His father didn’t answer, but he did have a sad look on his face. It made Dickie wonder if maybe things had gone farther between Dal and his father than he had supposed. They had been housemates for a good many months—it would be natural enough for them to become lovers.
It was a development that Dickie would welcome—though his sisters certainly wouldn’t.
Dickie saw what the girls might have missed—that their father was getting older and might really need a wife to look after him. Often Dickie would find his father sitting in a lawn chair outside the big house, looking lonely. Except for Bobby Lee he had no cronies. Marrying Dal might be his salvation, keep him lively for several more years.
Right now it was clear that he was disturbed to hear that she would be delayed three days—a mere three days.
Duane was disappointed but not entirely crushed. He adjusted. The oil business was global—if Dal and Dickie felt there was a good business reason for her to stop through Geneva, then they were probably right and he should get over it.
One way to soothe himself would be to go fishing, which he promptly did.
42
K.K. SLATER WENT to Africa and returned no worse for wear. The update on Double Aught was negative but she seemed not to care, particularly. And she had brought a new chef with her—or perhaps just a cook. Duane had never been exactly clear about the difference.
Stephanie Slade was long-legged and somewhat horsey, with big front teeth and very long brown hair. She wore cutoffs and T-shirts and, on her first evening, cooked Duane and K.K. a delicious gumbo. Her legs, like so many girls’, were nicely tanned.
“I think Steph might stay for a while,” K.K. said. “She’s from Plano—she won’t have to deal with quite so much culture shock.”
“I don’t know about that, K.K.,” the girl said. “Where’s my North Park Mall?”
“Steph wants to open a cooking school,” K.K. said.
“Oh, please—not a cooking school: a culinary institute,” Stephanie protested.
“And then you’ll run off with a busboy,” K.K. predicted.
“Could happen,” Stephanie admitted. “I do like the guys.”
To Duane’s surprise K.K. had already pledged a good amount of money toward the statue of Hondo Honda. She had even, herself, commissioned the artist, a highly thought of sculptor from Colorado. His name was Colby Jordan.
“Highly thought of in the world of Western art,” Stephanie insisted.
“I know you despise it,” K.K. said, amiably. “We’ll see how it goes when Colby actually gets here.”
“Yuck, I met him, he’s bowlegged and has a big old turnipy schnozz.”
“And he tried to fuck you?”
“Of course,” Stephanie said, blushing a little.
“I could have made this hotter,” she said, sampling her own gumbo.
Just then an egg-sized rock came flying out of the darkness and hit the table between K.K. and Duane, shattering a wineglass and just missing Stephanie.
“Hey, what the fuck?” she said.
Duane hurried to the edge of the building but saw no one. Below him the red light blinked on and on.
The courthouse lawn, across the street, was empty.
“Hey, they chipped my table,” K K. said. The table was of polished mesquite.
“This is not good,” she added.
“It isn’t,” Duane said.
“I just gave the town a lot of money to put up a statue of Hondo—maybe I ought to shut that down. Why would they throw rocks at me?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s a mean, miserable little oil patch town,” Duane said. “Strangers nearly always wear out their welcome, no matter how nice they try to be.”
“I’m not so sure I’m going to like this job,” Stephanie Slade said.
Duane continued to watch the street below them, hoping the kids—if it was kids—would show themselves and give him the finger. Chunking unwelcome strangers was not an unheard of practice in Thalia. He himself as a teenager had probably done it once or twice.
K.K. Slater said nothing more.
43
THE NEXT MORNING Duane put the rock in a baggie and showed it to Lena Loftis. The sheriff operated out of a small office in the old, shabby Municipal Building. Sheriff Lena worked in a kind of stall. A lot of Post-its were stuck to the wall behind her desk.
“Where does Deputy Dub sit when he’s around?” Duane asked.
“In his car,” Lena said. “Dub’s so big that when he comes in he has a tendency to sort of steam up the place.
“Dub’s got a good heart, though,” she said, “which is more than I can say for Bub. They may be twins biologically but they sure ain’t twins in temperament.”
“You think Bub might throw a rock at K.K. Slater’s penthouse?”
“Sure, and he’s got the arm for it too,” Lena said. “When he played catcher for the baseball team he tried to pick someone off at second and the ball sailed so high it hit the center fielder in the head.”
“I wonder if there could be fingerprints on this rock,” Duane asked.
“I don’t know but we’ve had Bub’s prints on file since he was about nine, when he began to break and enter,” the sheriff said. “He was the cat burglar of Thalia.”
“I’d like it tested, if it can be,” Duane said.
“Any teenager in town could have thrown that rock—not to mention a lot of assholes who aren’t teenagers,” she said.
“I don’t suppose you’ve been to our fine municipal swimming pool today have you, Mr. Moore?” Sheriff Lena asked.
“Nope, got my own pool,” Duane said.
“It’s drained for cleaning at the moment, which inspired a local grafitti artist to paint a sentiment on the bottom. Maybe you better go look.”
Duane promptly did. The pool was nearly surrounded by wobbly old folks from the nearby nursing home. They were in bathrobes, mainly. A few had oxygen tanks.
