his hair and the back of his neck. Then the two of them went back into the trailer, their arms around each other's waist, and stayed there until sunset.
Lucas was off that night and had planned to go into town. But Jeff and Esmeralda came to his door, their faces glowing with the promise of the summer evening, as though none of the day's events held claim on their lives. Jeff took the last toke off a roach, held the hit in his lungs, then let the smoke drift lazily off his lips into the wind. He was dressed in a tailored beige sports coat and dark blue slacks. She was wearing a pink organdy dress, hoop earrings, lavender pumps, and cherry-red lipstick. Jeff's necktie dangled from his coat pocket, almost as though he wished to demonstrate his indifference to decorum.
'You're going to dinner with us at Post Oaks Country Club,' Jeff said.
'I appreciate it, but that's a little rich for my blood. Say, if y'all are holding, I got to ask you not to bring it on my property. I don't mean no offense,' Lucas said.
'That was the last of my stash, Lucas, my boy. Hey, you're not going to hurt our feelings, are you?' Jeff said.
To its members Deaf Smith's country club wasn't simply an oasis of wealth in the middle of south-central Texas; it was the architectural expression of a cultural ideal in an era given over to vulgarity, urban ruin, and eastern liberals who destroyed standards and enfranchised an underclass made up of modern Visigoths.
The gardens and circular drive planted with oaks, the blinding-white columned entrance, the sun-bladed, turquoise pool shaped like a huge shamrock, the flagstone terrace dotted with potted palms, these were all lovely to look at but were only symbols of the club's luxury and exclusivity; its uniqueness lay in its tradition, one that went back to the early 1940s, when dance orchestras played Glen Miller's compositions on the terrace and worries over ration stamps and the war in Europe and the South Pacific were as unthreatening as the distant drone of a Flying Fortress on a training flight in a magenta sky.
The late fall might fill the trees with the smells of autumnal gases, and the shamrock-shaped pool might be drained and scrubbed with bleach and covered with canvas in winter, but mutability and death seemed to hold no sway once one entered the geographical confines of the club, which extended from the impenetrable hedges by the road, across the fairways sprayed weekly with liquid nitrogen, to the bluffs that overlooked the lazy, green bend of the river. The balls, the graduation parties, the conviviality of the bar and card room on the ninth tee, the candlelight dinners on the terrace, were part of the world's grandeur, given to those who had worked for and deserved them, and did not have to be defended. The red leaves blowing out of a hardwood tree in November were no more an indication of one's mortality than the aging and transient nature of the staff who, when they disappeared, were quickly replaced by others whose similarity to their predecessors hardly signaled a transition had taken place.
Lucas and Jeff and Esmeralda sat in the front seat of Jeff's convertible, their hair blowing in the wind as they drove out of the western end of the county into green, sloping hills and evening shadows breaking across the road. But Jeff did not want to go straight to Post Oaks Country Club. He pulled into a blue-collar bar above the river, one with takeout windows and an open-air dance pavilion and a jukebox in back.
'I don't want to go here, Jeff,' Esmeralda said.
'Why not?' he said.
'We dressed up to go to a beer joint? I'm hungry. I don't want to drink on an empty stomach,' she said.
'You're not dressed up,' he said.
She looked at the side of his face. She placed one hand on top of his.
'What's wrong, hon?' she said.
'Nothing. Will you stop pawing me while I'm driving?' Then he forced a grin on his mouth. 'I just want to get a drink. I got fired from my job last night. The tables at the club are crowded till eight o'clock. We can get some nachos. Right, Lucas?'
But Lucas didn't answer.
They drank two rounds of vodka collins, gazing at the river, the smoke from a barbecue pit attended by bikers and their girlfriends drifting across the table. Jeff kept pulling on his earlobe, biting his lip, glancing irritably at the bikers and their girls, almost as though he wanted to provoke them.
