“Oh my god, awful until I met Baby. Okay now.” She jumped from the black leather armchair and hurried to him, soft-soled boots soundless. The wool at one of her cuffs brushed his earlobe as she gave him a hug.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Chuck whispered, closing his eyes.
“You look so sad.” She let her arms dangle. “Do you . . . ?”
“Do I what?”
“Think you might be gay?”
“I don’t know what I am. I do know I can’t put up with corporation CEOs like Ken Lay of Enron who lie with the same gusto as Bush. Maybe I’ve been lying, too.”
Slouching in an armchair, he threw his hands toward Alexis’s research. “Who can believe this stuff when anything that promotes war passes as truth? I’m ashamed to be an American. Right now I’m ashamed to be me. Whoever that is.”
“An honest man,” she said, holding his eyes as she reseated herself.
“Aaahhh. Helen wants us to withdraw to Vermont.”
“What? No, don’t!” She pressed her breasts, then slid fingers garnished with silver rings below the table’s edge. “Baby lived near Burlington. Except for the winters and the litter, she loved it.”
“I’m staying put, don’t worry. Driving down here, I got an idea you may like. You may not.”
“Of course I’ll like it. What is it?”
“No time now.” Scratching his chin, he swept up her papers and pushed back his chair. “Go ahead and unwrap some more gum.”
Through the computer room came a single knock at the rear door, then four. The braided silver ring high in Alexis’s left ear jiggled as she frowned and turned her head.
“Manny Barnes,” Chuck said. “He wants a placard.”
“His girlfriend’s my best friend.”
“He’s told me. Stay there, I’ll let him in.”
Swaddled in his gray sheepskin coat and red stocking cap, Manny stood stamping hiking boots on the stoop. “Late for a breakfast, can’t talk,” Chuck said, pulling the door wide. He gestured Manny inside, touching with his fingertips the sheepskin’s ripped sleeve.
Manny unhooked the coat’s loops and stuffed the cap in a pocket. He was wondering what Alexis would be wearing this morning, when she appeared around the bookcase blowing a pink bubble at him.
STOP YAPPING
IN HIS POINTY BLUE COWBOY BOOTS AND HOME LOAN Champ billed cap, Ron Kirkpatrick lumbered into the hotel lobby where Maxine Morgan sat—smelling like paint thinner—on one of the three Hopi-blanket upholstered benches facing the registration desk. Behind the counter ascended the mural that gave Hotel La Concha its name. The Spirit of Flamenco arched from a white oyster shell in an embroidered gold bodice and flouncing red skirt. Her right arm stretched toward the oaken ceiling; both hands gripped ivory castanets. Beside each ear an angel plucked a guitar.
“What in the name of Judas Christ did you bring Pixie for?” Ron growled.
From violet-smeared eyes Maxine squinted up under her swirl of black hair. White and red stripes snaked along the sleeves of her cashmere sweater, the rest of it a blue field of white stars. Gold hoops large as merry-go-round rings swung from her ears. No smile for Ron this morning.
“Shut up,” she snapped at the black-faced Pekingese that, having sniffed Ron, had begun to yip and flap a tail still matted from his monthly carbolic-acid bath. The dog’s pop eyes stared through a hut-like cage of red willow that perched on a red wooden wagon. A stars-and-stripes kerchief drooped from his neck.
“Why Pixie?” Maxine asked. “I need support. Which I have a feeling you’re not going to give.” Clearing her throat, from under the dark wool skirt she lifted one knee-length boot and settled it on the opposite knee.
“You been redecoratin’?” Ron asked.
“Hunh?”
“That smell.”
“Turpentine, big boy. Balanchy’s latest.”
“It waters my eyes.” The duck’s bill of his cap dipped toward her. “Fuckin’ why did you throw that note last night?”
“I didn’t want to email it and I didn’t feel like phoning. I figured you’d smell it when you came out to your car.”
Face flat as Pixie’s, long black hair fanned over his coat, a Native American strode toward the restaurant’s arched entrance. “Stupid,” Ron muttered.
“Him?”
“You. What if Lila’d found it?”
“I was drunk.”
He watched her larynx bob. “Move over.”
Gripping the end of the bench, she tugged her buttocks to its end. He lowered his hulk beside her, unzipped a red polyester fleece with high collar and pinched cuffs, and peeled it from his back. Over his heart showed the badge, Onward Christian Soldiers, that a jeweler on the Plaza had fashioned for him the month before from turquoise and copper wire.
“Yip, yip.”
“Quiet down, buddy.” Ron waggled his pinkie through the cage’s grid. “We’ve got business here.”
Glancing at the mole that squatted like a bug on the bridge of Maxine’s nose, he let his eyes drift with the hand he eased to her thigh.
She grabbed his wrist and set it on the rough blanket between them. “Didn’t you read my note?”
“After Lila threw your Tabasco’d hankie and toilet paper tube in my face. I told her your ‘Don’t come over Thursday’ meant that the regular meetin’ she thinks we have with Giordy won’t work next week because he’s back to drinkin’.”
“You’re quick.”
“What are you goin’ to do about our tiles and the deck, Max?”
“Hunh?”
“The bathroom tiles are poppin’; last night the deck hightailed it down the hill.”
“Rotten luck, big boy. I’ll send Victor over.”
“Lila’s already called him. She’s right, you sold us a piece of junk. Where’s this new pigeon of yours?”
“Room service spilled latte on his slacks fifteen minutes ago.”
“How do you know? You spend the night together?”
“Shovel your shit elsewhere, okay? He phoned me downstairs.”
“How’d Giordy snag him?”
“Off our website. He collects petroglyphs.”
“Saws them out of the rock?”
“No, dum-dum—collects motif sculpture, pottery, furniture, whatever. The funding flows from his security-software company in San Jose. Giordy’s convinced him to buy a vacation hacienda here now, retire later. The usual.”
She pressed her palm to her high forehead and clenched her eyes. “Look, I’m not saying you and I can’t do deals together any longer, though that lard around your middle has become pretty unattractive. Mainly it’s your wheezing that scares me. I can see Giordy driving home from Thursday poker to find you flopped in his bed with a heart attack.”
Ron tugged his cap. “So that’s why you flattened my tire? To say ‘lose weight’?” The turquoise cinch on his bolo tie rose and fell over the green shirt snapped to his collarbone.
“Hunh?”
“Hunh? Hunh?