“He can keep his teeth now.” Laughing, Heather said, “It’s a wonderful
thing, Jack.” At last his smile was broad and without reservation.
“You’re damn right it’s a wonderful thing–now we won’t have to listen
to him gumming his food.”
Removing the wire from the cork, she said, “Even if we don’t deserve so
much good fortune, Toby does.”
“We all deserve it.” He got up, went to a nearby cabinet, and removed
a clean dish towel from a drawer. “Here, let me.” He took the bottle
from Heather, draped the cloth over it. “Might explode.” He twisted
the cork, it popped, but the champagne did not foam out of the neck of
the bottle. She brought a couple of glasses, and he filled them. “To
Eduardo Fernandez,” she said by way of a toast. “To Tommy.” They
drank, standing beside the table, and then he kissed her lightly. His
quick tongue was sweet with champagne.
“My God, Heather, do you know what this meanst’ They sat down again as
she said, “When we go out to dinner the next time, it can be someplace
that serves the food on real plates instead of in paper containers.”
His eyes were shining, and she was thrilled to see him so happy. “We
can pay the mortgage, all the bills, put money away for Toby to go to
college one day, maybe even take a vacation–and that’s just from the
cash. If we sell the farm–”
“Look at the photographs,” she urged,
grabbing them, spreading them on the table in front of him. “Very
nice,” he said. “Better than very nice. It’s gorgeous, Jack. Look at
those mountains! And look at this one–look, from this angle, standing
in front of the house, you can see forever!”
He looked up from the snapshots and met her eyes. “What am I
hearing?”
“We don’t have to sell it.”
“Live there?”
“Why not?”
“We’re city people.” . n: . ^: “And we hate it.”
“Angelenos all our lives.”
“Isn’t what it once was.” She could see that the idea intrigued him,
and her own excitement grew as he began to come around to her point of
view. “We’ve wanted change for a long time,” he said.
“But I was never thinking this much change.”
“Look at the photographs.”
“Okay, yeah, it’s gorgeous. But what would we do there? It’s a lot of
money but not enough to last forever. Besides, we’re young–we can’t
vegetate, we need to do something.”
“Maybe we can start a business in Eagle’s Roost.”
“What sort of business?”
“I don’t know. Anything,” she said. “We can go, see what it’s like,
and maybe we’ll spot an opportunity right off the bat. And if not .
. well, we don’t have to live there forever. A year, two years, and if
we don’t like it, we can sell.” He finished his champagne, poured
refreshers for both of them.
“Toby starts school in two weeks….”
“They have schools in Montana,” she said, though she knew that was not
what concerned him. He was no doubt thinking about the eleven-year-old
girl who’d been shot to death one block from the elementary school that
Toby would be attending.
She nudged him: “He’ll have six hundred acres to play on, Jack. How
long has he wanted a dog, a golden retriever, and it just seemed like
this place was too small for one?”
Staring at one of the snapshots, Jack said, “At work today, we were
talking about all the names this city has, more than other places.
Like New York is the Big Apple, and that’s it. But L.A. has lots of
names–and none of them fit any more, none of them mean anything. Like
the Big Orange. But there aren’t any orange groves any more, all gone
to tract houses and mini-malls and car lots.
You can call it the City of Angels, but not much angelic happens here
any more, not the way it once did, too many devils on the streets.”
“The City Where Stars Are Born,” she said. “And nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of a thousand kids who come here to be movie
stars–what happens to them? Wind up used, abused, broke, and hooked