“Iris doing well?”
Hank showed Dodge crossed fingers. “She goes to the doctor every couple months, and they run a battery of tests. So far, she’s holding.”
“Let’s be frank. You going to marry this one?”
“Marry? I hardly think the word’s in her vocabulary.”
“If that’s what you’re after, you could knock her up.”
“Oh, sure. Brilliant idea, Jack.”
“You think only women hold the cards on that sort of thing?”
Hank stood up. “No way. I like kids, but I’m not ready to sacrifice one in exchange for a wife.”
“But you’ve thought about it.”
“Christ, I’ve thought about Katharine Ross and Rosanna Arquette. But that doesn’t mean I joined their fan clubs.”
Dodge stood up and went to the beveled glass window behind his desk. “Take a look out there. Fifty’s peeking over the hilltop, Henry. You want to be able to throw a ball to your own kids.”
Hank looked at the oil paintings on the walls: Seattle Slew, Risen Star. Dodge fancied racehorses, but he was an armchair observer, too busy to attend the races in person.
Dodge came over to Hank’s chair and extended his hand for a shake. Business concluded. “Well, it’s your concern. Mine are settled and making me a grandpa every five years, it seems. At least I know where my money’s going. Do me a favor and just dress your cowgirl in a nice navy blue suit for the hearing. Nothing low cut, but keep the skirt short enough so that the judge can see the cast, and make sure she walks in on the crutches. I’ll take care of getting the doctor’s statement. Incidentally, you might wash her mouth out with soap first, too.”
“I admire her vocabulary. She calls the shots like she sees them.”
Jack Dodge winked. “When most of us wouldn’t say shit if we had a mouthful. Admit it. She’s got you by the short ones.”
Hank smiled. “It’s a possibility. But have I got her?”
“Ah, well, that’s the eternal question, isn’t it, son?”
The men smiled at each other. Between them they shared a history that included much of Hank’s childhood. Now Chloe’s defense added to the timetable of carvings. “Thanks, Jack.”
“You’ll get my bill.” He rubbed his palms. “I’m looking forward to this. It’s been a long time since I shot pool with the sheriff’s department.”
Hank dropped Chloe at work. She was quiet all the way into town. He kept the speedometer on the fifty-five mark, let all the other cars hiss past him. Even with the leg cast, she could draw herself up into a folded smallness in the passenger seat. If he reminded her to use her seat belt, she turned her face to the window, not hearing. Yet if he took her to bed, she would open right up. Flesh to flesh, there were no defenses she considered worth hiding behind. He wanted her seventeen times a day; he thought about it too much. Tonight, when they were ready to quit this sticky day, he knew he would turn to her again. Fishhook through the heart, calluses on the dick, brain out the window.
“May I take you out to dinner?” he asked as he let the car idle by the back-alley entrance to Wedler Brothers.
“I need to go check on Absalom tonight.”
“So we can eat out there somewhere. You pick. Find a steakhouse, and throw my heart into shock with some red meat.”
She gave him a half smile. “Anywhere I want?”
He nodded. “What are you standing out here for? Get your sweet behind in there and start hustling coffee.”
“What a mistake it was to introduce you to Rich. See you later, Hank. Teach them the truth today.”
“Always do—the way I know it.”
He looked back once before he put the Honda in gear and drove onto the boulevard. The coffee shop was tucked into a string of older shops, their stucco exteriors crumbling in the corrosive sea air that traveled up the boulevard from the peninsula. It wasn’t the greatest part of town. There were rundown trailer parks and a few cheap motels, a Mr. Goodwrench, and a host of shade-tree mechanics offering cut-rate tune-ups. The homeless stood on curbs in the speeding traffic holding signs reading “Will work for food.” In a few years, if the city kept on with the current redevelopment plan, everything here would be razed and replaced with something else, a cheap but trendy adobe look, maybe, something already disintegrating before the stringers dried out. He had no idea where Chloe would be then, or whether he might even know her. It was hard on her to look beyond each day toward the future, to make plans, and he couldn’t quite understand it. The way life happened, the future nearly always took care of itself.
