button.
“Listen to it. That’s a lot of kids.”
“Can I order you something from the grill?”
“They seem to be having fun,” Temple said, still distracted by the celebratory mood next door.
“The hotel gives them the space for their meetings one night a week.”
“That’s pretty nice.” Temple gazed out the door at the teenagers going in and out of the lobby, the shadows of the potted palms sliding off their skin and hair and the flowers some of the girls were wearing.
“It’s called Alla-something,” the bartender said.
“Can you order me a steak?”
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
“I like it pink in the middle,” Temple said.
He worked on his vodka and waited for his food and listened to the pianist play “Claire de Lune.” The pianist was dressed in a summer tux with a red boutonniere, his long fingers floating above the keys in a cone of blue light. Santa Fe was a grand place to be. The Spanish ambience, the wooden colonnades and earthen jars on the terrazzo entrances to the shops along the street, the stars twinkling above the vastness of the mountains-why should a man be afraid in a country as wonderful as this? Or why should a man be ashamed of what he was? He agreed with the liberals and libertines on this one. A man didn’t choose his sexual inclinations. They chose him. Didn’t Jesus say there are those who are made different in the womb?
The girl who came into the lounge from the lobby and sat down next to him at the bar had the face of a pixie, with a pug nose and an uplifted chin and thick dark red hair that was tied in back. She wore a sequined cowboy shirt and tight stonewashed jeans tucked into boots that came almost to her knee. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Temple said.
“Can you help me out?”
“You kill anybody?”
“I’d like to. At least if I have to go back in there.”
“Where?” he asked.
“To the Alateen meeting.”
“What’s Alateen?”
“A meeting that’s a guaranteed cure for insomnia. I got sentenced to it by the court.”
“Why’d the judge send you there?”
“My boyfriend totaled his car and left me unconscious inside it. My boyfriend is not only a needle-dick but a lying shit. I told the judge if he believed my boyfriend, he was a shitbird, too, but I wasn’t sure whether he qualified as a needle-dick. What’s that music?”
“Debussy, I think. You know, Claude Debussy?”
“Who’s that?”
“He was a great composer.”
She was chewing gum, her eyes rolling, her mouth indolent and somehow vulnerable. The sound of her gum wet and smacking in her cheek made him swallow. She smiled lazily, one eye crinkling at the corner. “Will you buy me a drink?”
“Are you legal age?”
“Why do you think I asked you to buy me one?”
“What are you having?”
“I don’t care. Something with candied cherries in it. Something that’s cold and warm at the same time.”
When the bartender served the steak, Temple ordered another Collins for himself and an old-fashioned for the girl. The bartender lowered his eyes with his hands folded, not unlike an undertaker who doesn’t want to broach a difficult subject.
“She’s my niece,” Temple said. “Nobody would believe she’s twenty-two.”
“Very well, sir,” the bartender said, and went to the end of the bar and took a tumbler from a rack on the back counter.
“That was impressive,” the girl said. “I had an uncle like that. He could get people to do things for him and make them feel like they were doing themselves a favor. You know how he’d do that?”
“Tell me.”
“He already knew what they wanted to do. They only needed permission from someone. It was usually about money. Or maybe sex. But one way or another, they were coming across for him. He used to say, ‘Put a smile on their faces, and they’ll follow you over a cliff.’”
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing. He owns a bunch of massage parlors in Los Angeles. Is that a Rolex?”
Temple looked at his watch, then realized how long he had been in the lounge. Where were his men? They had been acting strangely ever since two of them had been dumb enough to get themselves popped by Preacher Jack. “I never noticed. I have about a dozen watches I wear. Do you ride horses?”
“Sometimes. I barrel-raced when I was in Four-H. I was a hot-walker at Ruidoso Downs. Talk about a horny bunch. You ought to be in the bar after the seventh race.”
“Yeah, but that’s not your crowd. I bet you go to college.”
“If that’s what you call working at the McDonald’s inside Wal-mart. How about that for being a two-time loser? Your steak is getting cold.”
“You want one?”
“I’m a vegan. My whole life changed after I gave up meat and milk products. I thought my needle-dick boyfriend was the problem, but I think it was my diet.”
“What problem?”
“My organisms were messed up.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Meat and cheese and barnyard shit like that are toxic to your erogenous development.” The waiter placed a coaster in front of her and set down her old-fashioned. She wrapped her gum in her napkin. “Anyway, thanks for the drink. I can’t take that group next door. You know their problem?”
“No,” he replied.
She took a drink from her glass and her eyes brightened and her cheeks filled with color, in the same way a thirsty plant might respond immediately to water. He could feel the coldness of her breath when she exhaled. “They feel unloved,” she said.
“You have a lot of insight for such a young woman.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m in charge of the french-fry basket.”
“You smell like orange blossoms.”
“Maybe that’s because I’m chewing an orange rind.” She turned on the stool toward him, her knee hitting his. She let her eyes hold on his. “I bummed a ride here with a friend, but he’s gonna stay at the meeting for another hour. I live six miles away, and I don’t have money for a cab. I’d like a ride, but when I get home, I go in by myself.”
“You’re the captain of your soul?”
“No, I’m just not somebody’s backseat fuck.”
He picked up a small cooked tomato on the tines of his fork and placed it in his mouth and chewed slowly. “I wouldn’t ever say or even think something like that about you,” he said.
“So you’re gonna give me a ride?”
“If you’ll do one thing for me.”
Her eyes shifted sideways with a level of dependence that made his heart drop. “What’s that?” she said.
“Walk through the open-air jewelry market with me. I’m a sucker for Indian junk. I need an expert hand to guide me.”
“You have a daughter?”
“No.”
“I thought that’s what you were gonna tell me.”
“Why?”
“Most of the time they say I remind them of their daughter. They can’t do enough for you.”
