Texas by the Tail

the notion of stealing towels from a hotel or betraying a confidence or making time with a friend's wife.

'There was always a risk in such shenanigans, and the professional gambler had enough risks as it was. Zearsdale, then, if he was inclined to make trouble, would have a hard time finding a vulnerable spot.

Of course, Mitch was vulnerable by the fact of being what he was. Of living as he and Red lived. So…

She rolled over in the bed, and put her arms around him. 'Don't worry any more, darling,' she whispered. 'Everything will be all right.'

'Of course it will.' He patted the satiny plumpness of her bottom. 'I'm sorry if I waked you up, honey.'

'That's okay. Want me to give you something to make you Sleep?'

He did and she did, and it did. But the sleep seemed almost as brief as the treatment which brought it about. One minute he was dozing off, the next-or so it seemed-Red was shaking him, telling him that he would have to hurry because breakfast was already on the way up.

He arose promptly, and headed for the bathroom. Grumpily wondering why he had been called so early, but recognizing that Red would have had her reasons. Husband-like, he had learned long ago that if Red thought he should know something or remember something, it was best to pretend that he did; otherwise, he would find himself guilty of possibly the worst crime on the wifely calendar-ignorance of something of great importance to her, which should therefore be of equal importance to him.

He had shaved and was in the shower when Red poked her head in the door. Was he about ready? Breakfast had just arrived. He called that he'd be there in a shake, hoping she would jog his memory with a clue. When she didn't-hearing her reclose the bathroom door-he called to her again.

'Uh, about how much time have we got, honey?'

'Well… were we going to try to get there by noon?'

Get there? Get where?

'Whatever you think.' He turned off the shower and began toweling himself. 'Uh, where shall we eat lunch?'

'Well-Oh, I know! We'll take it with us. I'll have the dining room pack us a big hamper.'

'Fine, oh, fine,' Mitch said, desperately searching his memory.

'Maybe I should call ahead, too, huh? So we'll be expected.'

'Uh, yes, you do that,' Mitch said.

The door closed. He got out of the shower, and reached for his robe. And suddenly he remembered. Why, of course! They were driving up to his son's school today. This was the day they were seeing Sam, his son- and he had forgotten! Hurrying out of the bathroom to breakfast, Mitch felt a wrench of conscience. How bad off could a guy be, anyway, to forget a visit to his own son?

They had breakfast, and dressed. Mitch in tweeds and a dark sport shirt, Red in a fawn-colored travel suit with a head scarf of off- ivory silk. As they took the elevator downstairs, Mitch asked her to remind him that the quarterly payment on his income tax was about due. Red said she would do it, and that he was not to talk about anything unpleasant for the rest of the day.

Turkelson himself was at their car, supervising the tuckingin of a Thermos-type hamper. Mitch addressed him as boy, and handed him a dime tip. The manager accepted it with as much bowing as his portliness would permit, then exploded into laughter as they drove away.

It took them perhaps an hour to get out of Houston and the city's heavy traffic. Then, having reached the highway, he settled the Jag down to a more-or-less steady seventy miles an hour. It was a warm day, but a little cool in the swiftly moving car. Red moved close to Mitch, her small shoulder pressing against his. Glancing up into the car's mirror, he surprised her in a look of such love and devotion that a quick lump came into his throat.

'Mitch,' she said softly. 'You're the dearest, darlingest, nicest man that ever lived.'

'What took you so long to catch on?' Mitch grinned.

'I've known it right from the beginning. Sometimes I forget, I guess, and then something happens like this morning- You'd forgotten about coming to see Sam, hadn't you?'

Mitch nodded guiltily. 'I should have had my ass kicked.'

'You were a darling,' Red insisted. 'You pretended to remember because I expected you to. To keep me from being hurt or disappointed in you.'

Mitch said that that was the way he was-perfect. The thought, not highly original, flicked through his mind that the more different women were, the more they were the same. How many times, for example, had Teddy and his mother and Red done just about the exact opposite of what he had expected them to do? Teddy would smile at him when he expected a slap. His mother would slap him when logic prophesied a smile. Red-well, Red had just rewarded forgetfulness with tenderness. As proof of her love for him. All this was not to say, of course, that a woman would always do the thing contrary to a man's expectations. No, a woman was not going to be as easily understood as that! The subtle kinship which united her with her sex had a sweetly mythic as well as a contradictory quality. About her was the kind of wide-eyed, innocent, infuriating, deliciously irrelevant relevance that associated Easter bunnies with painted hen's eggs.

He was brought out of these abstract reveries when, a few miles short of his son's school, they stopped at a service station. The emblem Z (for Zearsdale) on the station's gas pumps was responsible. He had seen these signs before, naturally, but they had had no meaning for him. Now, after last night, they had a great deal. For a man needs something very, very special in the oil business to become an important refiner and distributor.

Attempting to become one, he invariably is confronted by the giant-with-many-names who proceeds nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a million to stomp the holy God out of him. The giant has posted Keep Out signs around the field of refining and distributing. Littering that field are the bleached and broken bones of intruders who had everything to go the distance- yet not quite enough.

There was Gidsen, for example, a man with great wit and charm, and the backing of some of the east's wealthiest families. No more. There was Harlund, who had as much going for him as Gidsen, plus plenty of political power. No more. And so on, endlessly.

To fight the many-named giant, you had to fight his way. And that was not something you could learn. It had to be second-nature with you. An instinct for the jugular. A conviction that the destruction of an enemy was as necessary as defecation. A social outlook that was as intestinal as it was amoral; seeing one's neighbors as something to be gobbled up, and a knife in the back as the best way to a man's heart.

Not all the giant's successful rivals were like that, of course. There are always exceptions. But Mitch doubted that Zearsdale was one of them.

What the hell? he asked himself. I'm not that important. I didn't really do anything to get him down on me.

His son, Sam, was waiting for them at the gate of the school. Mitch's heart quickened as the boy came toward them-black-haired, gray-eyed, wirily trim in his cadet's uniform. The long-ago image of one Mitchell Corley, dice handler de luxe.

Sam shook hands with him, kissed Red and complimented her on her suit. Then, he cast a lingering and longing eye at the car's controls, and cocked a brow at his father.

'Okay,' Mitch laughed. 'If it's all right with your Aunt Red.'

'Of course, it's all right,' Red smiled. 'I'll sit on your lap, Mitch.'

Mitch slid over on the seat, and Sam got behind the wheel. How old was he now, thirteen, fourteen? He experimented with the stick shift for a moment, then drove them smoothly through the gate to a nearby picnic area. Mitch complimented him on his driving as they unloaded the picnic hamper. It wouldn't be long now, he said, before Sam was driving his own car.