Asa Carver sought Hank out while he was having lunch in the school cafeteria. “Hey, buddy. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Hey, yourself. What brings you to eat here? I thought your new Mrs. packed you a lunch.”
“She slept in today.” Asa crumbled crackers into his minestrone until it resembled sienna pablum.
Hank watched him stir the mess, then looked away. A work-study student was watering the pale ferns in the planter near the windows. “Don’t tell me you’re going to eat that.”
“Eventually. You shouldn’t have skipped the department meeting.”
“I had to take Chloe to the lawyer’s.”
Asa tsked. “Hank and his bad girl—everybody’s intrigued. How’s that going?”
“It’s going.”
“Anyway, you were missed.”
“As if anything new was discussed. Whose textbook budget gets axed this year? How come we can spend a hundred dollars on a football helmet and not one dime for a guest lecturer? What poor fool’s contract won’t be renewed?”
Asa set his spoon down on his napkin. “Try yours.”
“That’s mildly amusing. A good beat, but you can’t dance to it. I’d give it a four.”
“I’m serious. You and Phil Green, Alec in Fine Arts, and all the part-timers in English. The women are hopping mad. They’re making the old order pick up a comp class each, the newest ones two each, and the only faculty they’re hiring for fall is ESL.”
Hank set his tuna sandwich down on the sturdy ironware alongside the nest of potato chips he knew he shouldn’t be eating anyway. The dill pickle had turned them green and soggy. Salt was bad for the heart. “They can’t fire me. I’ve been here too many years.”
“But they can cut you back, buddy. That’s the rumor. Can you make it on half pay, quarter pay? Will you go sell cars at Theodore Robins to make up the difference?”
“The union won’t let it happen.”
“It has nothing to do with the union. This is enrollment figures, budget cuts—we’re talking Sacramento. They’d reassign you if there was a secondary specialty on your credential. Get this. They might give Green a karate class. Can you beat that—a fucking karate class!”
“Well, he is a black belt.” Hank watched Asa chew his soup English Composition versus Folklore and Mythology. The logic was as clean as exposed bone. Years of frugal living amounted to his ample savings. Still, talk didn’t mean walk—it would probably never happen. Maybe he’d make a few calls—just to be on the safe side—there were other junior colleges in the area. The MLA Bulletin was in the library if the pink slip was in his future. His mind blurred over—he wondered what soup was on at Wedler’s, how much Chloe made in tips, whether Dodge was in a four-star haunt parrying with a fellow attorney, their BMWs and Mercedes parked outside, glistening with layers of hand-rubbed wax, grinning chrome.
“Where are you, Oliver? Are you okay on this?”
“Sure. I have to go. Office hours.” He got up and walked toward the door, leaving his unbused tray behind, the first time he’d done that in years.
Only Kathryn Price came in to see him. She was cheerful, half of her plain blond hair drawn up into a high ponytail, her jeans rolled at the cuffs, a smiling, timeless example of coed who could be dropped into any decade from 1940 on.
“Hey there, Mr. Oliver.” She sat in the ratty overstuffed chair at Asa’s desk, as if being invited was a form
ality she’d left behind in Texas. “I came to see about borrowing your book on Campbell. That was such a great videotape you showed a while back, and the library’s lost the book and…Jesus, what’s troubling you? You look as miserable as one of William Strauss’s earlobes.”
“Do I?” He smiled. “I had a disagreeable tuna sandwich for lunch. Let me get the book for you.” He turned and took it from the bookshelf, then handed it across the desk.
Kathryn chattered on gaily about her term paper. Hank saw her lips move, registered nothing beyond how full and pretty they were, how a kind word from a student like her had lifted many a day from the curb along the gutter. Next semester she would be sitting in some other professor’s office, just as excitedly sharing her progress.
Chloe went over her horse like a safecracker, using a stethoscope to study heartbeat and gut sounds. She shoved a monstrous greased glass thermometer up the beast’s rectum so far Hank felt his own buttocks tighten, even if the horse didn’t seem to mind. After five minutes, she wiped the smeary Vaseline across the horse’s rear, read the thermometer and shook it down.
