10
“WHAT IN THE goddamn hell do women want, anyway?” Bobby Lee asked. “A billion dollars and all she can find to marry is Hondo?”
“As to what women want, I would be the last to know,” Duane admitted. “And you would probably be the next to last.”
While they were debating what to do next Duane informed Bobby about their new job offer. He was opening his mail, at the time, and in his mail was a package from Willy. It proved to be a book, and was called Animal Ghosts. It was by a man named Elliott O’Donnell, and had been published in 1913. There was a brief note from Willy saying it might be useful in the matter of Double Aught’s disappearance.
“I wish you hadn’t even opened it in my pickup,” Bobby Lee complained. “The last thing I need is some animal ghosts sneaking in on me.
“It could be a small ghost—a rabbit, maybe.”
Duane scanned the book and soon discovered even elephants and gorillas would disappear, or appear, in ghostly form. Rhinos didn’t seem to be mentioned, which didn’t mean they couldn’t become ghosts.
But the book only served as a brief diversion from the really big news of the day, which was that K.K. Slater had married Hondo Honda.
“I did notice that K.K.’s taken to doing a little bit more with her hair,” Bobby said.
“Not much more,” Duane said. In fact he had not noticed any difference in how K.K. did her hair, but he knew he was in the main just not sensitive to ladies’ hairstyles.
“Of course a few women have married me,” Bobby Lee observed. “From an outsider’s point of view that might be considered just as odd as K.K. marrying Hondo.”
“K.K. said Hondo was the real thing once—fought lots of bandits and rounded up lots of rustlers.”
Bobby thought about that for a while.
“Lots of people become mere shadows of their former selves, I guess.”
“Like who?”
“Well, like you, I guess.”
“I’ll be glad when we get to the lake,” Duane said.
11
ON THIS STEAMY afternoon, destiny did not smile on the record-holding fisherman Bobby Lee Baxter. He caught a turtle and a gar.
Duane read the ghost animals book for a while before finally making a cast. He immediately caught a little bass.
“Nice, but not in the record class,” Bobby Lee said.
Duane mentioned K.K.’s offer to make him manager of her considerably expanded operation.
“And you’d be my lazy overpaid number two,” he added.
“When I was younger I didn’t know I’d spend my whole life working for you,” Bobby said.
“But you didn’t spend your whole life doing anything of the sort,” Duane reminded him. “You was manager for a while, as I recall, and it didn’t particularly suit you. And besides that you ran a drilling company in Colorado for a while. You’ve had plenty of chances to boss, if that’s what you’d rather do.”
Bobby Lee was silent for a spell.
“I know that’s all true, but it’s like a dream in my mind,” Bobby Lee said. “It was real, and yet it wasn’t.”
“Well, you cashed the paychecks—and you can keep on cashing them—bigger sums too.”
“I guess that’s what life boils down to, mainly,” Bobby said. “Paychecks.
“At least that’s a big part of it,” he added.
“Sure enough,” Duane said.
12
“DOING HER HAIR different, how different?” Honor wondered. She was more interested in K.K. Slater’s new hairstyle than she was about her marriage to Hondo Honda.
“It’s sort of more spiky now,” Duane said.
“Okay, good choice,” Honor said. “Are you in love with that Asian woman in the office?”
“Dal—no—she wouldn’t want me in love with her.”
“You don’t have to have the woman’s approval to fall in love,” Honor said. “You either fall in love or you don’t.”
“Well, I haven’t yet,” he said.
“But you’re fighting it, I’d say.”
Duane realized sadly that his relationship with Honor Carmichael was dissipating in some measure. They had been too far apart, for too long—so long that they had become abstractions to one another.
“I wish you’d come visit,” he said. “It’s been more than a year.”
Honor was silent for a while.
“I think I take your point,” she said, finally. “We’re slipping apart, aren’t we?”
“That’s how it feels,” Duane said.