All were looking at what was written on the bottom of the pool. What was written was:
RICH CUNT GO HOME!
One of the oxygen tankers, old man Jakes, who hadn’t said a good word for anybody in several years, wobbled around the edge of the pool, in danger of falling in.
“It’s what comes of educating the niggers,” he said. “I said it long ago and I’ll say it again.”
“To my knowledge we have never educated a single Negro in this town, because there’s none that live here,” Duane said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about and you never have known. If you don’t shut up I’ll turn off your oxygen.”
Old Mr. Jakes looked stunned.
“You shouldn’t pick on Charlie, Duane, he’s too old to know up from down,” an old lady named Coolidge said.
“You’re all old but it’s no reason to lie,” he said to the lady politely, “and I’m just a step or two behind you. It don’t excuse prejudice.”
Then he went to the hardware store, bought some paint remover and erased the graffiti from the bottom of the pool.
44
K.K. SLATER TOOK the news matter-of-factly. She seemed neither happy to hear it, nor upset.
“The reason the very rich congregate in certain watering holes is because nobody really likes them except themselves, and sometimes not then. But the point of Aspen, Vail, Sun Valley, Long Island, West Palm, Malibu, Gstaad, the Hotel du Cap and so on is in those places the super-rich can congregate and not feel too exceptional. These places take in a lot of money by providing very rich people the illusion of normalcy.
“A few are normal and God are they boring,” she went on.
“Maybe, but they probably don’t throw rocks at people having dinner, or write nasty things in the bottom of swimming pools.”
K.K. shrugged.
Dal was still not home, and it made Duane nervous. What if she just never came back? She may have liked working for Dickie but she could hardly have enjoyed Wichita Falls or Thalia. What if she stayed in Thailand?
Then
one night when he was watching the Weather Channel he heard the back door open, and Dal walked in, carrying her small knapsack. When she saw him she gave him an affectionate hug and a kiss, smiling her sly, shy smile.
“You okay, Mr. Moore?”
“I was thinking we were on a first name basis,” he mentioned.
“We are, but I’ve been away and I feel shy,” Dal said. “Besides, I need to shower. Airplanes get filthier and filthier.”
When she came out her hair was wet and she had wrapped a towel around her head. She made them tea.
“Have a good time?” he asked, as she handed him a spoon for his honey.
“Not very,” Dal admitted. “My mother is going to die soon. Leaving her was hard. And my children don’t know me very well, which is not right. And a not very nice man in Bangkok offered me a job for much more money.”
Duane had feared something like that might happen.
“I didn’t take the job, but neither did I close the door. I told him I would have an answer for him in thirty days, and would have to give Dickie thirty days’ notice if I should quit.”
Duane felt the beginning of a great sadness but did not feel surprised. He had allowed himself to think of a life with Dal, while all the while knowing that it probably would not come to pass. He didn’t have many years to offer her, and even if he was younger why would she want to live in such a miserable place?
Besides, it was merely normal that she would want to live closer to her family, and know her children better.
He said nothing but he felt Dal watching him.
“I think you are in love with me, Mr. Moore,” she said. “Is that not true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” he said. “I am in love with you but I never much expected you’d want to spend your life in a place like this.”
“You are right, I wouldn’t,” Dal said. “All the same you are a wonderful man and if I could live for the love of a man I would choose you.”
“Thanks,” Duane said.
“Do you know what Tuol Sleng is?” she asked.
Duane shook his head.
“It was a prison,” she said. “A million Cambodians died there, or near there. My husband was tortured to death there. He was a teacher—only a teacher. In relation to Tuol Sleng I was one of the lucky ones. I was raped and tortured but not killed. One of the guards was my cousin. He helped me escape and I got to Thailand. My mother and two of my children made it, but not my sisters. They died, there in Tuol Sleng.”
“A million people dying—it’s hard to imagine,” he said.
“I was sodomized with a hose, and worse things than that were done to me, Mr. Moore,” Dal said, with a distant look in her eyes.
“Lenin or Stalin or somebody said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic,” she said shaking her head.
“I do not feel like a statistic,” she said. “I felt like a woman who had been sent to hell. And I was sent to hell, along with my husband, two sisters and our children.”
She was silent for a bit.
“And now I am bringing this hell to you, who love me and have been only kind to me. I will take the offer of the man in Bangkok but I wanted to tell you first. It is a lot of money but it is not for the money I am going, you know?”
Dal rubbed her eyes but did not cry.
“I need to be closer to my children, but that is not why I am going to take the offer, either.”
“Why, then?” he asked. “Wanting to be closer to your family is only normal.”
“But I am not normal, Duane,” she said. “No one who went through Tuol Sleng is normal—though some pretend to be,” she said.
“It is not my family I need to be closer to,” she said. “I need to be closer to my ghosts, Mr. Moore. I hope you understand that.”
45
“IT’S THE NATURE of the business, Daddy,” Dickie said, a few days after Dal had left. “Anyone as good as Dal is going to get hired away.”
“I know, I’m a grown man—I’ll live.”
“That’s not a given,” Dickie said.