“Normal,” she pronounced, as if she’d wished it otherwise. “Well, we’ll fix him up a bran mash and just see what happens.”
“What’s so terribly wrong? He’s just standing there.”
“That’s it, Hank. He’s got a feeder of cubes and he could care less. Otherwise, he’s a vacuum. It’s not like Absalom to go off his feed without a reason.” She palmed a handful of sweet feed, oats and corn mixed with molasses, toward the horse’s dark muzzle. He nosed them with slight interest, but let the bulk of them drop to the stall floor. “I wish he’d snap out of it.”
Hank hauled the buckets for her, emptying thermoses of hot water into bran that closely resembled the stuff he poured into his morning cereal. Chloe stirred, and steam rose from the batter. He watched her trickle unsulfured molasses over the top like tarry icing. This the horse took, as if he had been holding out on them for the good stuff.
While she was tidying up Absalom, Hank took the tack box and grain back to the shed. He passed dozens of horses, all dedicatedly chomping away at their suppers. Such important names for such ordinary-looking animals—Boom’s Hallelujah, Nancy B.’s Comet, Bailey’s Irish Cream. Whatever happened to Pardner and Red and Banjo? Mr. Ed? Why couldn’t a horse skip a meal now and again if he felt like it? Hay could get boring, even pressed into those neat little cubes. What was the big deal? The stable goat crossed in front of him—apparently running loose was a way of life. The small horns looked innocent, but he’d seen one of the stable hands get popped onto his ass by the creature, so he gave it a wide berth.
The hills rising up behind the stables were green this time of year, bright long grasses and deeper green where cacti bloomed with waxy white flowers, soon to be replaced by the plum-colored fruit Chloe told him the grooms gathered to make a cheap but potent wine. Tiny wildflowers bloomed as if ushering in spring. He wondered if Chloe might take him out on those trails someday—if he could take a look at them through her eyes—come September, if Asa was right, there’d be time for anything. He could do any number of things besides teach. And hopefully Dodge would see to it that Chloe could join him. He needed to call his mother, touch base. Ought to explain to her about Chloe, how it was, meet the two of them for supper and smooth the waters down a bit, introduce Henry senior eventually. Maybe next week, when things were a little calmer, after he’d talked to some people at school—learned whether Asa’s message had been just a rumble of thunder or actual fact.
She wanted to go to a bar in San Juan, where there was food and drink, live music, and old friends. “We need some music to cheer us up,” she said, “Plus, it’s about time I introduce you around. You’ve already got this reputation as my savior.” She leaned over and kissed his neck. “They’ll be checking for your halo, Hank.”
“Will I pass muster?”
“Likely they’d have to see you ride before they let you into the club.”
“I can ride a horse.”
She looked surprised.
“That’s right, I can. I can do several things that might surprise you.”
The Swallows Inn was crowded with slumming yuppies and old timers, a smattering of the Harley-Davidson wanna-be crowd who worked regular jobs until five, then did a Cinderella metamorphosis into black leather and chains. Out front, the place was plastered with fliers advertising the upcoming March parade, and contests for predicting the date the swallows would return, notices for the three-day rodeo. There were want ads for used motor homes and hardly used horse trailers. Inside, back toward the dance floor, three old cowboys whistled and waved as Chloe came through the door. Hank took hold of her arm.
“Come on,” she said. “Don’t lose heart now.”
She made the introductions: Wesley McNelly, Francisco Montoya, Gabriel Hubbard, DVM. Francisco chattered low in Spanish—Who is this guy? Looks like a carpet salesman to me. He treating you right, Chloe?
Hank wanted to answer him in his own passable Spanish but knew he’d learn more if he played dumb. A barmaid wearing a toy holster set brought beer for them. Gabriel Hubbard gave her a possessive squeeze, and she patiently removed his hand.
“Come on, Tracy, be nice,” he said, and she set the shooters of tequila for the others down with exasperated patience. “Tracy goes to graduate school, don’t you, darlin’?”
She took his money. “Just to pass the time until I get to come here.”
Gabe said, “It gives her an attitude, you know?”
Hank smiled faintly.
Chloe ordered them rare steaks and home fries, turned to Hank and said, “Trust me, you’re gonna love it.”
