He found Stella in the living room, with her back to the bar, sipping from a tall glass. She was well dressed in a crisp white billowy shirt, a short black skirt, and kneehigh black boots. For some reason, he assumed her toenails were painted red. She seemed amused by the sight of him, amused by the evening in general. He noticed that she giggled out loud when one of the trophy wives, who was straining for a look at the vice president in the other room, accidentally dropped a cracker covered with some kind of soft white cheese on the leg of her creamcolored pantsuit.
“I’m glad you came,” she said when he joined her. “Your husband isn’t,” Joe said.
“What was going on in there? It looked like you were trying to bait him.”
“I was,” Joe said.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Joe smiled. “I never do. I just bump around sometimes until I hit something.”
She finished her drink and handed the glass to the bar
tender. “Another gin and tonic, please. And what would you like?”
“I have a drink.”
“Then have another.” She turned around. “Ed, will you please get my friend a bourbon and water?”
Ed looked up. He was taller than Joe, his broad face impassive, his eyes challenging. Joe had obviously broken up a story Ed was telling Stella before the pantsuit incident, and he resented it.
“Ed once skied down the face of the Grand,” she told Joe, her eyes widening. “Only twelve people have ever done it.”
“Eleven,” Ed corrected.
“Ed makes a dozen,” she said, and Joe realized she was poking fun at the bartender, but Ed didn’t get it. Instead, he puffed out his chest while he poured, straining the buttons on his shirt.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Joe said, but his mind was still on Don and Pete Illoway, how close he’d come to getting Ennis to blurt something.
She added, “He’s got pictures he’ll show you. He showed them to me within five minutes of meeting him.”
Now you’re pushing it, Joe thought. But Ed was easily flattered. He made the drink and handed it to her. “Here you go, Mrs. Ennis.”
“And don’t forget the bourbon and water for Joe here,”
she said.
“Yeah,” Ed grunted.
Joe and Stella exchanged glances. She was repressing a smile. Gesturing toward the sliding glass doors, she asked, “Have you ever seen the sun set on the Tetons?”
“Oh,” Joe mused, “about a dozen times so far.”
“Hmpf.”
“But I need some air. Thanks for the drink, Ed,” Joe said, leading Stella toward the sliding glass doors.
“Make sure he didn’t spit in it,” she laughed. “Ed’s sweet on me.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“It’s my gift to boys,” she said, smiling, flirting, but shooting a look at Joe that had just a little bit of fear in it.
The deck was clear of guests because they were all in the great room meeting the vice president. Joe and Stella walked to the corner of the deck, out of the light. Joe followed the trail of her scent through the thin outdoor sweet smell of sage and pine.
“It’s a little cold,” she said, putting her drink on the railing and hugging herself with her arms. “Don’t you want to meet the vice president?”
“Maybe later,” Joe said.
“We’re going whitewater rafting tomorrow,” Stella said.
“It will probably be the last time we’re able to do it this year before the snow starts flying. The original plan was to take the VP as our guest so Don could sell him on the idea of buying a place in Beargrass, but the Secret Service saw the stretch of river this afternoon and all of the places somebody could shoot at him—not to mention the class four rapids—and put a kibosh on the whole idea. Would you like to come with us instead?”
“That’s a nice offer,” Joe said, “but I’ll pass.”
“You should come along anyway. It’s the last trip of the year. And maybe the last time for me for a long time,” she said ominously.
“What do you mean?”
He could see her eyes glisten in the light of the stars.
“Don’s about to replace me for a newer model,” she said. “I can just tell. The other day he looked at me across the table and said, ‘Did you know you have some gray hairs?’ He said it in the same tone he uses when he looks at the odometer and says, ‘Ninety thousand miles.’ That means we’ll have a new car within the week.
“He doesn’t have her in the wings yet,” she said, “but it won’t take him long. Don always wants the best, and, well, I’m getting up there in years. His trophy isn’t so shiny anymore. I always knew it would happen. That’s why he had the prenup, after all. I knew it would be a short ride. But I was determined that it would be a short, fun ride.