'Okay, okay, we're going. Give it a rest,' he said to Esmeralda, even though she had said nothing to him.
When they pulled into the country club's driveway and stopped in front of the columned porch, Jeff got out of the car and took the parking ticket from the valet as though he were in a trance. He walked through the glass doors ahead of Esmeralda and Lucas, letting the edge of the door slide off his fingertips behind him. It was almost nine o'clock and the dining room should have been empty, the waiters gathering up silverware and soiled tablecloths and dropping wilted flowers into plastic bags. But instead the chandeliers filled the room with gold fire; carnations and roses floated in crystal bowls on the tables; and a throng of forty people was in the midst of a wedding rehearsal dinner.
One of the guests at the rehearsal dinner was Rita Summers, Jeff's ex-girlfriend. Her hair was as gold as the chandelier above her head, her blue eyes as intense as a hawk's. She took a cigarette without asking from an older woman's case and lighted it and blew smoke at an upward angle out of the side of her mouth. Jeff led Esmeralda and Lucas to a table in the corner and seated himself so his back was to the wedding party.
'This is a right nice place,' Lucas said.
'Right nice? Yeah, that says it. That really says it. Right nice,' Jeff said, as if his statement held a cryptic profundity that no one else understood.
'That girl over there, the one staring at us. She's the one who told me her food tasted like dog turds,' Esmeralda said.
'She's nearsighted. She's got a bug up her ass. Who cares what her problem is? Just don't look at her,' Jeff said. 'Did you hear me? Look at the menu.'
'Jeff, this ain't turning out too cool,' Lucas said.
'Tell me about it,' Jeff said, and snapped his fingers at a waiter. 'Andre, bring three T-bones out here, three schooners, three tossed salads. Shrimp cocktails for them, none for me. I'll take a Jack and Coke now.'
'Very good, Mr. Deitrich,' the waiter said, and bowed slightly without ever looking at Lucas or Esmeralda. Jeff pulled the menu out of Esmeralda's hands and gave it to the waiter.
'Wow, what a take-charge guy,' Esmeralda said.
'At this time of night, in this particular club, you either order steak or you eat warmed-up leftovers. I know that, you don't. So I was saving everybody time,' Jeff said.
'I think I need to find the ladies' room. You know, in case I have to throw up later,' Esmeralda said.
'You want to explore? It's a club. Can't you just…'
'What?' she said.
'Quit turning everything into a problem. Let's just eat dinner and get out of here. Oh, forget it,' Jeff said, and flipped a tiny silver spoon in the air and let it bounce on the tablecloth.
But before Esmeralda could get up from her chair, Rita Summers walked across the carpet and stood by their table, smoking her cigarette.
'Congratulations on your marriage, Jeff. I wish I'd had some preparation. I would have sent a gift. I really would,' she said. She had a peach complexion and shadows pooled in the folds of her blue satin dress and there was a shine on the tops of her breasts.
'Yeah, thanks for dropping by,' Jeff said, one arm hooked over the back of his chair, his eyes gazing out the French doors at the underwater lights glowing off the swimming pool's surface.
Rita took a puff off her cigarette and left lipstick on the tip. 'I guess you've worked out all your little sexual problems. I'm so happy when the right people meet,' she said.
The waiter brought Jeff's Coke and Jack Daniel's on a tray, and Jeff drank the glass half empty, his eyes deepening in color, then swung a cherry back and forth by its stem and stared at it.
'You want to clarify that last remark?' Esmeralda said.
Rita smiled at Jeff, then bent down and whispered in Esmeralda's ear, her eyes uplifted maliciously into Jeff's. Esmeralda's face grew pinched, puckering like an apple exposed to intense heat.
Rita straightened up and looked down at Esmeralda. 'He used to go to Mexican cathouses for it. But finally the only place that would let him in was run by a black woman down in the Valley,' she said.
Esmeralda picked up her purse, one with spangles and pink fringe, and walked past the wedding party to the
