Gail Hargrove seemed to notice the effect that Allison had on him, but maybe she was simply acting on some protective instinct around young girls by spelling out how young they were. She said, “Our queen and her court are particularly lovely this year, aren’t they? Whatever they’re giving them in the school cafeteria seems to be having wondrous effects.”
“Very pretty,” he said without much enthusiasm. He had to be careful around women like Gail Hargrove.
Part of her status in the town depended upon her reputation as a graceful and skilled ambassador to the powerful. Despite his tepid response, she seemed to believe she had figured out what interested him, so she offered him a closer look. The photographer had exposed enough film, and he was folding his tripod and putting equipment in padded cases, so she took Ted Forrest by the arm and led him to the girls.
They had little notion of who Ted was. One or two probably knew the name Forrest because they had seen it engraved on plaques on public buildings and parks; the others were ignorant. But they knew who Gail Hargrove was, and they saw her defer to Forrest and treat him like a visiting potentate. They all perked up as they had been trained to do, looked him in the eye, and gave him nearly identical good-student smiles-all but one, whose smile was distinctly different.
He surprised everyone by going down on one knee, bowing his head, and saying, “Your majesty, I’m deeply honored to be admitted to the presence of such a gracious queen and her beautiful princesses.” Gail Hargrove and the rest of the civic boosters laughed and applauded, and when the noise died down a bit, she introduced the girls.
The queen was Rebecca Sanders, the daughter of the plant manager for the packing and canning plant owned by a supermarket chain. Forrest said to her, “Say hello to your dad for me.” He was not surprised when he heard the names of three of the six princesses were Milton, Keller, and Cole, all names he knew. He said something friendly to each. Two of the others were Martinez and Garcia, and he said merely, “Very pleased to meet you,” as though it were true. Gail Hargrove, with a small-town politician’s delight in showmanship, saved Allison to the very end.
When Ted Forrest heard the name, at first he felt cheated. If she had been from a family he knew, he might have been able to contrive a way to visit her at home. If she had been from a family with business ties to his holding company or his water interests, he might at least have had some excuse to run into her. But he had never heard of anyone named Straight. He said, “Straight. That’s such a familiar name. Do I know your family?”
She gave him the mischievous look he thought he had detected earlier. “It’s only familiar because everybody you meet says they’re straight, even if they’re not.”
Ted Forrest laughed, the other girls joined him, and a half second later, the adults laughed nervously, too. But Gail Hargrove was not amused, and she didn’t pretend to be. After a moment, enough people noticed it and the irreverence was strangled. Gail Hargrove restored her frozen smile, took Ted Forrest away, and showed him the Japanese cucumbers and Chinese eggplants. After a minute or two, she had recovered enough to launch into her pitch for his support in the municipal-redevelopment effort.
Ted Forrest listened attentively, but did not say exactly how much money he was likely to give, or for which portions of the project. He had learned over time that his status diminished when agreement was reached. He also wanted an excuse to stay longer. He had at first planned to drive home at four o’clock, but he decided to stay for the evening’s fiesta. Ted Forrest had noticed that in order to obtain what he wanted, usually all that was required was patience and alertness.
Between the day’s events and the fiesta that began at seven, there was a lull, and he used the time to call for a room reservation, not in Mendota, but along Route 180 outside Fresno. He also drove to a liquor store and bought a quart of vodka, then stopped at a pharmacy for a flat white plastic bottle designed for a woman’s travel kit. He filled the plastic bottle with vodka, put the bottle in his coat pocket and locked the rest of the vodka in his car trunk, then went to the party.
The fiesta was held in the same few blocks downtown that the police had cordoned off for the earlier events. Mariachi bands strolled the sidewalks playing. There was a stage at the far end of the main street where two Mexican dance troupes performed folk dances in alternation. There was a beer tent run by a local bar, a wine- tasting tent run by a confederation of wineries, with the profits split in some unnamed formula with charities. If a person could make it past the crowds around those two tents, there was a long row of open booths where hot food was for sale.
Ted Forrest endured a couple of hours of the chatter of the town politicians and businesspeople. He knew that their patience and stamina weren’t as prodigious as his, and they drank more than he did. As they each expressed their bid for his support of some specific part of the renewal project, then ran out of words, fell silent, and finally wandered off, he waited. The time came when he was free.
He sauntered along the edges of the fiesta, scanning the crowd. He found the queen and her court, surrounded loosely by a swirl of people their age, slipped into the group, and asked the queen to dance with him.
They danced something like a Mexican polka to the music from the stage for a minute or two, and he handed her off to a boy she had been talking to. The boy seemed to have mixed feelings about dancing, but had no time to think of an excuse not to. Ted Forrest took the hand of the princess who was standing nearest, danced with her, and then handed her off to another boy. He had started a trend. Either the other boys were less afraid to dance, or the girls were more insistent, but he noted that most of the other princesses were dancing by now, so he moved to Allison Straight. As they began to dance, he guided her into the center of the court so it was clear he was simply showing the shy kids how to have fun. But he said to her, “You’re the most beautiful girl in the county.”
“You know that, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Then thanks.”
He tried again. “You seem much more sophisticated than the others. Have you traveled, or are you some kind of prodigy?”
“Kind of what?”
“Prodigy. You know, like a genius.”
She laughed hard, collapsing against his chest. “Oh, my God,” she said.
“You didn’t hear me wrong, did you?”
“So much for being a genius. But it’s not just me, it’s this band. It’s so loud.” She leaned against his chest again, then pulled back and patted his sport coat. “What’s this?”
He leaned close and said into her ear, “I brought a little vodka to get me through this.”
She looked up at him, her eyes excited. “Can I have some?”
“How old are you?”
She looked disappointed. “Busted. I’m sixteen.”
“If you think that’s old enough, then so do I. When this dance is over, go get some juice or a soft drink. It goes best with fruity ones, like orange.” He looked around. “Meet me by that row of trees at the edge of the park.”
“That’s no good. Couples go in there to fool around.”
“Where, then?”
“Don’t you have a car?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Then we can go there. Where did you park?”
“Up the street and around the corner behind the hardware store.”
Her eyes ignited with excitement. “Perfect. I’ll meet you there in, like, five minutes.”
She was there in three. They sat in the car and he poured some vodka into her orange juice, and they talked. Within a half hour, he had heard about how her father had left when she was four, and about her mother’s inept attempt to raise her, which she saw as comical rather than tragic. Her mother was working tonight. She was a secretary at a dentist’s office during the day and a waitress in a bar at night. The more Ted Forrest heard, the better he liked Allison. After an hour of talking, he kissed her. She stared at him for a few seconds as though she were trying to be sure she had not imagined it, then a few more to decide how she ought to feel about it, and then kissed him back.
It seemed to Ted Forrest that it was only a few minutes after that when he began to see small groups of people walking along the street, getting into cars to go home. He said, “I think we ought to get out of here.”
