he said. "Perhaps tomorrow. The workout is very good for you."

  "Okay," Quill said with relatively good grace, "I give up. I'll be there. You, too, John. No backing out."

  "I'm driving down." John stood up. "I want to drop by Howie Murchison's office with the new draft of the agreement afterward. Do you want to ride with me?"

  Quill shook her head. Meg's crack to the contrary, it was a beautiful day outside. "I'll walk. I feel as if I haven't been outdoors for a week."

  A few minutes later, walking down the drive to Main Street, a MOMA tote bag with gym clothes in hand, Quill realized she really hadn't been outdoors for a week. Late-summer flowers were in full display. The

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  Oriental lilies near the privet hedge lining the drive had bloomed; their heady fragrance drifted in the air like petals on water. Purple chrysanthemum stood stiffly around the base of the mountain ash. Quill paused for a moment. Meg thought chrysanthemums were the most boring flowers in the world. Meg was right. She— Quill—should get Mike the groundskeeper to pull those out and plant hydrangea. Perennials were the thing; plant them once, and enjoy the flowers year after year. As long as you took care of them, perennials rarely let you down.

  If she'd taken better care of Meg... Quill swung the tote bag against her leg. She was angry and sad at the same time. And she couldn't decide at whom she was angrier, herself or Meg. And she wouldn't look for a new chef just yet.

  She turned onto Main Street. It looked the same as it always did in late summer—mellow, quiet, and lovely. Most of the buildings in Hemlock Falls were cobblestone, and English ivy grew thickly up the sides of Esther West's dress shop, the insurance office, and Nickerson's Hardware. Rower boxes of scarlet geraniums and potentilla stood against the base of black iron streetlights. Quill had never been able to paint a village scene. There wasn't enough tension in the view before her. Some of the buildings here had endured for almost two hundred years, immune to both forward and "backward" progress and the vagaries of the human beings who passed the buildings on from generation to generation.

  She stopped in front of the gym. The stone building here was a good example of the village's indifference

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  to human affairs. In the past ten years the little structure had held a Laundromat, Marge and Betty Hall's diner, Quill and Meg's own Palate Restaurant, and now a discreet silver-and-gray sign announced:

  GET BUFF! SHERRI KERRI, MANAGER/TRAINER.

  But the slate roof was still covered with moss, and the cobblestones made their familiar river pattern on the outside walls, as they had for the past one hundred and fifty years.

  Marge opened the wooden door and poked her head out. "You made it. John's already been and gone. Signed up for a full membership. You should, too." She backed away as Quill stepped inside. The smell was unfamiliar: indoor-outdoor carpet; fresh paint; and something gym-like. Soap? Disinfectant? The mellow wood floors had been covered with a workmanlike brown carpet. Thick mats lay over that. Track lighting illuminated every corner of the former dining room. A half- dozen or more pieces of ominously professional gym equipment lined the north wall. The south wall had a ballet bar and was entirely lined with mirrors. The west end of the gym had a waist-high leather bar. The glass shelves behind it were filled with jars, cans, and packages of health food. Quill sighed. She hated health food.

  Quill looked at herself in the unforgiving glass. She dabbed futilely at her hair, which was sticking up from the heat, and pulled in her stomach.

  An athletic blonde of about Quill's own age came out of the back room where Meg's kitchen had been.

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  She was wearing a tank top, skimpy shorts, and seriously athletic-looking tennis shoes.

  Marge stuck out a thick thumb. "Sherri? This is Sarah Quilliam. Quill? Sherri Kerri. Quill's the one I told you about, Sher. She's here to sign up."

  "Urn," Quill said. Sherri had biceps and quads that rivaled Linda Hamilton's in Terminator 2. She positively vibrated with good health. Quill felt a headache coming on.

  Sherri laughed. "Don't look so dismayed, Quill!" She had turquoise-blue eyes and the kind of thick, springy blonde hair that Quill associated with surfers. She also had one of those perfect caramel tans like unmarred silk. "Marge has been dragging every poor soul in the village in here. I'm sure you've just come to look around."

  "Not at all," Quill murmured in a confused way.

  Mar
ge clapped a large hand on Quill's shoulder. "Give her a good workout, Sher. I gotta go. I want to talk with John about how things are going with the Finn. Sher's got changing rooms in the back, Quill. Right where the Aga used to be. There's a dandy shower, too."

  Quill opened her mouth to protest. Marge flexed one meaty arm. "I already worked out this morning. Feels great. And I'll see you tomorrow morning, eight o'clock for the regular class. See ya." She banged out the door as unceremoniously as she'd come in.

