dreaming up ways to seduce him. Like the skinny-dipping. Like asking him to take nude pictures of her. Like doing a Sharon Stone, sitting with her knees apart in a miniskirt. Nothing worked. Finally she put the question to him in a soft voice, 'Ben, are you gay? It's okay if you are.' It wasn't, but that's what she said. He looked surprised and told her no, of course not. She said, 'Then why don't you want to do it?' He said, ' 'Cause it's a sin.' It was that fucking Carl's born-again influence. She wondered if it was still a sin now that he lived in Hollywood and was in movies, an Indian, in Dances with Wolves, but which one? She caught glimpses of him in other pictures, once she learned which ones he was in. He looked great, even getting shot.
She was dying to see him. He'd called and was coming to the house and she wasn't sure what to wear, if she should go smart or hot.
First Hazen calling with 'Guess who just came by.'
No, 'Guess who jes come by here,' and knew right away who he meant - without knowing why she knew it - and felt a twitch in her stomach, or even lower. Hazen said he was calling because now he wanted to buy the property and needed his offering drawn up before the movie star went back to Hollywood, California. He always called Ben the movie star, getting it from Lydell, who hadn't seen a movie since Gone with the Wind and assumed any picture Ben said he was in he must've been the star.
'Since you and him are old school buddies,' Hazen said, 'I bet he'd want you to be in on it and get a nice commission, huh?'
It sounded fishy. Where would he get the money for the down payment, sell his repainted Cadillac?
Hazen said, 'I'll find out where he's staying and let you know. See, then you can invite him over, say you got an offer for his property you want to talk to him about.' Hazen said, 'I can come by your house tonight with the figures. You gonna be home?'
'Tomorrow at the office,' Denise said, and wouldn't let him talk her out of it.
She had never allowed him in the house. Several times they had drinks and dinner together because she had nothing to do and was curious about him and would listen to Hazen tell how he'd once rustled cattle with a semi- trailer and had done some prison time in his wild youth, but never associated with the perverts or hogs inside and had kept himself clean, Hazen eating his dinner with his cowboy hat on. Hazen wanted her to know he'd had an outlaw streak in him but now was a straight-shooter looking for the girl of his dreams. If she ever told anybody she'd add, 'You have to hear him say it.'
Finally, the last time they went out together and he took her home, he started putting the moves on her in his car, the backseat full of engine parts and trash, Hazen kissing and feeling, the straight-shooter smelling of cigarettes, tequila and Aqua Velva, breathing hard through his nose till Denise shut him down with a quiet tone of voice.
She said, 'Hazen, please don't,' and thought of telling him she was a lesbian, but couldn't bring herself to say the word. So she said, 'I'm not used to a man like you. Twice I was talked into getting married, not giving myself time to realize what I was doing, and both times I made an awful mistake. You'll just have to be patient with me.'
She didn't have to tell him to get his hand off her tit. He grumbled something and withdrew it. So she didn't have to pull the SIG Sauer .380 she kept in her handbag and shove it under his nose.
It was time to dress for Ben.
The way it turned out it didn't matter what she was wearing.
Denise opened the door. Ben came in. They looked at each other, neither one saying a word. They went into each other's arms for a hug after all these years, kissing each other on the cheek, on the mouth, on the mouth hard, and ended up on the oriental that covered the living-room floor, scrambling to get enough of their clothes off, Ben's windbreaker, his boots - goddamn it, a pair of the newer ones, hard to pull off - his jeans, Denise her cotton sweater, no bra but the panties beneath the skirt, and love was made in a fever that lasted only a few minutes after twenty years of it never having happened.
On the floor side by side looking at each other, both at peace, smiling a little, she said, 'Well... how've you been?'
He said, 'You look better than ever.'
She said, 'I like your hair like that.'
He said, 'You're not married, are you?'
'Would it matter?'
'Not now.'
She touched his hair. 'Where's your cowboy hat?'
'I'm not a cowboy anymore.'
'I still have a picture of you I cut out of the paper, riding a bull.'
He said, 'You want to know something?'
'What?'
He hesitated, but had to say it because it was the reason he was here.
'I think about you all the time.'
She said, 'Aw, Ben,' in a soft way, touching his face, kissing him. Soon they were kissing each other without making a sound as they settled in.
They got cans of beer from the kitchen and took them into the library where they used to kiss and fool around sometimes, but without ever getting too close to doing it. She said, 'I guess it's not a sin anymore.'
'You remember that?'
'I'd say, 'Why don't we see what it's like.' '
'You already knew.'
'Yeah, but not with you and I had to find out. But I wasn't jumping in the sack with everybody. You know how many guys I did it with? Two.' She paused. 'Actually three while we were in school and I'm Denise the piece? You must've wanted to.'
'Sure I did.'
She said, 'I was absolutely insane over you,' and stopped for a moment, looking at him next to her on the cracked leather sofa, her dark hair and part of her face in lamplight. 'You're not married, are you?'
He said, 'Almost, once,' and saw Kim on the beach at Point Dume, what seemed now years ago.
'Why didn't you?'
'I thought I wanted to -'
'But you weren't sure. I wasn't sure, either,' Denise said, 'when I married Wayne Hostetter, the second- biggest mistake of my life, but it was a chance to get out of town.'
Saving Ben from having to talk about Kim, what happened to her, and what he felt now about ever getting married or even serious with a woman, because they didn't have to be married to have something awful happen to whoever she might be. He wasn't convinced that it would, no, but here it was on his mind while Denise was telling him about the country artist, Wayne Hostetter and the Wranglers in their cowboy hats. 'I called them Wayne and his Wanglers. He's the only guy I ever heard of puts lifts in his cowboy boots.'
'He was your second-biggest mistake,' Ben said. 'What was your first?'
She said marrying Arthur Allen, an investment banker, the most boring man she'd ever met. 'He played golf every afternoon and talked about it all night. It's what golfers do.'
'Why didn't you play?'
'It's boring. I saw every movie you were in.'
'Space Sluts in the Slammer Two?'
'I missed that one.'
'I was killed by a space slut. How'd you know about the movies?'
'My cleaning lady.'
'Right, Ophelia. Preston told me.' He said, 'You were interested, huh?'
Denise stared at him. She said, 'You big lug, don't you know it's been you all the time? What's that from?'
'A lot of old movies, not any I was in.'
She kept staring, not just looking, studying him. She said, 'You're a stuntman. That's pretty cool. Do you
