“What’s that?”
“I’m completely irresponsible.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I sure am. I happen to be immature, undisciplined, and self-centered, pretty much a little boy stuck in a man’s body, although I’d appreciate it if you didn’t quote me on that.”
“That’s not true, Bobby Tom.”
“The fact is, I never think about anybody but myself. I probably should have told you that from the beginning, but my agent wouldn’t let me. I’m going to be honest with you. If somebody’s not around to keep me in line, there’s a good chance you’re not ever going to get this picture made.”
She fiddled with her earring, the way some women did when they were nervous. “I suppose I could have Ben take care of you.” She gestured toward one of the grips.
“That goofy-lookin’ character in the Rams’ hat?” Bobby Tom gazed at him in disbelief. “Do you seriously think I’d pay attention to a Rams’ fan? Sweetheart, I earned my Super Bowl rings playin’ for a real team.”
Willow clearly didn’t know what to make of this. “You seem to have been taken with Maggie in props. I’ll assign her to you.”
“She’s a real pretty lady, that Maggie. Unfortunately, the two of us struck passion-sparks the minute we looked at each other, and it seems once I start romancin’ a woman, I can talk her into just about anything. I’m not saying this to brag, you understand, but just as a point of information. I doubt Maggie’d be able to stay in charge of me for too long.”
Willow regarded him shrewdly. “If you’re angling to have Gracie back, you can forget it. She’s already proved she can’t control you.”
Bobby Tom gaped at her as if she’d lost her mind. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? That woman could give lessons to a prison guard. Shoot, if it’d been up to me, I prob’ly wouldn’t have been here till October. Fact is, I had an uncle I wanted to visit in Houston, and I think it’s un-American to go anywhere near Dallas without a visit to the rodeo in Mesquite. I also need a haircut, and the only barber I trust lives in Tallahassee. But Miss Gracie kept putting her foot down, and I couldn’t get her to lift it back up. You’ve seen her. You tell me she doesn’t put you in mind of one of those old maid English teachers you had in senior high.”
“Now that you mention it . . .” Willow seemed to realize he had almost cornered her, and she immediately retrenched. “I understand what you’re trying to do, but I’m afraid it’s not going to work. I’ve made up my mind. Gracie has to go.”
He sighed. “I apologize, Willow. I know what a busy woman you are, and here I am wasting your time by not making myself clear.” His smile grew more gentle, his voice softer, but his blue eyes were as hard and cold as ice chips. “I’m going to need a personal assistant, and I want it to be Gracie.”
“I see.” She dropped her eyes, well aware that she’d been given an ultimatum. “I suppose I should confess that there’s been a lot of belt-tightening going on around here, and we’ve had to streamline several jobs. If I hire her back, I’ll have to fire someone else, and we’re already short of staff as it is.”
“There’s no need to fire anybody. I’ll take care of her salary, although we’d better keep that piece of information quiet. Gracie is real funny about money. How much do you pay her?”
Willow told him.
He shook his head. “She could do better delivering pizzas.”
“It’s an entry level position.”
“I’m not even going to speculate on what kind of position she had to assume for that particular form of entry.” He turned to walk toward the Thunderbird and then paused.
“One more thing, Willow. When you talk to her, I want you to make one thing absolutely clear. Tell Gracie I’m in charge. One hundred percent. Her whole purpose in life is to keep me happy. I’m the boss and whatever I say goes. You understand?”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “But that defeats the purpose of everything you’ve said.”
He gave her a wide, bone-melting grin. “Now don’t you worry about it. Gracie and I’ll work it out just fine.”
By nine o’clock that night, Willow still hadn’t found Gracie, and even Bobby Tom’s brutal workout in the exercise room he’d built next to the apartment over the garage hadn’t relieved his frustration at her incompetence. Fresh from his shower, he settled down on the ruffled chaise in the bedroom of the white frame house that sat in a small pecan grove just outside Telarosa. He’d bought it three years ago so his mother could have some peace when he came home. Proving his point, the phone began to ring. He ignored it and let the answering machine pick it up. When he’d last checked, the machine had registered nineteen messages.