  "You don't have to do a thing," Sherri assured her. "And you certainly don't have to join tomorrow's eight o'clock class. As a matter of fact, I've got an appoint-

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  ment for an eval in about ten minutes, so you couldn't work out now even if you wanted to."

  "Eval?" Quill said.

  "An evaluation. I always put prospective cb'ents through an evaluation. We don't want you taking on any more exercise than you can handle at first." Her eyes ran up and down Quill's figure in an abstracted way. "You don't need to lose a single pound, Quill. Toning's the thing for you. Here. Let me show you around and explain. You can try each piece of equipment; it's a good thing you have on a droopy skirt. And I'll give you some literature on the right kind of supplement. You look a little pasty."

  Quill put her hands on her cheeks. "I do?"

  "Then you can come back for a free workout, see if you like it, and we'll talk about signing up then. But only if you want to."

  The machines, Quill decided, were alarming. The bicycle seat was hard and skinny, rather like sitting on a pointed rock at an interminable picnic. There was something called a Thighmaster, which looked easy when Sherri did it, but which sent muscle spasms from Quill's ankles to her lower back when she tried it. The treadmill was okay, and she actually had fun on the hydraulically run chin-up machine, which did most of the work for her until Sherri reset it at a weight more appropriate to a linebacker for the Miami Dolphins.

  "It's my Gravitron," Sherri explained. "You stand on this platform and grasp the overhead bars. And the machine helps you. That's it, pull up, pull up!"

  Quill found herself doing effortless chin-ups. "This is fun."

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  "It's even better when your own muscles can make you feel like that," Sherri said seriously. "I just love this machine. It's fabulous. You have to be a little careful with the hydraulics, though. Watch it." Quill hopped off the machine and the platform shot upward with a whoosh. "It'll knock your block off. Well? What do you think? Exercise is a great stress reliever. And from what I hear, you're going through quite a bit right now."

  "Stress? Me? Where did you hear that?"

  "Marge. Told me there's a bit of man trouble, too. Sorry. I've been through that myself. I'll tell you, though, you should have your sister and her new husband live here and let them commute to New York. That's what Marge thinks, and the rest of the Ladies' Auxiliary."

  Quill closed her eyes to control her temper and repeated her personal mantra: It's just a small town, it's just a small town, it's just a small...

  "You okay?" Sherri asked.

  "Yes," Quill said firmly. She unclenched her fists. "That's a good idea. I was going to talk to Meg and Andy about it. She's gotten a terrific job offer, you know. In New York."

  "Well, I hope she doesn't leave for good! Didn't mean to get nosy, but when Marge talked me into leasing here, she gave me the whole picture, which I appreciated. And your sister's skills as a chef are a large part of it. It's not all that easy, opening a gym in a town the size of this one. But Marge seems to think your inn will be good for short-term business, and there's a nice profit in that, if you wouldn't mind my

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  leaving flyers at your front desk." Her eyes shifted away from Quill. "Of course, I'd be glad to let you work out here for free, if you feel there should be a quid pro quo for the flyers."

  "No, no, of course not." Quill blushed. "I'll sign up for a full year, and at the regular price, of course."

  "That's just great!" Sherri chattered easily about the need to start slowly. "The point," she said seriously, "is to have fun and feel good at the same time. And"— she bounced behind the food bar, took down a large jar, and shook it vigorously—"this is just the ticket for your pastiness."

  "I don't... pasty? Me?"

  "This is an echinacea-based tonic out of California. And it's fabulous. You won't believe how energetic it'll make you."

  "I could use a little more energy," Quill admitted.

  "Exercise and these will help!" She shook the jar again, then bounced along the shelves, pulling packets, cans, and bags off them with abandon. "Here you go! There's a very good introductory price for these. You'll clarify your blood—"

  "I don't think my blood needs—"

  "Of course it does! Clear up your skin, help you breathe better! That stress I was talking about?"

  "Well, I—"

  "Perfect for that, too. And all natural." She unloaded the armful of products onto the counter.

  Quill took two steps backward. "It all seems a little undignified. And—I don't know—so back-to-naturish. We've spent several thousand years getting away from eating roots and berries, as a species. I mean...

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  ground arrowroot is progress?" She picked up a plastic Baggie filled with powder.

  "You're not gonna believe what this will do for your sex life!"

  Quill tugged at her lower lip. She wasn't too sure she needed to do anything about her sex life.

