The ratings continued to rise, and Clare Padgett mentally rubbed her hands together with glee.
Using a part of the increase in her salary, Francesca bought an electric fan to try to dispel the stifling afternoon heat in her garage apartment, purchased a Cézanne museum poster to replace the string guitar, and made a down payment on a six-year-old Ford Falcon with body rust. The rest she tucked away in her very first savings account.
Although she knew her looks had improved now that she was eating better and worrying less, she paid little attention to the fact that a healthy glow had returned to her skin and a sheen to her hair. She had neither the time nor the interest to linger in front of a mirror, a pastime that had proved so completely useless to her survival.
The Sulphur City airport advertised a skydiving club, and Clare's normally testy temper took a turn for the worse. She knew a good programming idea when she saw one, but even she couldn't order a woman who was eight months pregnant to jump out of an airplane. Francesca's pregnancy greatly inconvenienced Clare, and as a result she made only the smallest concessions to it.
“We'll schedule the jump two months after your kid is born. That'll give you plenty of time to recover. We'll use a wireless mike so the listeners can hear you scream all the way down.”
“I'm not jumping from an airplane!” Francesca exclaimed.
Clare fingered the pile of forms on her desk, part of her attempt to straighten out Francesca's affairs with the U.S. Bureau of Naturalization and Immigration. “If you want these forms filled out, you will.”
“That's blackmail.”
Clare shrugged. “I'm a realist. You probably won't be around for long, chicky, but while you are, I'm going to suck out every last drop of your blood.”
This wasn't the first time Clare had alluded to her future, and each time she did, Francesca felt a surge of anticipation pass through her. She knew the rule as well as anyone: people who were good didn't stay at KDSC for very long; they moved on to bigger markets.
She waddled out of Clare's office that day feeling pleased with herself. Her show had gone well, she had almost five hundred dollars tucked away in the bank, and a bright future seemed to be waiting for her on the not-so-distant horizon. She smiled to herself. All it took to succeed in life was a small bit of talent and a lot of hard work. And then she saw a familiar figure walking toward her from the front door, and the light went out of her day.
“Aw, hell,” Holly Grace Beaudine drawled as she came to a stop in the center of the reception area. “That stupid son of a bitch knocked you up.”
Chapter
21
The bubble of Francesca's self-satisfaction abruptly popped. Holly Grace planted five frosty mauve fingernails on the hip of a pair of elegantly tailored white summer trousers and shook her head in disgust. “That man doesn't have any more sense now than he did the day I married him.”
Francesca winced as every head in the office turned her way. She felt her cheeks fill with color, and she had a wild urge to cross her hands over her bulging abdomen.
“Do you girls want to use my office to chat?” Clare stood just inside her doorway, obviously enjoying the mini-drama that had sprung up before her.
Holly Grace quickly sized up Clare as the person in authority and announced, “Us girls are gonna go someplace and have ourselves a stiff drink. That is, if you don't mind.”
“Be my guest.” Clare swept her hand toward the door. “I do hope you'll be ready to share some of this excitement with your listeners tomorrow, Francesca. I'm sure they'll be fascinated.”
Francesca stayed several steps behind Holly Grace as they crossed the parking lot toward a sleek silver Mercedes. She had no desire to go anywhere with Holly Grace, but she could hardly play out this particular scene in front of her rabidly curious co-workers. The muscles in her shoulders had tightened into knots and she tried to relax them. If she let Holly Grace intimidate her so quickly, she would never recover.
The Mercedes had a pearl gray leather interior that smelled like new money. As Holly Grace got in, she gave the steering wheel a light pat and then pulled a pair of sunglasses from a purse that Francesca instantly recognized as Hermes. Francesca drank in every detail of Holly Grace's wardrobe, from the marvelous turquoise silk halter top that crisscrossed in the back before disappearing into the belted waistband of her beautifully cut trousers to the stunning Peretti chrome cuff bracelet and luscious silver kid Ferragamo sandals. The Sassy ads were everywhere, and so Francesca wasn't surprised to see how well Holly Grace was doing for herself. As casually as possible, Francesca draped her arm over the coffee stain that marred the front of her shapeless yellow cotton maternity dress.
