“Our best hope for the future is that he gets cancer,” Hangtown snarled.
“You’re wrong about him, Father,” she said, angry red splotches forming on her chiseled cheeks. “He’s not Satan.”
“He’ll do,” cackled Hangtown, who clearly relished these sparring sessions with his younger daughter.
His older daughter did not seem to be enjoying it at all. Moose’s eyes were cast down at her empty plate, her hands folded in her lap.
“This is the price you pay for living in paradise,” Takai said emphatically. “Other people want in, too.”
“In which case it’s not paradise anymore,” Hangtown said. “We never learn. We destroyed southern California. We destroyed Florida. We destroyed Long Island-”
“Wait, I have to take issue with you there,” Mitch interrupted. “Long Island was never nice.”
“It’s enough to make one wish for a nationwide economic calamity,” Hangtown argued. “People need to simplify their lives. Spend less. Consume less. We are pigs.”
“I’m going to have to take issue with you again-on behalf of Elrod,” Mitch said. “He seems like a very efficient fellow who’s doing no harm to anyone.”
“I like this man,” Hangtown said to Moose, as Jim refilled the wineglasses. “You ought to marry him.”
“You are the pig, Father,” Takai spoke up angrily. “You get to live here in luxuriant splendor but no one else can. That’s not a community-that’s a country club with a ceiling on its membership.”
“I just want to be left in peace. Don’t I have that right?”
“Not if it means denying other people their rights!”
Hangtown sat there in heavy silence for a moment, the fire crackling behind him. “You’ve been blinded by your own greed, princess. You think Bruce Leanse will line your pockets with gold, and you don’t care who or what gets destroyed.”
“You’re wrong, Father. He’s a good, good man.”
He leered at her. “Well, you ought to know just how good he is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Father, please,” Moose interjected, glancing uncomfortably at Mitch, who was sitting there wondering if Hangtown was always so hard on Takai. “This is getting a little out of hand.”
The old man ignored her, glaring across the table at Takai. “Shall I tell you what your problem is?”
“What is it?” she demanded hotly, glowering right back at him. “I’d really love to know.”
“You inherited the Frye artistic vision but none of our talent. So you have to feed on real people in order to express yourself. You’re a leech, my dear. A lovely, silken parasite.”
“Th-that…” Takai was practically speechless, nothing but bottled-up fury. “That was an awful thing to say to anyone.” She got up suddenly, toppling her chair over behind her, and threw her wine in her father’s face. Then she stormed out, her spiked heels clacking, her hips swinging.
The dinner table fell silent as Mitch heard the front door slam, then the roar of the Porsche’s engine. It pulled away in a splatter of gravel.
“Hot damn!” the great Wendell Frye exclaimed happily, using his napkin to dab at the wine that was streaming down his face and neck. “Another quiet evening at the Ponderosa. More lamb, Big Mitch?”
• • •
“I thought I’d make dinner for Bella here on Friday,” Des said drowsily as she kneaded his chest with her bare toes. The two of them were lolling in Mitch’s claw-footed bathtub together, still aglow from the atomic passion they’d just detonated upstairs in the sleeping loft. “I had hoped to be in my new place by now, but…”
“Not a problem,” Mitch murmured contentedly, stroking her smooth, taut calf. “That’s fine. Wonderful…”
With the bathroom door open they could see the fire in the fireplace and hear the vintage Doug Sahm on the stereo-Sir Doug’s old San Antonio recordings with The Pharaohs. Both Clemmie and Quirt were balanced precariously on the edge of the tub, transfixed by the plopping, shifting water below. Quirt even dangled a paw down toward it, only to yank it back when Des playfully flicked water at him. It was strange how Quirt would only hang around in the house when Des was there, Mitch reflected. Even Clemmie seemed happier.
“There’s somebody else I’d like to invite,” she told him. “One of my… that is to say, a certain individual with whom I’m related is having a personal occasion.”
Mitch eyed her curiously. Whenever she retreated into police-speak it meant she was ill at ease. “What kind of a personal occasion?”
“A birthday.”
“And which particular relative would we be discussing, Master Sergeant?”
“Um, it’s my father. And we have this tradition where I make Hoppin’ John for him every year on his birthday. That’s black-eyed peas and ham and-”
“Whoa…”
“Rice, with lots and lots of Tabasco sauce. I usually make cornbread to sop it all up and-”
“Whoa! Pull over a second, girlfriend. We’re not exactly talking about what we’re talking about, are we?”
Des frowned at him. “Which is what?”
“That you just said you want me to meet your father.”
She fell silent a moment, shifting uneasily in the tub. “Well, yeah. Unless you don’t want to, which I would certainly… Man, why are you grinning at me that way?”
“I’m kvelling.”
“What does that mean-kvelling?”
“It’s what your Jewish people do in lieu of an end-zone celebration. It means I’m tremendously pleased. But tell me, who am I supposed to be? A friend? An acquaintance? A portly, somewhat pink person you bumped into at the supermarket?”
“Okay, that’s a fair question.”
“And…?”
“And it’s none of his damned business.”
“Hey, this sounds promising.”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’ll know what’s going on between us the second he walks through the door.”
“How?”
“He’s the Deacon, that’s how. You think you can read me. Compared to you, he’s Evelyn Wood. Besides which, I’m not a very good actress.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” Mitch said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because it means you weren’t faking just now when we were upstairs.”
“Boyfriend, nobody’s that good an actress,” she said softly, her eyes shining at him.
Mitch had not known whether to expect Des when he got home from Hangtown’s or not. Happily, he’d found her cruiser parked outside his cottage. And the lady herself parked on a stool at her easel, glasses sliding down her nose as she pondered an arrangement of empty bottles that she’d positioned on the floor at her feet. She’d stripped down to a halter top and gym shorts. And for Mitch there was something about the sight of her peerless caboose perched there on that stool that
… well, within sixty seconds they were out of their clothes and up in his sleeping loft together.
It was so different than it had been like with Maisie. Within two weeks, he and Maisie had moved in together. Des was much more guarded and careful. In many ways, she was exactly like one of her feral cats. One moment she would inch toward his outstretched hand, purring. The next moment she would hiss and dart away. She was the most skittish woman he had ever known. Also the most alluring. Sometimes, he felt he knew exactly what she was thinking. Other times she totally befuddled him. For sure, she was not the sort of woman who he ever thought he’d find himself involved with. It was not the racial thing-which was not a thing at all as far as he was concerned. It was that she was a goddamned state trooper. And big into rules. She refused to keep any of her clothes at his place-always carting them to and fro in a gym bag. Refused to stay in his New York apartment, which she felt was Maisie’s place. More than anything, Mitch felt, she was afraid of getting in too deep. Possibly this was the baggage she’d brought along from her divorce. Possibly this was because the two of them were so different. He didn’t know. He only knew that she was beautiful and smart and honest, and the thought of her got him through each day.
“How was your drawing class tonight?”