“I guess I need to stop falling in love with these pretty analysts you bring in.”
Dickie didn’t answer—soon Duane left. The next day he got a letter from Dal, mailed from the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport. He opened it and propped it up against a teacup to read it.
Dear Duane—
Do not shut out life because I am gone. It is odd that I should ever have been in Wichita Falls and Thalia but the good part of it was that we met. For reasons of my past I thought I must be formal with you—many Cambodians are formal. But my friendship with you will always be a solace—to me, and I hope to you.
I hope you mend fences with your daughters—they are just confused, as is my own daughter, back home.
To forgive is to survive. I know.
Your friend always
Dal
Duane did not know who he needed to forgive, exactly—they had grown up as country girls and now were trying to be city girls—of course they made mistakes, but he did not feel that they were lost to him.
He was not even sure that Annie Cameron was lost to him, even if all that joined them was her anger. The fact that she was still angry troubled him, but it also meant that, in some measure, she was still there.
It was Dal, whom he loved most of all his women, who was not still there. Dal was gone forever—he felt it in his gut. He was a Texas workingman—it was odd indeed that computers and the effect they had on the oil business had brought women into his life that would never have been in his life even ten years ago. His wife Karla had her fatal car wreck just as the world changed. She had not been happy when Honor Carmichael came into his life and she would have been even more angry about the women who followed.
That night, for the first time that he could remember, Duane wondered how it would be just to go to sleep and not wake up. He did not want to do anything to effect his end, but if his eventual departure involved just going to sleep and quietly ceasing to live, that would, he thought, be ideal.
What had come as an idle thought became a frightening thought. He did not want to leave all his duties, all his friendships, in that way. He did not want to die at all—he would have to someday.
Of course he was sad that Dal was gone, but Willy wasn’t gone, nor Dickie, nor his daughters, nor Honor, nor K.K., for that matter. Or Bobby Lee.
He still had people, he still had duties. Not going on would be a betrayal of all he believed.
Finally he went to sleep—and, when morning came, woke up.
46
IN HIS SLEEP Duane dreamed that he and Karla were working in the garden—it was a common dream with him, and, of course, annually they had worked in a garden, so the dream had an old basis.
When he woke the first thing he sensed was that someone was working in the garden—then he remembered that Stephanie, K.K.’s long-legged cook, had been invited to forage in the garden and take what she wanted. When he peeked out the window he saw that it was indeed Stephanie, wearing cutoffs, a Texas Rangers baseball cap and sandals. So far she had some turnips, some collard greens and several cucumbers in her basket.
Duane got into some clothes and wandered out.
“Hi, Mr. Moore, I’m out here pillaging,” she said cheerfully. “I love turnips. Isn’t it a fine day?”
It was a beautiful sunny day.
“What are you doing with yourself?” she asked.
“Working at being retired,” he said. “It’s kind of a full-time job.”
“I’ll never retire—people always need cooks,” Stephanie said. “Of course I might change my mind if I met a real sexy guy. If that ever happens I plan to have a bunch of babies. I haven’t attained orgasm yet but I’m still hopeful. The clitoris is supposed to have eight thousand nerve endings, but somehow the guys I date can never find very many of them.”
When she bent to pick a cucumber he saw the valley between her young breasts, which were heavy, despite her slim build.
>
Stephanie, like Casey, was a heavy gum chewer—heavy enough that it made her breasts move a little. She looked at him, and picked up on where he was looking, but she didn’t say anything for a while.
Duane remembered Dal’s admonition—don’t push life away. Here was life—young life.
“K.K.’s gone for the day, if that’s what’s stopping you,” Stephanie said. “I bet you’d like to see if you could find some of those nerve ends on my clitoris.”
“Stephanie, I’m tempted, but I’m going to pass,” he said.
“What?” she said, genuinely surprised. “You’re going to pass up a free fuck with me?”
“Yes,” Duane said.
“But why?”
“I don’t know why,” he admitted. “I honestly don’t.”
“Wow—I was lying about the orgasms,” she said. “If that’s what’s worrying you, forget it. Given a reasonably hard dick I can come in about three minutes.”
“Glad to hear it,” Duane said, and turned toward the house.
“Hey, don’t let it affect our friendship, Mr. Moore,” Stephanie said.
“I won’t.”
“Come to dinner, we’re having swordfish—K.K.’s bringing it from Dallas.
“Sounds good, I’ll be there,” Duane said.
47
STEPHANIE SLADE DID such a fine job of cooking for K.K. that soon invitations to dine at the penthouse were much coveted. Boyd Cotton came, on average, three times a week, and Duane had begun to eat there almost every night, usually with Bobby Lee in tow.
Boyd was contentedly running the nilgai operation now, while occasionally helping out with the Scottish cattle, which he still didn’t really like.
K.K. had yet to deliver Hondo Honda’s famous rifle to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame—most nights she kept it on the counter in the penthouse.
“Would you shoot someone, K.K.?” Boyd asked one night.
“I’m probably capable of that,” K.K. said. “It would depend on my mood. In truth there are not that many things I’m not capable of—though many of those things I’ll never actually do.