He wanted to. But when the Lonesome Prairie Band struck up a swing tune, cast and all her protestations be damned, Wesley McNelly took her out to the dance floor and Hank was left alone with two strangers, both of whom were smiling and staring at him expectantly. It was an alien landscape. He made himself sip his beer, cut small bites of steak, and chew them twenty times each.
“Hard to believe she can dance with that cast on,” Gabe said. “Seems there’s nothing in this world that can down our Chloe for long.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
The vet held his gaze steady. “I bet you are.”
Then it was Francisco’s turn to dance with her. While he guided her slowly through a handicapped version of the two-step, Wesley buddied up to Hank. “What’s your line, Hank?”
“I teach over at the junior college.”
“Teaching. Now there’s a noble profession. What’s your field?”
“Folklore and mythology.”
Wesley squinted. “I’m not sure I follow. Does that mean the little stories?”
“In a way.”
“There a lot of call for that nowadays?”
Hank swallowed down the last of his beer. All intellectual arguments were sieves to piss beer through. “Actually, it looks like next term I’m going to be fired.”
Gabe clapped him on the back. “Well, why didn’t you say so right off?” He nabbed the waitress on a pass to the bar. “Tracy, bring the professor here a shooter and a chase, will you? Got something to celebrate.”
Wesley grinned, Gabe grinned, Hank drank his drink, trying to locate a grin inside the alcohol to go along with them.
On the wall before him hung a mounted deerhead with marble eyes and fourteen points of horn sporting a ball player’s cap, a horseshoe, a peach-colored brassiere. The art was of the Miller HighLife glowing clock variety—bears palming struggling salmon in everlasting waterfalls. Any blank wall space was filled in with rude signs, crude jokes, notices. A clock that said “No drinking until after five” turned a single second hand; every number it passed was a big, red, and not terribly surprising five. Hank drank his shooter, the next one Wesley bought for him, switched back to beer over their protests, and ate but never tasted the steak, his palate numbed by alcohol. Chloe reappeared from time to time, grabbed a bite of
her dinner, her face animated and her conversation a whisper under the throbbing music.
The singer in Lonesome Prairie was well past fifty, a chrome-white platinum blond with a black velvet ribbon tied around her crepey neck. Her dress featured ruffles that made Hank think of circus clowns in whiteface. When she took a break and went off to smoke a cigarette at the bar, the boys in the band launched into an instrumental version of “Amarillo by Morning.” Wesley McNelly stood up and accepted the fiddle player’s offer of his violin. He set the instrument beneath his chin and began sawing notes into conical piles of longing, each flat and sharp slicing like a razor into the smoke-filled room. It was more than a decent rendition; the man was gifted. Hank saw tears welling up in Chloe’s eyes. Francisco patted her hand. No te triste, mi amiga. Gabe Hubbard lifted her up off the barstool and danced her across the floor, his pelvis thrust into hers, driving her out of her mood and into the dance. Only a man who’d been her lover could do that and not get slapped. He had that funny, hunched-over cowboy stance to his dancing, formal from the hands up, but decidedly intimate from the belt buckle on down. She kept her brown eyes on Wesley, let her head rest on Gabe’s shoulder.
Hank felt the alcohol lending everything a fun-house angle. He sobered up, made his way through the dancers and cut in, Gabe backing away, hands up as if Hank held out a gun. “She’s all yours, buddy.”
He didn’t know those steps the other men used, but what was so wrong with a box step? Her cast thumping on the wooden floor, she danced the last dance with Hank. When the bartender hollered out last call, Tracy balled up her apron and threw it at Gabe, smiling.
“I told you college wasn’t ever going to be enough to satisfy you,” he said, chasing her across the floor until they both disappeared into the back room. Hank went to pay the check, but found it had been taken care of by Gabe Hubbard.
A few minutes later Gabe reappeared. “I can’t let you pay for our meal,” Hank said.
“Relax. Someday you might be able to return a favor.”
Hank didn’t like the way he looked at Chloe when he said it. He liked it even less when the big man scooped her up and carried her out to the Honda.
Hank & Chloe Page 20