The Temporary Agent Read Online Free PDF Page B

forty-five, bankrupt, she was facing the daunting task of just keeping her head above water in a still-suffering economy.
    And did so by working the same job she’d held back in high school.
    It was a job she was lucky to have, yes, she would be the first to admit that. But Tom knew that while this would be a less-than-satisfying arc for any person, it was even more so for someone like Stella Quirk.
    The only property she’d held on to was located on Main Street—yet another investment once, as much for herself as for the town, with a mortgage that was currently upside down, and so dramatically that none of her creditors had taken it.
    A modest storefront with a small apartment above.
    The storefront was vacant, like too many other storefronts in town, and Stella had moved into the apartment above two years ago, when her home had been quickly—so quickly—lost to foreclosure.
    A month after they started dating, Stella asked Tom to move in with her.
    She’d never done anything like that before, she’d told him, had always been cautious with men.
    It was her nature, but there was also the fact that everyone in town watched her so closely, and that a person—a woman —in her position had to be careful.
    Should she one day actually run for office—and there were days back then when she had seriously considered doing that—her past relationships with men would, at best, become common knowledge, and, at worst, be held against her.
    There were, she’d confessed, aspects of her sexuality— appetites that she could not ignore, or at least ignore for long—that she did not want in the spotlight.
    By then, Tom had already been spending several nights a week at her place, the others in a cheap motel on the edge of town.
    Cheap or not, paying for the motel room was just a waste of money, Stella had said.
    Live with me, Tom. I don’t give a fuck anymore what anyone thinks. I don’t care if everyone knows.
    It was obvious to Tom in the days after he moved in that Stella’s having a live-in boyfriend—and one so much younger than she—was the talk of the town.
    He could see the resentment in the faces of her “suitors” whenever he passed them on the street.
    He could see in their unsmiling faces their dislike for the grim-looking stranger who had come out of nowhere and gotten himself invited into Stella’s bedroom.
    Such attention was not something Tom had wanted or needed, but what was left of Stella’s world had a gravity that he didn’t understand, but also didn’t doubt. He was pulled toward it, and into her.
    And maybe, between the two of them, a new life would be possible.
    He often wondered what would have happened had he not stopped for lunch that day six months ago.
    He almost hadn’t, at that moment wasn’t particularly hungry, but how often does one see an actual railcar diner anymore?
    And the town he had been passing through—Canaan—seemed to Tom like the kind of place in which a man like him might be able to come safely to a stop for a time.

Eight
    The steam drifting with them as they moved from the shower to her bedroom smelled of green apples and lavender.
    Tom knew no cleaner smell than that.
    Scrubbed and naked, they stood in the middle of the dark room and embraced, Tom behind Stella, his arms around her waist, Stella with her arms reaching back, her hands on his lower back.
    They were halfway between her bed, still unmade from this morning, and the tall window that looked out over the small back parking lot.
    Tom occasionally saw her in that window when he returned from work.
    Sometimes she would be dressed in black lace underwear, and sometimes she was undressed save for her string of pearls.
    And other times, she would place both hands on the windowsill and brace herself as Tom took her from behind, the combination of their muted reflection in the glass and Stella’s potential exposure sending waves of heat running through her.
    Tom was six feet, weighed 210. Stella had been with many