Myra Evans and Cora Rusk

Myra Evans and Cora Rusk are best friends whose shared desire for an Elvis portrait turns intimacy into a contest of secrecy and possession. Myra goes to Needful Things without an appointment, driven by a call from Cora and by the fear that her friend will get the picture first. The episode makes the rivalry more than a quarrel over who saw an object first: each woman’s attachment gives the portrait a private emotional force, while concealment and competition begin to displace friendship.

Friendship and the Rivalry

Cora is not merely Myra’s acquaintance: Myra recognizes her as her best friend, and that closeness sharpens the betrayal in what she is doing. She knows Cora wants the same picture and believes that, if Cora knew where she was going and why, she might never speak to her again. Still, Myra tells herself that Cora’s ignorance will spare her, and that first come, first served settles the matter. The sayings furnish convenient justifications for an act she already understands as disloyal.

The immediate trigger is Cora’s call, made less than twenty minutes before Myra reaches the shop. Cora has been thinking about the portrait all day; she regrets not buying it on Wednesday, when she had only four dollars in her purse and could not be sure that Leland Gaunt would accept a personal check. She says she hardly slept that night. Myra has hardly slept either, so she knows Cora’s fixation is genuine rather than silly. Yet recognizing the feeling does not make Myra yield. Instead, she argues inwardly that seeing the picture first would not give Cora a divine right to own it—and voices the self-serving suspicion that Myra herself may have seen it first.

Myra’s Visit to Needful Things

Myra approaches the door under the sign stating that the shop is open by appointment only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She has no appointment; she has come on the spur of the moment, galvanized by Cora’s call. Her furtive glances make the secrecy physical: she checks behind her and across Main Street before advancing to the entrance. She is trying to act before Cora can, while also avoiding the possibility of being seen.

Her imagined future visit to Cora’s house shows what the picture means to her. She cannot bear the thought of seeing it displayed above the mantel between Cora’s ceramic Elvis figure and porcelain Elvis beer stein. The prospect makes her stomach knot beneath her heart, a bodily reaction she compares to how she felt during the first week of the war against Iraq. Cora already has many Elvis objects and once saw him perform at Portland Civic Center, about a year before his death; Myra’s resentment turns those advantages into reasons Cora should not have this particular picture. Muttering that it should be hers, Myra gathers her courage and knocks.

Cora Arrives Too Late

Cora later enters Needful Things determined to buy the portrait and is extremely upset when Gaunt tells her it has been sold. Asked who bought it, he says the woman was from out of state and that the car had an Oklahoma plate. The explanation conceals Myra’s role from Cora, preserving the secret that has already strained the friendship. Cora’s angry cry and real distress reveal that she had not fully understood how badly she wanted the picture until she learned it was gone.

The loss weighs on her even though she has seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pictures of Elvis and already owns half a dozen. This one had seemed special, and she hates the supposed woman from Oklahoma. The contrast is pointed: Cora is told the portrait went to a stranger, while the reader knows Myra’s clandestine visit has brought the friends into direct competition. Gaunt lets Cora wait while he serves Henry Gendron and his wife, then offers to look in the back room for something she might find equally or more interesting. Cora waits without much expectation, sunk in a deep gray depression; the episode leaves the friendship’s rivalry poised to deepen as Gaunt replaces the lost portrait with another object of desire.