you might jeopardize Mr. Shadway and Mrs. Leben and..
well…”
He wanted to shoot himself, put an end to this humiliation.
She said, “I’m not seeing anyone special, not anyone I’d share secrets
with.”
Reese cleared his throat. “Well, uh, that’s good. All right.”
He started to turn toward the door, where Julio was giving him a strange
look, and Teddy said, “You are a big one, aren’t you?”
Reese faced her again. “Excuse me?”
“You’re quite a big guy. Too bad there aren’t more your size. A girl
like me would almost seem petite to you.”
What does she mean by that? he wondered. Anything?
Just polite conversation? Is she giving me an opening? If it’s an
opening, how should I respond to it?
“It would be nice to be thought of as petite,” she said.
He tried to speak. Could not.
He felt stupid, awkward, and shy as he’d been at sixteen.
Suddenly he could speak, but he blurted out the question as he might
have done as a boy of sixteen,
“MissBertlesman-would-you-go-out-with-me-sometime?”
She smiled and said, “Yes.”
“You would?”
“Yes.”
“Saturday night? Dinner? Seven o’clock?”
“Sounds nice.”
He stared at her, amazed. “Really?”
She laughed. “Really.”
A minute later, in the car, Reese said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“I never realized you were such a smooth 6perator,” Julio said
kiddingly, affectionately.
Blushing, Reese said, “By God, life’s funny, isn’t it? You never know
when it might take a whole new turn.”
“Slow down,” Julio said, starting the engine and driving away from the
curb. “It’s just a date.”
“Yeah. Probably. But… I got a feeling it might turn out to be more
than just that.”
“A smooth operator and a romantic fool,” Julio said as he steered the
car down out of the Heights, toward Newport Avenue.
After some thought, Reese said, “You know what Eric Leben forgot? He
was so obsessed with living forever, he forgot to enjoy the life he had.
Life may be short, but there’s a lot to be said for it. Leben was so
busy planning for eternity, he forgot to enjoy the moment.
“Listen,” Julio said, “if romance is going to make a philosopher out of
you, I may have to get a new partner.”
For a few minutes Reese was silent, submerged in memories of well-tanned
legs and flamingo-pink silk.
When he surfaced again, he realized that Julio was not driving
aimlessly. “Where we going?”
“John Wayne Airport.”
“Vegas?”
“Is that okay with you?” Julio asked.
“Seems like the only thing we can do.”
“Have to pay for tickets out of our own pockets.”
“I know.”
“You want to stay here, that’s all right.”
“I’m in,” Reese said. q “I can handle it alone.”
“I’m in.”
“Might get dangerous from here on, and you have Esther to think about,”
Julio said.
My little Esther and now maybe Theodora Teddy” Bertlesman, Reese
thought. And when you find someone to care about-when you dare to
care-that’s when life gets cruel, that’s when they’re taken from you,
that’s when you lose it all. A premonition of death made him shiver.
Nevertheless, he said, “I’m in. Didn’t you hear me say I’m in? For
God’s sake, Julio, I’m in.”
VIVA LAS VœGAS Following the storm across the desert, Ben Shadway
reached Baker, California, gateway to Death Valley, at 6,20.
The wind was blowing much harder than it had been back toward Barstow.
The driven rain snapped against the windshield with a sound like
thousands of impacting bullets. Service-station, restaurant, and motel
signs were swinging on their mountings, trying to tear loose and fly
away. A stop sign twitched violently back and forth, caught in
turbulent currents of air, and seemed about to screw itself out of the
ground. At a Shell station, two attendants in yellow rain slickers
moved with their heads bowed and shoulders hunched, the tails of their
glistening vinyl coats flapped against their legs and whipped out behind
them. A score of bristly tumbleweeds, some four or five feet in
diameter, bounced-rolled-sailed across tiny Baker’s only east-west
street, swept in from the desolate landscape to the south.
Ben tried to call Whitney Gavis from a pay phone inside a small
convenience store. He couldn’t get through to Vegas. Three times, he