In the past few hours, he’d done an interview with the Telarosa Timer, Luther had popped up at the door to ask about Heavenfest two of his old girlfriends, along with one woman he didn’t know, had shown up to invite him to dinner, and the high school football coach had asked him to make an appearance at practice that week. What he really wanted was to buy a mountaintop somewhere and sit there all by himself until he felt like being with people again. He’d do it, too, if he. didn’t hate being alone so much right now. Being alone made him remember that he was thirty-three years old, and he didn’t know how to be anything but a football player. Being alone made him remember that he no longer knew who he was.
He still couldn’t quite explain why he hadn’t gotten rid of Gracie back in Memphis, except that she’d kept surprising him. She was one crazy lady, he thought, remembering the way she’d sabotaged his car and thrown herself in front of the wheels. But she was nice, too. The best thing about having Gracie along was that no matter how mad she made him, she didn’t wear him out like a lot of other people.
When he was with her, he didn’t have to use up all his energy just trying to be himself. She also amused the hell out of him, and right now in his life, that counted for a lot.
Where the hell was she? Between her innocence and her damned curiosity, she’d probably already landed herself in a mess. According to Willow, no one knew how she had gotten into town, only that she’d picked up her paycheck at the hotel and disappeared. He still had her suitcase in his trunk. Not that there was anything in it that shouldn’t be burned for the greater good of mankind. Except for her underwear. During her striptease and that vault she’d made over his car door, he hadn’t failed to notice that Gracie did have herself some nice underwear.
Tossing his legs over the side of the chaise, he got up and began to dress. He didn’t want people in Telarosa to think he’d gotten a big head, so he bypassed his Levi’s for a pair of Wranglers, then pulled on a baby blue T-shirt, a sleeveless black denim vest, and a pair of boots. Just before he left the room, he grabbed a straw cowboy hat from his closet. So far he’d managed to avoid going into town, but with Gracie missing, he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer.
With a combination of despair and resignation, he walked over to a small painting of a ballerina, opened it by pulling back on the gilded frame, and entered the combination on the wall safe behind. When the lock released, he extracted a royal blue velvet jeweler’s box and flipped it open with his thumb.
Inside lay his second Super Bowl ring.
The team logo of three interlocking gold stars in a sky blue circle had been replicated on the top of the ring, with the points of the stars executed in white diamonds while three larger yellow diamonds formed the centers. More diamonds spelled out the Super Bowl roman numeral designation and the year of the game. It was big and flashy, which was pretty much a requirement for Super Bowl rings.
Bobby Tom’s lips tightened as he slipped it on his right hand. Although he’d always had an aversion to gaudy masculine jewelry, his reaction wasn’t based on aesthetics. Instead, wearing the ring made him feel like so many of the retired players he’d known over the years, men who were still trying to live out their glory days long after they should have put the past behind them and gotten on with their lives. As far as Bobby Tom was con
cerned, once he’d blown out his knee, he hadn’t ever wanted to touch this ring again. Wearing it was a reminder that the best days of his life were behind him.
But he was in Telarosa now—the favorite son of a dying town—and what he wanted didn’t matter all that much. In Telorosa he had to keep the ring on his finger, just as he’d worn its predecessor, because he knew how much it meant to everybody who lived here.
He walked into the living room and headed toward a round table nestled between two gilt chairs. The table’s overskirt was printed with pink-and-lavender flowers and streamers of green ribbon. A small cut glass bowl filled with dry rose petals sat on top, along with a white marble statue of Cupid and a bone china pitcher bearing clusters of violets. Bobby Tom picked it up and tilted out the keys to his pickup truck.
After replacing the pitcher, he gazed around the living room and began to smile. As he took in the pastel wallpaper, the lace curtains caught back with candy-striped bows, the plump chintz sofas and overstuffed easy chairs with deep ruffles that brushed the carpet, he reminded himself never again to give a lady who was pissed off at him the job of decorating one of his houses.