As they rode silently toward Sulphur City, the pit of her stomach filled with dread. Now that she knew about Francesca's baby, Holly Grace would surely go to Dallie. What if he tried to make some claim on her baby? What was she going to do? She stared straight ahead and forced herself to think.
On the outskirts of Sulphur City, Holly Grace slowed down at two separate roadhouses, inspected them, and then drove on. Only when she reached the third and most disreputable-looking did she seem satisfied. “This place looks like it serves good Tex-Mex. I count six pickups and three Harleys. What do you say?”
Even the idea of food made Francesca feel nauseated; she just wanted to get their encounter over with. “Any place is fine with me. I'm not very hungry.”
Holly Grace tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel. “The pickups are a real good sign, but you can't always tell with the Harleys. Some of those bikers keep themselves so stoned they wouldn't know the difference between good Tex-Mex and shoe leather.” Another pickup pulled into the lot in front of them, and Holly Grace made up her mind. She nosed into a parking place and shut off the engine.
A few minutes later, the two women slid into a booth at the back of the restaurant—Francesca clumsily bumping her stomach against the edge of the table, Holly Grace settling in with a model's elegance. Above them, a set of steer horns and a rattlesnake skin had been nailed to the wall along with several old Texas license plates. Holly Grace pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and nodded toward the Tabasco bottle in the center of the table. “This place is gonna be real good.”
A waitress appeared. Holly Grace ordered a tamale-enchilada-taco combination and Francesca ordered iced tea. Holly Grace made no comment about her lack of appetite. She leaned back in the booth, ran her fingers through her hair, and hummed along with the jukebox. Francesca had a vague sense of familiarity, as if she and Holly Grace had done this before. There was something about the tilt of her head, the lazy drape of her arm over the seat back, and the play of light on her hair. Then Francesca realized that Holly Grace reminded her of Dallie.
The silence between them lengthened until Francesca couldn't stand it any longer. A strong offense, she decided, was her only defense. “This isn't Dallie's baby.”
Holly Grace regarded her skeptically. “I'm real good at counting.”
“It isn't.” She stared coldly across the table. “Don't try to make trouble for me. My life is none of your business.”
Holly Grace toyed with her Peretti cuff bracelet. “I picked up your radio show when I was driving along Ninety on my way over to Hondo to see an old boyfriend, and I was so surprised to hear you that I almost ran off the road. You do a real good show.” She looked up from the bracelet with clear blue eyes. “Dallie was pretty upset when you disappeared like that. Even though I can't blame you for being mad when you found out about me, you really shouldn't have left without talking to him first. He's sensitive.”
Francesca thought of any number of responses to that and discarded them all. The baby kicked her hard beneath her ribs.
“You know, Francie, Dallie and I had a little baby boy once, but he died.” No emotion was visible in Holly Grace's face. She was merely stating a fact.
“I know. I'm sorry.” The words sounded stiff and inadequate.
“If you're having Dalli
e's baby and you don't let him know, you'd be pretty much of a low-life in my opinion.”
“I'm not having his baby,” Francesca said. “I had an affair in England, right before I came over. It's his baby, but he married a female mathematician before he knew I was pregnant.” It was the story she'd invented in the car, the best she could come up with on short notice, and the only one Dallie might accept when word of this got back to him. She managed to give Holly Grace one of her old haughty looks. “Good gracious, you don't think I would have Dallie's baby without demanding some sort of financial support from him, do you? I'm not stupid.”
She saw that she had struck a responsive chord and that Holly Grace was no longer so certain of herself. Francesca's iced tea arrived and she took a sip, then stirred it with her straw, trying to buy time. Should she give more details about Nicky td support her lie or should she keep quiet? Somehow she had to make her story stick.
