'What was that all about?' Trudy said. 'He seemed kind of mad.'
'He doesn't like you.'
'Oh yeah, I forgot.'
'No you didn't.'
'Okay, I didn't.'
'You want to shoot first?'
'I think I'd really rather go in the house and have a cup of coffee. It's kind of chilly out here.'
'You're not dressed like it's chilly.'
'I've got hose on. They're warmer than you think. Just not warm enough. Besides, I haven't seen you in a while—'
'Almost two years.'
'—and I wanted to look good.'
'You do.'
'So do you. You could gain a few pounds, but you look good.'
'Well, you don't need to gain or lose an ounce. You look great.'
'Jazzercise. I've got a record and I do what it says. Us older ladies have to work at it.'
I smiled. 'Okay, older lady. Why don't you help me gather this stuff, and we'll go on up to the house.'
She sat at the kitchen table and smiled at me and made small talk. I got down the coffee and tried to keep my mind off how it used to be between us, but I wasn't any good at it.
When I had the coffee maker going, I sat at the table across from her. It was slightly warm in the kitchen from the gas heaters, and close enough I could smell the scent of her minty soap and the hint of some perfume, probably dabbed behind the ears and knees and below her belly button. That's the way she used to do it, and the thought of it made me weak.
'Still working in the rose fields?' she asked.
'We've been digging them, but not in the last few days. The man me and Leonard work for is through with that part. It'll be a few days before he'll need us for anything else.'
She nodded, ran one long-nailed hand through her hair, and I saw the glint of a small, gold loop in her earlobe. I don't know what it was about that gesture, about the wink of gold, but it made me want to take her in my arms, pull her on the table and make the two-year absence of her blow away.
Instead I contented myself with a memory, one of my favorites. It was about the time we went to this dance and she had worn this zebra-striped blouse and mini-skirt. I was twenty-three and she was nineteen. The way she danced, the way she moved when she wasn't dancing, the smell of her, had made me manic with lust.
I had whispered something to her and she had laughed and we had gone out to my Chevy and driven to our favorite parking place on a pine-covered hill. I stripped her and she stripped me, and we made slow, sweet love on the motor-warm hood of my car, the moon shining down on us like a personal love-light, the cool summer breeze blowing across us like a feathered fan.
And the thing I remember best about that time, other than the act of copulation, was I had felt so goddamn strong and immortal. Old age and death were as wild and improbable as some drunken story about walking across the face of a star.
'How's... what is it? Howard?' It wasn't a thing I really wanted to ask, but it came out anyway.
'Okay. We're divorced. Have been for a year now. I don't think I'm cut out for marriage. I had you and I screwed that up, didn't I?'
'No great loss.'
'I left you for Pete and Pete for Bill and Bill for Howard. None of them worked out, and neither did the ones I didn't marry along the way. None of them came close to what we had. And the kind of men that are anything like you are harder and harder to find.'
The flattery was a little thick, so I didn't have anything to say to it. I checked the coffee, poured a couple of cups.
When I set hers on the table, she looked at me, and I started to say something brotherly, but it wouldn't come out.
'I've missed you, Hap,' she said. 'I really have.'
I put my coffee cup on the table next to hers and she stood and I held her and we kissed. The earth didn't move and my heart didn't stop, but it was quite all right just the same.
Then we had our hands all over each other, and we started moving toward the bedroom, molting clothes along the way. Under the covers we danced the good, slow dance, and she let loose with that laugh I loved so much, the one as sweet and happy as the song of a bird.
And I did not care to remember then that even that most predatory of birds, the shrike, can sing.
Chapter 2
About two in the morning the phone rang. I got up, and went to the kitchen and answered it. I don't think Trudy even heard it.
It was Leonard.
