'It's the Quadrantid shower,' Davey said. 'We'll be getting forty an hour pretty soon. It's the shortest-lived meteorite display, but the densest except for the Perseids.'
I could hear the mud sucking at his boots as he shifted his weight. I was glad it was dark, that he couldn't see the flush of pleasure on my face as he drew closer, looking up at the sky, as if he cared about the Quadrantids, as if that's why he'd come out.
'There!' Owen said. 'Did you see it, Uncle Ray? Did you?'
'Yeah, I saw it buddy. I saw it.'
He was standing right next to me. If I shifted just an inch to my left, I could brush him with my sleeve. I felt the radiant heat of him across the narrow gap between us in the darkness. We had never stood so close.
'You and Starr having a beef?' he asked me softly.
I exhaled vapor, imagined I was smoking, like Dietrich in The Blue Angel. 'What did she say?'
'Nothing. She's just been acting funny lately.'
Shooting stars hurled themselves into the empty places, burned up. Just for the pleasure of it. Just like this. I could have swallowed the night whole.
Ray toked too hard, coughed, spat. 'Must be hard on her, getting older, pretty girls coming up in the same house.'
I gazed up as if I hadn't heard, but what I was thinking was, tell me more about the pretty girls. I was embarrassed for wanting it, it was base, what did pretty matter? I had thought that so many times with my mother. A person didn't need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn't help wanting it. If that was the way I could be loved, to be beautiful, I'd take it.
'She still looks good,' I said, thinking that it wouldn't be so hard on her if he didn't follow me out into the star-filled night, if he didn't watch me the way he did, touching his mouth with his fingertips.
But I didn't want him to stop. I was sorry for Starr, but not enough. I had the sin virus. I was the center of my own universe, it was the stars that were moving, rearranging themselves around me, and I liked the way he looked at me. Who had ever looked at me, who had ever noticed me? If this was evil, let God change my mind.
You couldn't stop it, Mother. I didn't have to listen to you anymore.
IT WAS SPRING, painting the hillsides with orange drifts of California poppies, dotting the cracks in gas stations and parking lots with poppies and blue lupine and Indian paintbrush. Even in the burn zones, the passes were matted with yellow mustard as we jounced along in Ray's old pickup truck.
I told him I wanted to see the new development up in Lancaster, the custom cabinetry he 'd been working on. Maybe he could pick me up after school sometime. 'You know how funny Starr's been,' I said. Every day I came out of school hoping I would see his truck with the feathered roach clip hanging from the rearview mirror. Finally he had come.
The development itself was bare as a scar, with torn and dusty streets of big new houses. Some were already roofed and sided, others finished to the insulation, some skeletal and open to the sky. Ray led me through the house where he was working, clean, the exterior finished, smelling of raw sawdust. He showed me the solid maple cabinetry in the eat-in kitchen, the bay window, the built-in bookcases, the backyard gazebo. I felt the sun glinting off my hair, knew how my mother felt that day long ago at the Small World bookstore, when she had seen my father and stood in the window, beautiful in the light.
I let him show me around like a real estate agent — the living room's two-story picture window, the streamlined toilets in the two and a half baths, the turned banister, the carved newel post. 'I lived in a house like this when I was married,' he said, running his hand along the flank of the heavy banister, pushing against the solidity of the post. I tried to imagine Ray in a two-and-a-half-bath life, dinner on the table at six, the regular job, the wife, the kid. But I couldn't. Anyway, even when he was doing it, he was going to the Trop instead of coming home, falling in love with strippers.
I followed him upstairs, where he showed me the finish work, cedar-lined linen closets and window seats. In the master bedroom we could hear the hammering from the other houses and the sound of the bulldozer cutting a pad for a new one. Ray looked out the smudgy casement at the surrounding construction. I imagined what the room would look like once the people moved in. Lilac carpets and blue roses on the bedspread, white- and-gold double dresser, headboard. I liked it better the way it was, pink wood, the sweet raw smell. I watched the browns and greens of his Pendleton shirt, his hands spread on either side of the window frame, as he looked down into the unplanted yard. 'What are you thinking?' I asked him.
'That they won't be happy,' he said quietly.
'Who?'
'People who buy these houses. I'm building houses for people who won't be happy in them.' His good face looked so sad.
I came closer to him. 'Why can't they?'
He pressed his forehead to the window, so new there was still a sticker on it. 'Because it's always wrong. They don't want to hurt anyone.'
I could smell his sweat, sharp and strong, a man's smell, and it was hot in the room with the new windows, heady with the fragrance of raw wood. I put my hands around his waist, pressed my face into the scratchy wool between his shoulder blades, something I'd wanted to do since he held me that first Sunday when I'd ditched church and stayed behind in the trailer. I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent, dope and sweat and new
