Everyone did double takes when they saw us. The old Ford was part of it; the rest of it was her.
She was this beautiful girl with a sort of boisterous style and that foreign accent. She was wearing this sleeveless black shift, with a long slit in the back, tan sandals attached to these long legs, a huge, gold watch on her wrist, with gold bracelets dangling in front of it, gold hoop earrings, and this big, white smile.
When we’d go in any place, the clerks would look past me with plaster of Paris still spotting my jeans and my arms, and they’d head from behind their counters with open arms, ready to show her the Polos and the Guccis and the DKNYs.
She was looking for a white, heavy man’s or woman’s terrycloth robe, which she couldn’t find anywhere. She said Uncle Ben had black ones and there was nothing more depressing than getting out of a hot shower and slipping into a big, black robe.
I told her there was a shopping center about five miles away, but she said she wanted to look around, anyway. She said she’d never had her own charge card, and money burrowed a hole in her pocket.
“Burns,” I said.
“What?”
“Money burns a hole in your pocket.”
“I never had any,” she said.
“I still don’t.”
“You live here and you’re poor?”
“My mother works for your uncle.”
“Oh, you’re the one.”
“The one what?”
“The one who’s supposed to show me the sights. Uncle Ben told me about you.”
“When was that?”
“The other night when he called. Just before I left to come here.”
We’d wandered around the corner to Newtown Lane. Into some clothing shop, the kind I never went into, filled with leather jackets, silk scarves and dresses, and CKone eau de toilette.
I let her remark about my showing her around go without comment. Let Nevada correct it. She’d only just arrived at Roundelay that morning.
I wanted to call Alex before he left for the theater. I looked at my watch (five P.M.) and she saw me do it.
“Do you have a date?”
“No. My mother might wonder where I am. I went down to the beach about noon, that’s all.”
“With that girl who threw rocks at you?”
“Yeah.”
“Pffft! Is she your girlfriend?”
“No. Just a friend.”
“Some friend.”
Then she pulled this blue man’s shirt off a hanger and held it up to me. It had yellow and white flowers stitched across the front.
She said, “This would fit you. No?”
“It would, but I wouldn’t wear it.”
“Sure you would. Wouldn’t you?”
“No…. Don’t buy me anything.”
“You think I would buy this for you?”
“I don’t know what you’d do.”
“I don’t even know you.” She laughed. “I like you, but I don’t go around buying shirts for someone I don’t even know.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“You thought I was going to buy it for you. I know you did.”
She was right about that.
I felt like an ass, but I shrugged and said, “You wouldn’t be paying for it, anyway. Uncle Ben would.”
“Do you like him, Lang?” She hailed a clerk, handed him the shirt and the Visa card.
“He’s my mother’s boss.”
“So you don’t.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Do you like his music?”
“A lot.”
She said to the clerk, “You can mail this for me?”
He said he could.
She wrote down an address while she talked to me. “What about Cali?”
“I don’t know much about her. Do you?”
“There’s a portrait of them together in the guest room. It’s the only picture of her at Roundelay. It’s a very formal pose, but the odd thing is she has a nosebleed.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No…. And I can’t imagine Uncle Ben loving someone so passionately. He’s so stern…. And that Franklin—he looks like something out of a wax museum.”
She pushed the address across the counter, and the clerk said it would be extra to mail anything overseas.
“Okay!” she said brightly.
I figured the grape picker was going to have a new shirt. A $320 one. A Yohji Yamamoto.
TWELVE
“WHAT’S HER NAME?” ALEX asked.
“Huguette Haun…. That’s why I didn’t call sooner. Are you on your way out the door?”
“Almost. Huguette what?”
“Haun.”
“H-a-u-n?”
“I guess.”
“Huguette Haun?”
“Yes. What’s the big deal?”
“Do you know who she is, Lang?”
“She’s the daughter of a friend of Nevada’s. She calls Nevada ‘Uncle Ben.’”
“Lang, dear, she’s Cali’s daughter.”
“I didn’t even know she had a daughter.”
“Cali married a man named Leonard Haun. They had one child. You just spent the afternoon with her.”
“She’s the one I told you about: the one Nevada wanted me to entertain this summer.”
“My Gawd! And you refused.”
“You said good for me last night.”
“I didn’t know it was Cali Coss’s daughter!”
“What difference does it make?”
“Aren’t you curious? What’s she like?”
“I thought you were rushing out the door.”
“I am. But what’s she like?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t believe you. Don’t you have any curiosity?”
“I’m not starstruck, Alex.”
“Okay. Skip it!”
“You can meet her this weekend.”
“I can?”
“I guess you can.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Why don’t we take her to a movie? I have to run, Lang. I love you.”
“Love you too,” I said, but I was teed off.
I hung up wondering how I was going to backtrack, how I was going to tell Nevada that both Alex and I would entertain her this weekend. I wondered if he’d agree to it…just this one time.
THIRTEEN
A SCHWINN TEMPO WENT with the caretaker’s cottage. Mom was in a tizzy because she was nearly out of the homemade bread Nevada liked, and what if he wanted sandwiches for lunch that day?
I knew the farm where she got the bread, so I headed out around seven A.M. to get some for her.
The Range Rover was parked down by the gate. The rottweilers were diving into their food. Huguette was standing there in white shorts and a yellow T-shirt, watching with a frown on her face.
“Lang! Come here, please!”
“Are you feeding them now?”
“I’m trying to. That one won’t eat, though.”
“That’s C. He always waits until the others are finished.”
“So that’s what he’s up to? What does C stand