“Maybe I will come,” Honor said. “I’ve those two sections of Daddy’s land that I need to do something about.”
“K.K. would probably buy it—she’s in an expansion mode.”
“Maybe, but Mike and Tommy have the first option,” Honor said. “They’ve done so well with the deli that they want to retire and be cowboys.”
“Well, we had a Bushman for a while,” Duane mentioned. “Tommy was the only person who could really talk to him. Sri Lankan cowboys might work out just fine.
“Boyd could give ’em roping lessons,” he added. “Maybe I’d even get him to give me roping lessons too. I need a hobby.”
“I think I will come,” Honor said. “I’ve become a little too Long Island.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t need to,” Honor said.
13
“OH GOOD,” K.K. said, when Duane told him Honor might be visiting. “I’ve always wanted to meet her—we ran in something of the same circles once, but never managed to meet.”
“Besides, Yves is due in tomorrow,” K.K. said. “I do know that her girlfriend is something of a foodie, which probably means Honor knows her way around a soufflé.
“It can be a nice little test for Yves,” she added.
“Who’s Yves?”
“My new chef,” K.K. said. “I don’t think I can survive on the local staples anymore.”
“He’s not going to barbecue goats, is he?”
He actually liked goat, but had not found the steer’s brains very appealing. He only took one bite, but noticed that K.K. ate it heartily.
“What kind of food is Yves planning to cook?”
“French food, of course,” K.K. said. “Although maybe I should call it Mediterranean food. The fish will be almost as fresh as if you and Bobby caught it yourselves—all thanks to fast airplanes.”
Duane had given the two bass he caught yesterday to K.K. and Hondo. The latter seemed to spend most of his day wandering around the rapidly evolving penthouse. He didn’t actually carry the rifle in the fringed scabbard, but he kept it propped against a table where he could grab it quickly if the need arose.
“Hondo’s not taking many chances,” Duane observed. He still found the fact of K.K.’s marriage to Hondo a little difficult to believe. But he said it quietly—he already knew that K.K. would be fierce in defense of her man.
“I think I’m going to build an addition to this place,” she said.
Duane thought she was kidding, but in the ensuing days truck after truck came up from the south, where K.K.’s stuff had been most of her life.
“I had forty-five rooms in the big house down south,” she told Duane. “And mostly I had them to myself.”
Soon trucks full of Scottish cattle, plus vaqueros to herd them, plus carpenters, hairdressers, laundresses, kitchen help of various kinds, poured into Thalia, and in many cases right on through it.
One evening near dusk Duane happened to look down the main street and saw lots and lots of the people of Thalia—to the extent that there were lots of them—standing under awnings or sitting under shade trees, watching what was clearly the beginnings of the transformation of their town.
Few of them had ever seen a chauffeur in a dark suit and tie sitting all day in a maroon Town Car, waiting to take people to the airport or bring people from it.
Not only had they never seen it, they had never expected to see it. Before their
very eyes the crumbling Mitchell Hotel, a weather-beaten eyesore that the City Council had considered knocking down, before it fell down by itself and hurt somebody, was being turned into a palace, or something very like it.
Even as they watched, Duane from on high and the townspeople on their lawns or on their porches, another car, this one a limousine, stopped near the front of the hotel and disgorged a small, quick young man in a windbreaker, jeans and white tennis shoes. He had not shaved for a while—when he stepped out of the car and looked his new home over he looked dismayed.
“Uh-oh, it’s Yves,” K.K. said. “I better go down and smooth his passage a bit. I’m not sure he will immediately like what he sees.”
“Immediately—why would he ever like it?” Duane asked.
K.K. ignored that question—at which point Hondo came and put his arm around K.K.
“Want me to go down with you, honey?” he asked.
“Nope, you’ve climbed those stairs enough for one day,” K.K. said, giving his shoulder a pat, at which point Hondo at once sank into a lawn chair.
“Can you still shoot, Hondo?” Duane asked—he was surprised by his own question. What did it matter whether Hondo Honda could still shoot?
