he'd never finished college, didn't compare himself to other men of his age who were more successful.
He simply put in his hours, did his job, and counted the days toward retirement.
And he bought a lottery ticket twice a week.
A man had to have something to hope for.
'Lieutenant! Over here!'
Horton turned around, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. He saw Deets, the youngest uniform, frantically beckoning him from down the end of an aisle. He dropped the cigarette, stubbed it out, and hurried toward the rookie. 'What did you--?' Find, he was going to say, but there was no reason to ask. The floor in this section of the shop was stained brown with dried blood, forming a huge irregular amoeba pattern against the dusty faded slats of the hardwood finish. Small speckles of blood could be seen on the lower portion of a beveled mirror, though the droplets were smeared and it was clear that someone had tried to wipe them away.
Bentley Little Protruding from underneath a piece of furniture was a small, ragged, fleshy segment of torn muscle.
'Jesus,' Horton breathed. He glanced toward Me Comber, standing on the other side of Deets. 'Call the lab,' he ordered. 'Get some dusters and photogs over here now.'
The younger cop nodded, frightened, and hurried down the aisle toward the front desk.
'Don't touch anything,' the lieutenant told Deets.
'Yes, sir.'
'And stop that 'sir' crap. This isn't the goddamn marines.'
'Okay, sir, uh, Lieutenant.'
Horton looked at the rookie, shook his head. He reached into his pocket for another cigarette, pulled out the package, but found that it was empty. He crumpled it up, put it back in his pocket, and looked wistfully up the aisle to where he'd dropped his other cigarette. It was going to be a long afternoon.
After dinner, Penelope went out to the Garden. The air was warmer than it was inside the air-conditioned house, and more humid, but to her it felt wonderful. She sat on the edge of the fountain, bracing her arms against the rounded concrete, and leaned back, peering upward. The winery was far enough from town that the lights of the business district did not seep into then: air space, and the sky above was a deep purple, dotted with patterned clusters of millions of microscopic stars. Her eyes picked out the Big Dipper, the North Star at its corner, and her gaze swept across Orion's belt and the Little Dipper to the dot of pinkish light that was Mars.
She had always been fascinated by the stars, the moon, the planets, the movements of the heavens. It seemed amazing to her that the progress of celestial bodies had been noted and charted so long ago, the patterns of such an immense canvas identified and understood by peoples who had not even known the rudimentary rules of science grasped by today's grade schoolers. She had taken an astronomy course last semester, hoping to learn more about the subject, but had been disappointed to discover that the class dealt more with the mathematics of trajectories than with the background stories of heavenly bodies and their earthbound discoverers.
Which was one of the reasons she had signed up for, and really looked forward to, this Mythology class. Glancing through the book after the first meeting, she had seen that three full chapters were devoted to the constellations, and she had read those chapters immediately.
This was what she'd wanted to learn.
She had also met Dion in the class.
She found herself thinking of him now, just as she'd thought about him at odd times during the week. She didn't know Dion, didn't know anything about him, but there was something about the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he acted, which interested her. He was obviously intelligent, but he also seemed very nice, very down-to-earth, although that was not a quality to which she would have expected to be attracted.
Did he like her? She thought he might. Twice during the week she had caught him staring at her from the next seat over when he thought she wasn't looking, and he had always looked immediately away, acting guilty, as though he had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to do.
And then today at lunch he had actually spoken to her. Vella, afterward, had said that Dion was obviously interested, but Penelope was not sure she could read that much into the few words that they had spoken together. The suggestion had flattered her, though, and the rest of the day she had found herself tuning out her teachers, going over each sentence they had spoken, looking for clues that backed up Vella's hypothesis.
Penelope looked up into the sky. She smiled. Maybe it was fate. Maybe their signs had coincided, and that's why they had met in this place at this time.
She closed her eyes. Several times today she had tried to imagine what it would be like to go on a date with Dion, but the image just wouldn't come. It was not that she wasn't attracted to him, or at least interested, but she had never before gone on a date, and it was hard to imagine herself carrying on the sort of vacuous conversation favored by high school daters in movies.
Movies.
All of her perceptions of dates had been formed by film, books, or television.
She heard a soft click and opened her eyes, sitting up. Mother Felice opened the sliding glass door and smiled at her. 'Maybe we should bring your bed out here.'
'And my dresser and TV.'
'A refrigerator and microwave?'
They both laughed. Mother Felice crossed the gravel and sat down on the rim of the fountain next to Penelope. The two of them said nothing for a while, simply enjoying the quiet and each other's company. They often sat this way. It would have driven Mother Margeaux mad to sit for so long without doing something actively productive, and Molher Margaret and Mother Sheila would have had to talk, get up, move around. She would not have wanted to be alone with Mother Janine. But Mother Felice enjoyed the quiet, was thankful for silence after spending all day in the hurricane of the household. She was like her daughter in that way, which only served to reinforce Penelope's theory.
Mother Felice leaned her head back, trying to reduce the tension in her neck, then sat up. She looked casually at her daughter. 'Is anything wrong?' she asked.
Penelope frowned, puzzled. 'No. Why?'
Her mother smiled. 'Well, you seemed kind of distant today at dinner. I
just ... well, we sort of thought ... I mean, we were wondering if maybe you'd met someone. You know, a boy.'
Was it that obvious? She hadn't thought she'd acted any differently than usual. She looked at her mother. She wanted to tell the truth, and probably would have if her mother hadn't made mention of the rest of the family, but that 'we' implied that the subject had been discussed, that Mother Felice had been sent out here deliberately. She had no doubt that Mother Felice had been the one to notice--she was always the most observant in emotional matters--but this obvious collusion, this attempt to invade her privacy, no matter how well intentioned, hardened her against revealing anything. 'No,' she said.
Mother Felice frowned. She looked confused, as though she hadn't understood the answer. 'Haven't you even met someone who looks like he might be interesting?'
Penelope shrugged. 'It's too early to tell.' She shook her head. 'God, Mother, it's only been a week. What do you expect?'
'You're right, you're right.' Her mother's voice was understandingly apologetic, her smile sympathetic, but there was still a slight look of mystification on her face.
They were silent again, although the silence this time was not quite as comfortable. Penelope stared up at the recently risen moon, yellow and disproportionately large above the hills in the east.
When she was little, around eight or nine, she had seen the movie A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court with Bing Crosby. It had been light entertainment, a romantic musical comedy, but the thing that had made the biggest impression on her, that had stayed with her for years to come, had been the fact that Bing had been able to save his life by remembering the date of a solar eclipse, passing himself off as a powerful magician, pretending to the medieval men and women intending to burn him at the stake that he was able to make the sun disappear by simply making absurd hand gestures at the appropriate time. It had been a terrifying scene to her, and had been the cause of many a nightmare-filled sleep time. Throughout grammar school she had been obsessed with learning the dates for solar and lunar eclipses, past and present, just in case a similar situation ever happened to her.
