had come and the sky was blue, and luckily Betty didn’t know what was up. I went to see what she was up to-it was already twenty to ten.
She was rubbing some white cream on her behind. I knew what it was-this stuff that takes hours to sink in- every time I get involved with it I have to go wash it off my hands. But girls don’t know what it is to hurry-at least I’ve never known one who did.
“Listen, you do what you want-me, I’m leaving in one minute.”
She rubbed faster.
“Well, all right, but why won’t you tell me what’s going on?
What’s got into you, anyway?”
I’d let them break my legs before she’d get one word out of me. I told her the same story as before.
“Listen,” I sighed. “We live together, you and me, right, and we try to share everything, right? So it should just be enough that I tell you I have something to show you-you should be shifting into high gear.”
“All right, I’ll get a move on it.”
“Shit, I’ll just wait for you in the car.”
I grabbed my jacket and went down. Light breeze, nice blue sky, big sun. My plan was going perfectly, with the precision of an atomic clock. I had planned on her being late, worked it into my split-second calculations. The guy had promised me that it would keep for at least two hours once out of the fridge. I glanced at my watch. We still had forty-five minutes to kill. I pushed my fist on the horn.
At ten o’clock sharp, I saw her bound out onto the sidewalk and we took off. I was playing the game with a master’s touch. I’d washed the car the night before-vacuumed the cushions and emptied the ashtrays. I wanted to assemble the day, piece by piece, nothing left to chance. Had I wanted night to fall just then, or to conjure up a layered sky, I could have done it with ease-I could have done anything I wanted.
I put my shades on to hide my shining eyes. We headed out of town. The area was fairly dry-a desert. I liked that. The earth had a beautiful color to it. It reminded me of the place we’d lived before. The bungalow episode. It seemed like it had been a thousand years since then.
I felt her squirming around next to me. Poor thing. She lit a cigarette, half smiling, half nervous.
“Jesus, this is far. Tell me what it is!”
“Patience,” I said. “Let me handle this…”
It took a while, but eventually she let herself be lulled by the monotony of the countryside, her head turned sideways against the seat. I put on some music, not too loud. There was no one on the road. I drove along at fifty-five, sixty.
We drove up a small hill covered with trees. Trees were rare in these parts-it sort of made you wonder what they were doing there. I didn’t worry about it. Everything I saw made me feel that the place was wonderful, that I was surfacing out of nowhere into somewhere. The road wound up and around. I branched off onto a small dirt road to the right. Betty sat up in her seat. Her eyes opened wide.
“What in the world are we doing here?” she whispered.
I smiled silently. The car jerked its way up the last hundred yards. I stopped under a tree. The light was perfect. I waited for the silence to return.
“Okay,” I said. “Get out.”
“So, this is where you’re going to strangle and rape me?”
“Yeah, I could.”
She opened the door.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you start by raping me.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll have to think about it.”
We found ourselves at the foot of some sloping land, empty, with gradations of color, from pale yellow to dark red. It was lovely-the last time I’d come, I’d just sat and looked. Betty stood next to me. She whistled.
“Hey, this is really beautiful…”
I savored my triumph. I leaned against the fender of the Mercedes, pinching the end of my nose.
“Come over here,” I said.
I put my arm around her neck.
“Tell me something-you see that old tree there, all the way up on the left, the one with the broken branch?”
“Yes.”
“And there-you see that big rock on the right, the one that looks like a guy curled up in fetal position?”
I felt her starting to get excited, as if I’d lit a wick in her brain.
“Yes, of course I see it. Obviously…”
“And the cabin in the middle, you see that too? Isn’t it cute?”
I was making her jump like a piece of popcorn. I’d set a fire under her. She dug her nails into my arm, nodding her head.
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at…”
“I love this place,” I said. “Don’t you?”
She ran her hand through her hair. Her bracelets rang out like a cascade of coins. I watched her hair fall back onto her lambskin collar. She smiled.
“Yes, it’s like everything’s in place here-like nothing’s missing. I don’t know if that’s what you wanted to show me, but you’re right-it’s great here.”
I glanced at my watch. The moment had come.
“Right,” I said. “Well… it’s yours!”
She didn’t say anything. I took the papers out of my pocket and held them out to her.
“Your land goes from the old tree to the rock that looks like a guy curled up, and comes down to here. The door of the cabin locks with a key.”
When she finally made the connection, she let out a joyful moan. She went to throw herself into my arms. I held her off with one raised finger.
“Just one more minute,” I said.
I went and opened the trunk of the car. If the guy hadn’t lied to me, it was still in time. I unwrapped the strawberry cream pie. I stuck my finger into it. The son of a bitch was just right. I brought it to Betty. She turned completely red.
“Happy birthday!” I said. “We have to eat it right away. Here’s to your thirtieth year.”
I didn’t wait to see her sway. I set the pie down on the hood of the car and grabbed her in my arms.
“Now come here and see what’s in the trunk,” I said.
I’d done everything the night before-filled it with provisions from the supermarket. I’d managed to switch a few price tags on the fancy items.
“There’s enough here for three days,” I said. “That is, if you’d like to invite me to your house.”
She leaned against the car and pulled me to her. It lasted five minutes. It would have gone longer, if I hadn’t pulled myself away-if I hadn’t stayed lucid.
“We’re not going to let a strawberry cream pie melt away, are we? That would be stupid!”
It took two trips to get it all up to the cabin. The land was really sloped, and the sun was already hot. Betty ran all over the place, picking up strange pebbles or standing with her hand shielding her eyes, looking at the horizon. “Jesus, I just can’t believe it,” she kept saying.
As for me, I knew I’d scored big-my all-time-high game. It was a little nothing of a cabin, yet there she was, running her fingers along the windowsills, biting her lip, and turning in circles. I wasn’t allowed to drop my ashes on the floor either. Soon, I thought, we’ll be playing house, making make-believe dinner. That’s exactly what we did. It was real champagne we poured into the paper cups, though.
“When I think…” she said. “When I think that I’ve had to wait thirty years for someone to give me a present like this…!”
I winked at her. I was pleased with myself. The guy figured he’d unloaded his little piece of desert for a hefty sum, and I felt I’d bought a little bit of paradise for a song. I’d been working on the whole thing for a week now, figuring out every detail. Bob was the one who’d put me onto it. We took a quick trip one day to look at it, and my mind was made up immediately. I’d told him, You know, Bob, at first I was just going to buy her a plant, but I realized it would be too small for her, I want to buy her a stretch of mountains or something-a branch of the sea…