“Haven’t been to the range in a while, cowboy,” Hondo said. “I don’t like to spend the money on ammunition, though I guess K.K.’s rich enough to buy me a bullet factory, if I was to need one.”
There was a pause.
“Doubt I’ll meet too many killers in this peaceful little town.”
Then he yawned, and soon fell asleep.
Duane looked again at the townspeople of Thalia. He even gave them a halfhearted wave, but not a single soul waved back.
14
HONOR HAD GOTTEN heavy. She still had her beauty of feature, and her smile was delightful. But she had gotten heavy.
“I can see that you’re shocked by my weight,” she said, with a wry smile.
Duane at once hugged her.
“It’s been a while,” he said.
“And during that while we’ve both grown old,” she said.
In fact Duane had been shocked by Honor’s appearance. He had blandly supposed she’d be slim and beautiful until she died. And he had supposed he would be mostly the same until he died.
But that was not the way of the world. He had seen the way of the world when he watched Hondo Honda creak around K.K. Slater’s penthouse. Hondo was old, Honor was old and he himself was old. Hondo would never be mistaken for a vital man again—how lucky he was to have K.K. to take care of him.
What he experienced as he first looked at Honor had been shock—but once he had been with her a little while he began to see more of the old Honor in her movements and her laugh. She had, he knew, buried two lovers. He had buried one wife and lost another. No wonder she had changed.
“How do you feel about things?” he asked. He didn’t know what else to say, right off the bat.
He sliced a couple of fresh tomatoes from his garden and grilled a pork chop—after she had flown from New York and driven from Dallas she might be hungry.
“I feel sad,” Honor said. “I’ve loved and lived to bury two extraordinary Jewish princesses. They were spoiled to begin with and I happily spoiled them more.”
“K.K. invited us to dinner,” he mentioned. “She’s hired this chef who just got here from Paris.”
“Right, Yves Clair—she stole him from a very rich family—it’s the talk of a certain set, just now. You don’t steal other persons’ chefs.
“Fortunately K.K. is richer than the family she stole Yves from. Liz wanted to hire him but I talked her out of it. In general stealing the help is bad form.”
“He flew here from France and he’s still just help?” Duane asked.
Honor nodded and ate her tomatoes.
15
“I’M SURE K.K. bought Yves an Aga stove and maybe accommodations for a live-in boyfriend,” Honor said, as they strolled the few blocks from Duane’s house to the Mitchell Hotel.
“What’s an Aga?”
“A very good stove,” Honor said. “The stove, in fact, for serious foodies.”
“Okay, an Aga’s a stove, but what’s a foodie?”
Honor laughed—she had a rich, easy laugh.
“I keep forgetting how country you are,” she said, putting her arm around him in a friendly way.
“A foodie is a cultivated person who’s seriously interested in food and usually not too interested in anything else.
“And they eat at restaurants where chefs like Yves do the cooking,” she added. “I know you told me when she first came here that she ate chicken-fried steak from the Dairy Queen, like everybody else, but that was just showing off. Besides which she had no real choice.”
When they got to the hotel they saw that giant pots with tall cacti growing in them ringed the roof of what had very quickly become a penthouse.
“I bet those pots and those cacti weren’t here this morning,” Honor said. “One nice thing about the rich is that the trains run on time.
“Why do you look worried, Duane?” Honor asked, taking her arm off his shoulder.
“I am worried,” Duane said. “What I know is that Thalia isn’t interested in changing as much as K.K. wants it to change.”
They saw Bobby Lee, sporting a clean white shirt and pressed jeans, come walking toward them. At least he had been invited to the dinner, which was a mark in K.K.’s favor, so far as Duane was concerned. Leaving Bobby Lee out would give Bobby a serious grievance, and he had plenty of those already.