Everything was either lace, pink, covered with flowers, or had a ruffle on it. Sometimes all four at once, although his former girlfriend/decorator had been careful not to overdo. Since he didn’t fancy the idea of having his buddies bust a gut laughing at him, he had never permitted any of the decorating magazines to photograph the interior of this particular house. Ironically, it was the only one he really liked. Although he’d never admit it to a soul, this silly little candy box of a house relaxed him. He had spent so much of his life in exclusively masculine enclaves that entering this place always made him feel as if he were taking a short vacation from his life. Unfortunately, the minute he walked out the front door, the vacation was over.
The spacious freestanding garage that sat behind the house held his Thunderbird along with his black Chevy pickup. He’d turned the area above it into a weight room for himself as well as a small apartment where he could tuck away all the visitors who didn’t think twice about dropping in on him without warning. A retired couple from town took care of everything when he wasn’t here, which was most of the time, because being in this place he loved more than any other spot on earth was sometimes more than he could bear.
He maneuvered the pickup down the gravel drive to the highway. Across the road, he could see part of the landing strip he’d built on some additional acreage he owned. The Baron was tucked into a small hangar set back from the highway amidst the mesquite and prickly pear.
A truck loaded with pigs blew by. After it had passed, he turned out onto the asphalt. He remembered all those summer nights when he and his friends used to run drag races on this very road. Then they’d go down to the South Llano, where he’d drink too much and throw up. By the time he was seventeen, he’d already figured out that he didn’t have the stomach for hard liquor, and he’d been a light drinker ever since.
Thoughts of the river reminded him of the nights he and Terry Jo Driscoll had spent down there. Terry Jo had been his first real girlfriend. She was married to Buddy Baines now. Buddy’d been Bobby Tom’s best friend all through high school, but Bobby Tom had moved on in the world and Buddy hadn’t.
He reached the city line and saw the sign that had been erected when he’d been named All American his sophomore year at U.T.
TELAROSA, TEXAS
POPULATION 4,290
HOME OF BOBBY TOM DENTON
AND THE TELAROSA HIGH SCHOOL TITANS
There had been some talk of taking his name off the sign when the Chicago Stars had drafted him before the Cowboys had a chance. It had been hard on the town to watch its favorite son go to Chicago instead of Dallas, and whenever his contract with the Stars had come up for renewal, he would receive a series of phone calls from the town’s leading citizens urging him to remember his roots. But he’d loved playing for Chicago, especially after Dan Calebow had taken over as head coach, and the Stars had paid him millions of dollars to make up for the embarrassment of his becoming a part-time Yankee.
He passed the turnoff that led to the small enclave of executive homes where his mother lived. She’d had to attend a Board of Education meeting that evening, but they had talked earlier on the phone and would spend some time together this weekend. Until recently, he’d thought his mother had adjusted well to his father’s death. She had taken on the presidency of the Board of Education and kept up with all her volunteer work. Lately, however, she’d begun to ask his opinion about things she never used to bother him with: whether to get the roof repaired or where she should take her vacation. He loved her dearly, and he would have done anything for her, but her growing dependency was uncharacteristic, and it worried him.
He crossed the railroad tracks, glancing up at the water tower decorated with the flying orange T of Telarosa High, and then turned onto Main Street. The sign advertising Heavenfest on the marquee of the old Palace theater reminded him he had to call some of his buddies one of these days and invite them down for the celebrity golf tournament. So far, he’d been making up the guest list off the top of his head just to keep Luther quiet.
The bakery had closed since his last visit, but Bobby Tom’s Cozy Kitchen was still in business, along with BT’s Qwik Car Wash and Denton’s Championship Dry Cleaning. Not all of the businesses in Telarosa were named after him, but sometimes it seemed that way. As far as he knew, nobody in town had ever heard of such a thing as a licensing agreement, and if they had, they would have dismissed it as some kind of left-wing horseshit. In Chicago, local businesses had paid him nearly a million dollars over the years to use his name, but the citizens of Telarosa freely appropriated it without giving a thought to asking for permission.