“Dallie's funny about babies,” Holly Grace said. “He doesn't believe in abortion, no matter what the circumstances, which is exactly the sort of hypocrisy I hate in a man. Still, if he knew you were having his baby, he'd probably get a divorce and marry you.”
Francesca felt a stir of anger. “I'm not a charity case. I don't need to have Dallie marry me.” She forced herself to speak more calmly. “Besides, whatever you may think of me, I'm not the kind of woman who'd make one man responsible for another's child.”
Holly Grace played with the straw wrapper abandoned on the table. “Why didn't you get an abortion? I would have if I were you.”
Francesca was surprised at how easily she could slip back behind her rich-girl facade. She gave a bored shrug. “Who remembers to look at a calendar from one month to the next? By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late.”
They didn't say much else until Holly Grace's meal arrived on a platter the size of west Texas. “Are you sure you wouldn't like some of this? I'm supposed to lose four pounds before I go back to New York.”
If Francesca hadn't been so much on edge, she would have laughed as she watched food ooze over the sides of the plate and puddle onto the table. She tried to shift the course of the discussion by asking Holly Grace about her career.
Holly Grace dug into the exact center of her first enchilada. “Have you ever heard any of those talk shows where they interview famous models and all of them say that the job's glamorous, but it's a lot of hard work, too? As far as I can tell, every one of them is lying through her teeth, because I never made so much easy money in my life. In September, I'm even auditioning for a TV show.” She set down her fork so she could heap green chili salsa over everything except her Ferragamo sandals. Shrugging her hair away from her face, she picked up her taco, but she didn't lift it to her mouth. Instead, she studied Francesca. “It's too bad you're so short. I know about a dozen photographers who'd think they'd died and gone to homo heaven if you were six inches taller... and not pregnant, of course.”
Francesca didn't say anything, and Holly Grace fell silent, too. She set down her taco untasted and pierced the center of a mound of refried beans with her fork, twisting it back and forth until she'd made an indentation that looked like an angel's wing. “Dallie and I pretty much stay out of each other's love lives, but it doesn't seem to me I can do that in this case. I'm not absolutely sure you're telling the truth, but I can't exactly come up with a good reason why you'd lie.”
Francesca felt a surge of hope, but she kept her expression carefully blank. “I don't really care whether you believe me or not.”
Holly Grace continued to twist her fork back and forth in the beans, turning the angel's wing into a full circle. “He's sensitive on the subject of kids. If you're lying to me...”
Her stomach in a knot, Francesca took a calculated risk. “I suppose I'd be better off if I told you this was his baby. I could certainly use some cash.”
Holly Grace bristled like a lioness springing to the defense of her cub. “Don't get any ideas about trying to put the screws to him, because I swear to God I'll testify in court to everything you've told me today. Don't think for one minute that I'll sit on the sidelines and watch Dallie pass out dollar bills to help you raise another man's kid. Got it?”
Francesca hid her relief behind an aristocratic arch of her eyebrows and a bored sigh, as if this were all just too, too tedious for words. “God, you Americans are so full of melodrama.”
Holly Grace's eyes turned as hard as sapphires. “Don't try to screw him over on this, Francie. Dallie and I may have an unorthodox marriage, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't take a bullet for each other.”
Francesca pulled a six-shooter of her own from its holster and sighted down the barrel. “You're the one who forced this confrontation, Holly Grace. You can do whatever you want.” I take care of myself, she thought fiercely. And I take care of what's mine.
Holly Grace didn't exactly look at her with new respect, but she didn't say anything, either. When their meal was finally over, Francesca grabbed the check, even though she couldn't afford to. For the next few days, she anxiously watched the front door of the station, but when Dallie failed to show up, she concluded that Holly Grace had kept her mouth shut.