“Don’t worry, Duane—K.K.’s restless, like all rich people,” Honor said. “In a few months she’ll weary of her rural enterprise, and all those pots with all those cacti in them will simply disappear and K.K will move on to the next thing.”
“Hope you’re right,” Duane said.
16
K.K. AND honor hit it off at once, as food the likes of which neither he nor Bobby Lee had ever seen poured out of the kitchen and was consumed: first there were snail’s eggs, served on little pieces of toast. Then came a pile of raw sirloin seasoned with various spices. This, he learned, was steak tartare, followed by a cold soup and then a fish baked in thin pastry.
Hondo Honda was served a different menu: a minute steak and French fries. He drank two glasses of wine and slowly nodded off—finally his head slumped on his chest.
K.K. went on chattering with Honor.
“I know this is impolite, guys,” she said. “Honor and I seem to have to talk through the whole Social List, which is great fun for us but no fun for anybody else.”
“It’s like being an English boy and not going to Eton,” Honor said. “Eton’s great for those who go there but it irritates the hell out of those who don’t.”
“I have a grandson who’s a Rhodes Scholar,” Duane reminded them. “When Willy gets home I guess he can hold forth with you two better than I can.”
“That’s for sure,” K.K. said.
Honor looked at Duane solemnly for a moment.
“Willy will always be someone to be proud of,” she said. “And he’ll always be your grandson. But I don’t know that he’ll ever be home.”
“Willy escaped, and the rest of you didn’t,” she said.
K.K. Slater looked down and said nothing.
17
THE DINNER PROGRESSED at a measured pace. K.K. and Honor talked about ski resorts and private islands—then they talked about fashion designers—odd, to Duane’s ear, since K.K. never wore anything but khakis. Then they talked about affairs people they knew might be having, or might not be having.
Their chatter was casual and friendly—good cowboys getting together after a branding might talk in much the same way, though not about the same matters.
Still, Duane found himself getting uneasy. Once, when he had gone to relieve himself, he happened to glance over the pots full of cacti, down toward the Kwik-Sack. Six or eight people were gathered—two or three teenagers, a couple of roughneck
s and old Mrs. Banner in her wheelchair—she lived next door to the Kwik-Sack and relied for entertainment on what was happening in the parking lot. Now she was just one of the onlookers who were staring at the penthouse of the former Mitchell Hotel.
The sight of those folks, all of whom he knew, made Duane deeply uneasy. He couldn’t really say why he felt so troubled—but troubled was how he felt.
Dessert consisted of several sorbets, followed by coffee and brandy. K.K. and Honor each drank a little brandy but Duane passed. Bobby Lee took one sip and became even more silent than he had been up to then.
When they got up to leave Duane saw that the crowd in the parking lot of the Kwik-Sack had grown. There were maybe twenty-five people there, and what was wrong with the picture was that he ought to have been one of the crowd at the Kwik-Sack, not one of the people eating snail’s eggs and drinking brandy on K.K. Slater’s penthouse with Honor Carmichael.
When the dinner ended and they walked home they came within hailing distance of the Kwik-Sack. Some of the roughnecks had left but Mrs. Banner and the kids were still there. The people in the crowd were still as statues. Nobody waved—Duane couldn’t blame them. How friendly was it to eat a meal that cost at least a thousand dollars in front of people who mostly fed themselves out of a microwave?
Honor wobbled a little—it was the brandy. When they got to Duane’s house she went straight to bed, in the room K.K. usually stayed in.
Duane couldn’t sleep. He knew he wasn’t going to take K.K.’s offer and become her manager—it just didn’t appeal.
Maybe Bobby Lee would take it—but Duane didn’t really think so—and if he took it, it wouldn’t be for long.
He had no real explanation of his own attitude. Some things were okay to do in Thalia and some things weren’t.
18
“K.K. WANTED ME to be her overall manager but it just wouldn’t work,” Duane told Honor the next morning.
“She mentioned it while you were in the gents’,” Honor said. “She was hoping I’d persuade you.”