  Sherri had shiny white teeth. And she smiled a lot. Just now she was smiling brilliantly at Quill. "You know the guy who was just in here? John Raintree? Of course you do, he's your business partner. Marge told me. Anyway—that's a dishy guy. He's buff, too. Didn't think I'd find a guy like that here in the back of beyond. Is he single?"

  "Yes. And he's one of the nicest men I've ever known." Then, to herself, she thought Idiot! She decided she could at least change the subject. "You're not from upstate?"

  "Me? No." Sherri shook her head. "Like the song says, 'I've been everywhere.' "

  "What made you decide to move up here?"

  The very blue eyes looked directly at her. "What made you decide to move up here?"

  "Meg and I came through here on a car trip in the spring. It seemed like Eden after New York City."

  "New York City!" Sherri's eyes glowed. "That's one place I've never been. Well, I didn't have that sort of epiphany. It was Marge."

  "Marge Schmidt?"

  "Marge was looking for tenants, and a friend of a friend introduced us by phone. Marge is pretty high on Hemlock Falls, and she said that your inn attracted people from all over the world because the food's so

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  good and you're such a famous artist..."

  "Marge said all this?"

  "Marge," Sherri said, a little impatiently. "She really likes you two. And she thinks this village is heaven on earth."

  "Marge Schmidt?" Quill pinched her lower lip harder than she had before. She was beginning to sound like a parrot. She thought of all the things Marge was: bellicose, tough, "one helluva businesswoman," according to village lore. But she'd never suspected Marge of sentimentality. "So you came, you saw, you leased."

  "Something like that. Beats teaching twelfth-grade English."

  "Oh. You were an English teacher?"

  "Yep-per as we say in the valley. I saw you blink when I used the term 'quid pro quo,' " she explained kindly. "I thought you should know that I don't spend all my time getting fit. I read, go to plays, love good movies. I even know who you really are. Quilliam, the famous painter."

  Quill didn't know how to respond to this, so she didn't.

  Sherri shook her head. "Even in these enlightened times, it's hard for people to say jock and literate in the same breath. Your average Joe thinks deltoids are peppermints." She glanced at her watch. Quill, who had never met anyone so self-possessed before, felt as
if she'd survived a tornado. "My appointment's due right now. Do you want to set a date to come back? Tomorrow morning? The eight o'clock class? It's called Get With It and you'll have a lot of fun. And,

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  oh, would you like to pay for your membership and the food supplements by cash or credit card?"

  "I don't think Meg would be too happy about my using food—" Quill demurred.

  "Nonsense!" Sherri interrupted. "I can give you ten percent off." She whipped out a calculator, tapped rapidly into it, and named a staggering sum. Quill paled. She wrote a check. The supplements alone came to two hundred and forty-two dollars and sixty-three cents.

  Sherri grinned and bagged it all up. The front door opened. "And here's your appointment card for tomorrow. You know, Quill, if you want to hang around, you can see what an eval's like. I'm sure Carol Ann won't mind."

  "Carol Ann?" Quill said hollowly. She turned around. "Oh. Hello, Carol Ann."

  Carol Ann Spinoza nodded brusquely. The county tax assessor was the cleanest person Quill had ever met. Meg swore that she polished the bottom of her shoes and ironed her money. Her blonde hair (natural) was drawn tightly back in a neat ponytail. She smelled like pine-tar soap. She had three little kids and a nondescript husband, who were as terrified of her as the rest of Hemlock Falls. "Haven't seen you for a while, Quill? You've got your C of O?"

  "My what? Oh, you mean my certificate of occupancy? For the Inn?"

  "Uh-huh. You can't have anybody in there until you do." The worst of Carol Ann was not her obsession with cleanliness, or even her nasty, malicious nature. It was her icy-sweet speaking voice and all the terrible

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  things it said. Such as, "Your assessed value is up by forty percent this year." Or, "There's a pretty large fine for that." Listening to her was exactly like hearing fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

  "Yes," Quill said recklessly. "I do. I think."

  "You'd better make sure you have one," Carol Ann said. "I'm dropping by the Chamber of Commerce meeting tomorrow morning. I'll check it out then. There's a nice fat fine if it isn't there. Thousand dollars. Well." She smirked ingratiatingly at Sherri Kerri. "Here I am. It's so nice of you to take time for me, Sherri." She narrowed her eyes at Quill. "Sherri got a special deal for some special folk, seeing as how she's new in town. My first year is absolutely free, isn't it, Sherri?"