Sulphur City was a small, graceless town whose only claim to fame lay in its Fourth of July celebration, which was considered the best in the county, mainly because the Chamber of Commerce rented a tilt-a-whirl every year from Big Dan's Traveling Wild West Show and set it up in the middle of the rodeo arena. In addition to the tilt-a-whirl, tents and awnings encircled the perimeter of the arena and spilled out into the gravel parking lot beyond. Beneath a green and white striped awning, Tupperware ladies showed off pastel lettuce crispers, while in the next tent the County Lung Association exhibited laminated photographs of diseased organs. The pecan growers badgered the Pentecostals, who were handing out tracts with pictures of monkeys on the covers, and children dashed in and out of the tents, snatching up buttons and balloons only to abandon them next to the animal pens, where they set off firecrackers and bottle rockets.
Francesca moved awkwardly through the crowd toward the KDSC remote tent, her toes pointed slightly outward, her hand pressed to the small of her back, which had been aching since yesterday afternoon. Although it was barely ten o'clock in the morning, the mercury had already reached ninety-four and perspiration had formed between her breasts. She gazed longingly toward the Kiwanis Sno-Cone machine, but she had to be on the air in ten minutes to interview the winner of the Miss Sulphur City contest and she didn't have time to stop. A middle-aged rancher with grizzled cheeks and a fat nose slowed his steps and gave her a long, appreciative look. She ignored him. With a full-term pregnancy sticking out in front of her like the Hindenburg, she could hardly be anybody's idea of a sex object. The man was obviously some sort of loony who was turned on by pregnant women.
She had almost reached the KDSC tent when the sound of a single trumpet came toward her from the area near the calf pens where the members of the high school band were warming up. She turned her head to see a tall young boy with a hank of light brown hair falling over his eyes and a trumpet pressed to his mouth. As the boy played the notes of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” he turned his head so that the bell of the instrument caught the sun. Francesca's eyes began to tear from the glare, but she couldn't bring herself to look away.
The moment hung suspended in time as the Texas sun burned above her, white and merciless. The smell of hot popcorn and dust mingled with the scent of manure and Belgian waffles. Two Mexican women, chattering in Spanish, passed by with children draped from their plump bodies like ruffled shawls. The tilt-a-whirl clattered along its noisy track, and the Mexican women laughed, and a string of firecrackers went off next to her as Francesca realized that she belonged to it all.
She remained perfectly still while the smells and the sights absorbed her. Somehow, without knowing it, she had become part of this vast, vulgar melting pot of a country—this place of rejects and discards. The hot breeze caught her hair and
tossed it about her head so that it waved like a chestnut flag. At that moment, she felt more at home, more complete, more alive, than she ever had felt in England. Without quite knowing how it had happened, she had been absorbed by this hodgepodge of a country, transformed by it, until—somehow—she, too, had become another feisty, single-minded, ragtag American.
“You better get out of this sun, Francie, before you suffer heat stroke.”
Francesca whirled around to see Holly Grace ambling up next to her wearing designer jeans and eating a grape Popsiele. Her heart took a giant leap in the direction of her throat. She had not seen Holly Grace since their lunch together two weeks earlier, but she'd thought about her almost incessantly. “I assumed you'd be back in New York by now,” she said warily.
“As a matter of fact, I'm on my way, but I decided to stop by here for a few hours to see how you're doing.”
“Is Dallie with you?” She surreptitiously scanned the crowd behind Holly Grace.
To Francesca's relief, Holly Grace shook her head. “I decided not to say anything to him. He's playing in a tournament next week, and he doesn't need any distractions. You look like you're about ready to pop.”
“I feel like it, too.” Once again she tried to rub the ache from her back, and then, because Holly Grace looked sympathetic and she was feeling very much alone, she added, “The doctor thinks it'll be another week.”
“Are you scared?”
She pressed her hand against her side where a small foot was pushing up. “I've been through so much this past year, I can't imagine that giving birth could be any worse.” Glancing toward the KDSC tent, she saw Clare waving wildly toward her, and added wryly, “Besides, I'm looking forward to lying down for a few hours.”
Holly Grace chuckled and fell in step next to her. “Don't you think it's about time you stopped working and took it easy?”
“I'd like to, but my boss won't give me any more than a month off with pay, and I don't want to start the clock running until the baby's born.”