He could have put a stop to it—if it had happened any other place he would have—but this was Telarosa. The people here figured they owned him, and they would only have been mystified by any arguments to the contrary.
The lights were out at Buddy’s Garage, so he went around the corner to the small wooden house where his former best friend lived. As soon as his truck entered the drive, the front door burst open and Terry Jo Driscoll Baines came running out.
“Bobby Tom!” He grinned as he took in her short, plump body. After two babies and too many bake sales, she’d lost her figure, but in his eyes, she was still one of the prettiest girls in Telarosa.
He jumped out of the truck and gave her a hug. “Hey there, sweetheart. Do you ever look anything but gorgeous?”
She swatted him. “You are so full of it. I’m fat as a pig, and I don’t give a damn. Come on. Let me see it.”
He dutifully extended his hand so she could see his newest ring, and she let out a squeal of delight that could have been heard all the way to Fenner’s IGA. “Gawd! It is just so beautiful I can’t stand it. Even prettier than the last one. Look at all those diamonds. Buddy! Bud-dee! Bobby Tom’s here, and he’s wearin’ his ring!”
Buddy Baines came slowly down off the porch where he’d been standing watching the two of them. For a moment their eyes locked, and decades of old memories passed between them. Then Bobby Tom saw the familiar resentment.
Although they were both thirty-three, Buddy looked older. The cocky, dark-haired quarterback who’d led the Titans to football glory had begun to thicken around the middle, but he was still a good-looking man.
“Hey, Bobby Tom.”
“Buddy.”
The tension between them had nothing to do with Bobby Tom having been there first with Terry Jo. Instead, their problems had begun because Buddy and Bobby Tom together had carried Telarosa High to the Texas State 3AAA Championship, but only one of them had received a full ride to U.T., and only one of them had made it to the pros. Even so, they were each other’s oldest friend, and neither of them ever forgot it.
“Buddy, look at Bobby Tom’s new ring.”
Bobby Tom slipped it off his finger and held it out. “You want to try it on?”
With any other man, he would have been rubbing salt into an open wound, but not with this one. He knew that Buddy figured at least a couple of those diamonds rightly belonged to him, and Bobby Tom figured so, too. How many thousands of passes had Buddy thrown to him over the years? Short, deep, down the sidelines, over the middle. Buddy had been throwing footballs at him since they were six years old, and they’d lived next door to each other.
Buddy took the ring and put it on his own finger. “How much does something like this go for?”
“I don’t know. Couple of thousand, I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Buddy acted as if he priced expensive rings every day when Bobby Tom knew for a fact-that he and Terry Jo never had anything left over at the end of the month. “Do you want to come on in and have a beer?”
“I can’t tonight.”
“Come on, B.T.,” Terry said. “I need to tell you about my new girlfriend, Glenda. She just got divorced, and I know you’re exactly what she needs to take her mind off her troubles.”
“I’m real sorry, Terry Jo, but a friend of mine is missing, and I’m kind of worried about her. You wouldn’t have happened to rent a car to a skinny white lady with funny hair, would you, Buddy?” In addition to running the garage, Buddy had the town’s only rental car franchise
“No. She with those movie people?”
Bobby Tom nodded. “If you see her, I sure would appreciate it if you’d give me a call. I’m afraid she might have gotten herself into some trouble.”
He chatted with both of them a few minutes longer and promised to hear all about Glenda on his next visit. As he was getting ready to leave, Buddy pulled the Super Bowl ring off his finger and held it out to his former best friend.
Bobby Tom kept his hands at his sides. “I’m going to be real busy for the next couple of days, and I’m afraid I won’t get a chance to stop in and visit your mama right away. I know she’ll want to see that ring. Why don’t you hold on to it and show her for me? I’ll pick it up over the weekend.”
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