The police had taken the report with all the enthusiasm of the walking dead-he might as well have been reporting a missing paper clip for all the interest they mustered-and Jack had used the occasion to deliver a sermon. “What do you expect,” he'd said, “when all you bleeding hearts want to invite the whole world in here to feed at our trough without a thought as to who's going to pay for it, as if the American taxpayer was like Jesus Christ with his loaves and fishes. You've seen them lined up on the streets scrambling all over one another every time a car slows at the corner, ready to kill for the chance to make three bucks an hour. Well, did you ever stop to think what happens when they don't get that half-day job spreading manure or stripping shingles off a roof? Where do you think they sleep? What do you think they eat? What would you do in their place?” Jack, ever calm, ever prepared, ever cynical, drew himself up and pointed an admonishing finger. “Don't act surprised, because this is only the beginning. We're under siege here-and there's going to be a backlash. People are fed up with it. Even you. You're fed up with it too, admit it.”
And now Kenny Grissom. Business as usual. A shoulder shrug, a wink of commiseration, the naked joy of moving product. From the minute Kyra had dropped Delaney off at the lot-he was determined to replace his car, exact model, color, everything-Kenny Grissom had regaled him with stories of carjackings, chop shops, criminality as pervasive as death. “Don't get me wrong-I'm not blaming it all on the Mexicans,” Kenny said, handing him yet another page of the sales agreement, “it's everybody-Salvadorians, I-ranians, Russians, Vietnamese. There was this one woman came in here, she's from Guatemala I think it was, wrapped up in a shawl, bad teeth, her hair in a braid, couldn't have been more than four and a half feet tall. She'd heard about credit-'we don't refuse credit' and that sort of thing, you know? — and even though she didn't have any money or collateral or any credit history whatever, she just wondered if she could sign up for a new car and maybe drive it down to Guatemala-”
The broad face cracked open, the salesman's laugh rang out, and Delaney imagined how thoroughly sick of that laugh the other salesmen must have been, not to mention the secretaries, the service manager and Kenny Grissom's wife, if he had one. He was sick of it himself. But he signed the papers and he got his car and after Kenny handed him the keys, slapped him on the back and told him the story of the woman who'd wrecked two brand-new cars just driving out of the lot, Delaney sat there for a long while, getting used to the seats and new-car smell and the subtle difference between this model and the one he was familiar with. Little things, but they annoyed him out of all proportion. He sat there, running sweat, grimly reading through the owner's manual, though he was late for his lunch date with Kyra. Finally, he put the car in gear and eased it out onto the road, taking surface streets all the way, careful to vary speeds and keep it under fifty, as the manual advised.
He drove twice round the block past the Indian restaurant in Woodland Hills, where they'd agreed to meet, but there was no parking at this hour: lunch was big business. The valet parking attendant was Mexican, of course-Hispanic, Latino, whatever-and Delaney sat there in his new car with thirty-eight miles on the odometer, seat belt fastened, hand on the wheel, until the driver behind him hit his horn and the attendant-he was a kid, eighteen, nineteen, black shining anxious eyes-said, “Sir?” And then Delaney was standing there in the sun, his shirt soaked through, another morning wasted, and the tires chirped and his new car shot round the corner of the building and out of sight. There were no personalized license plates this time, just a random configuration of letters and numbers. He didn't even know his own plate number. He was losing control. A beer, he thought, stepping into the dark coolness of the restaurant through the rear door, just one. To celebrate.
The place was crowded, businesspeople perched over plates of _tandoori__ chicken, housewives gossiping over delicate cups of Darjeeling tea and coffee, waiters in a flurry, voices riding up and down the scale. Kyra was sitting at a table near the front window, her back to him, her hair massed over the crown of her head like pale white feathers. A Perrier stood on the table before her, a flap of _nan__ bread, a crystal dish of lime pickle and mango chutney. She was bent over a sheaf of papers, working.
“What kept you?” she said as he slid into the chair across from her. “Any problems?”
“No,” he murmured, trying to catch the waiter's attention. “I just had to drive slow, that's all-you know, till it's broken in.”
“You did get the price we agreed on? They didn't try anything cute at the last minute-?” She looked up from her papers, fixing him with an intent stare. A band of sunlight cut across her face, driving the color from her eyes till they were nearly translucent.
He shook his head. “No surprises. Everything's okay.”
“Well, where is it? Can I see it?” She glanced at her watch. “I have to run at one-thirty. I'm closing that place in Arroyo Blanco-on Dolorosa? — and then, since I'll be so close, I want to stop in and see that there're no screwups with the fence company…”
They'd got a variance from the Arroyo Blanco Zoning Committee on the fence height in their backyard, as a direct result of what had befallen poor Sacheverell, and they were adding two feet to the chain-link fence. Kyra hadn't let Osbert out of her sight since the attack, insisting on walking him herself before and after work, and the cat had been strictly confined to the house. Once the fence was completed, things could go back to normal. Or so they hoped.
“I left the car out back,” he said, “with the parking attendant.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe after lunch, if you still…” He trailed off. What he wanted to tell her was how angry he was, how he hadn't wanted a new car-the old one barely had twenty thousand miles on it-how he felt depressed, disheartened, as if his luck had turned bad and he was sinking into an imperceptible hole that deepened centimeter by centimeter each hour of each day. There'd been a moment there, handing over the keys to the young Latino, when he felt a deep shameful stab of racist resentment-did they _all__ have to be Mexican? — that went against everything he'd believed in all his life. He wanted to tell her about that, that above all else, but he couldn't.
“I'm out front,” she said, and they both looked out the window to where Kyra's midnight-blue Lexus sat secure at the curb.
The waiter appeared then, a pudgy balding man who spoke in the chirping singsong accent of the Subcontinent. Delaney ordered a beer-“To celebrate my new car,” he explained sourly to Kyra's lifted eyebrows-and asked for a menu.
“Certainly, sir,” the waiter barked, and his eyes seemed to jump round in their sockets, “but the lady has-”
“I've already ordered,” Kyra said, cutting him off and laying a hand on Delaney's arm. “You were late and I've got to run. I just got us a veggie curry and a bite of salad, and some _samosas__ to start.”
That was fine, but Delaney felt irritated. It wasn't lunch-at this point he didn't care what he ate-it was the occasion. He wasn't materialistic, not really, and he never bought anything on impulse, but when he did make a major purchase he felt good about it, good about himself, the future of the country and the state of the world. That was the American way. Buy something. Feel good. But he didn't feel good, not at all. He felt like a victim.