improvements. This was merely a way station enroute to The Dream, so
they saw no point in lavishing funds on dreams.
The Dream. That was how they thought of it-with a capital d They kept
their expenses as low as possible in order to fund The Dream. They
didn’t spend much on clothes or vacations, and they didn’t buy fancy
cars. With hard work and iron determination, they were building Dakota
and Dakota Investigations into a major firm that could be sold for a
large capital gain, so they plowed a lot of earnings back into the
business to make it grow. For The Dream.
At the back of the house, the kitchen and family room-and the small
breakfast area that separated them-were furnished. This-and the master
bedroom upstairs-was where they lived when at home.
The kitchen had a Spanish-tile floor, beige counters, and dark oak
cabinets. No money had been spent on decorative accessories, but the
room had a cozy feeling because some necessities of a functioning
kitchen were on display: a net bag filled with half a dozen onions,
copper pots dangling from a ceiling rack, cooking utensils, bottles of
spices. Three green tomatoes were ripening on the windowsill.
Julie leaned against the counter, as if she could not stand another
moment without support, and Bobby said, “You want a drink?”
“Booze at dawn?”
“I was thinking more of milk or juice.”
“No, thanks.”
“Hungry?”
She shook her head. “I just want to fall into bed. I’m beat.”
He took her in his arms, held her close, cheek to cheek, with his face
buried in her hair. Her arms tightened around him.
They stood that way for a while, saying nothing, letting the residual
fear evaporate in the gentle heat they generated between them.
Fear and love were indivisible. If you allowed yourself to care, to
love, you made yourself vulnerable, and vulnerability led to fear. He
found meaning in life through his relationship with her, and if she
died, meaning and purpose would die too.
With Julie still in his arms, Bobby leaned back and studied her face.
The smudges of dried blood had been wiped away. The skinned spot on her
forehead was beginning to scab over with a thin yellow membrane.
However, the imprint of their recent ordeal consisted of more than the
abrasion on her forehead. With her tan complexion, she could never be
said to look pale, even in moments of the most profound anxiety; a
detectable grayness seeped into her face, however, at times like this,
and at the moment her cinnamon-and-cream skin was underlaid with a shade
of gray that made him think of headstone marble.
“It’s over,” he assured her, “and we’re okay.”
“It’s not over in my dreams. Won’t be for weeks.”
“A thing like tonight adds to the legend of Dakota and Dakota.
“I don’t want to be a legend. Legends are all dead.”
“We’ll be living legends, and that’ll bring in business. The more
business we build, the sooner we can sell out, grab the Dream.”
He kissed her gently on each corner of her mouth
“I have to call in, leave a long message on the agency machine so Clint
will know how to handle everything when he goes to work.”
“Yeah. I don’t want the phone to start ringing only a couple of hours
after I hit the sheets.
He kissed her again and went to the wall phone beside the refrigerator.
As he was dialing the office number, Julie walk to the bathroom off the
short hall that connected the kitchen to the laundry room. She closed
the bathroom door just as the answering machine picked up:
“Thank you for calling Dakota and Dakota. No one-”
Clint Karaghiosis -whose Greek-American family had been fans of Clint
Eastwood from the earliest days of his first television show, and had
named their baby after him. “Rawhide”-was Bobby and Julie’s right hand
man at the office. He could be trusted to handle any problem. Bobby
left a long message for him, summarizing the events at Decodyne and
noting specific tasks that had to be done to wrap up the case.
When he hung up, he stepped down into the adjoining family room,