Delaney didn't know what to say. He was wrestling with his feelings, trying to reconcile the theoretical and the actual. Those people had every right to gather on that streetcorner-it was their inalienable right, guaranteed by the Constitution. But whose constitution-Mexico's? Did Mexico even have a constitution? But that was cynical too and he corrected himself: he was assuming they were illegals, but even illegals had rights under the Constitution, and what if they were legal, citizens of the U. S. A., what then?
“I mean,” Kyra was saying, lifting a morsel of tofu and oyster mushroom to her lips, “I'm not proud of it or anything-and I know how you feel and I agree that everybody's got a right to work and have a decent standard of living, but there's just so many of them, they've overwhelmed us, the schools, welfare, the prisons and now the streets…” She chewed thoughtfully. Took a sip of water. “Oh, by the way, did I tell you Cynthia Sinclair got engaged? At the office?” She laughed, a little trill, and set her fork down. “I don't know what made me think of it-prisons?” She laughed again and Delaney couldn't ablñey couldnhelp joining in. “Sure. Prisons. That was it.”
And then she began to fill him in on Cynthia Sinclair and her fiancé and all the small details of her education, work habits and aspirations, but Delaney wasn't listening. What she'd said about cleaning up the streetcorner had struck a chord, and it brought him back to the meeting he'd attended with Jack two nights ago. Or it wasn't a meeting actually, but a social gathering-“A few guys getting together for a drink,” as Jack put it.
Jack had come in the door just after seven, in a pair of shorts-white, and perfectly pressed, of course-and an Izod shirt, and he and Delaney walked down the block and up two streets to Via Mariposa in the golden glow of evening. Jack hadn't told him where they were going-“Just over to a neighbor's house, a friend, a guy I've been wanting you to meet”-and as they strolled past the familiar sprawling Spanish-style homes, the walk took on the aspect of an adventure for Delaney. He and Jack were talking about everything under the sun-the Dodgers, lawn care, the situation in South Africa, the great horned owl that had taken a kitten off the Corbissons' roof-and yet Delaney couldn't help wondering what the whole thing was about. What friend? What neighbor? While he barely knew half the people-in the community, he was fairly confident he knew everybody in Jack's circle, the ones in Arroyo Blanco, anyway.
But then they came to a house at the very end of Via Mariposa, where the road gave out and the hills rose in a wedge above the roof-line, and Delaney realized he had no idea who lived here. He'd been by the place a hundred times, walking the dog, taking the air, and had never really paid much attention to it one way or the other: it was just a house. Same model as his own place, only the garage was reversed, and instead of Rancho White with Navajo trim, the owner had reversed the colors too, going with the lighter shade for the trim and the darker for the stucco. The landscaping was unremarkable, no different from any of the other places on the block: two tongues of lawn on either side of a crushed stone path, shrubs that weren't as drought-tolerant as they should be, a flagpole draped with a limp flag and a single fat starling perched atop it like a clot of something wiped on a sleeve.
“Whose place is this?” he asked Jack as they came up the walk.
“Dominick Flood's.”
Delaney shot him a glance. “Don't think I know him.”
“You should,” Jack said over his shoulder, and that was all.
A maid showed them in. She was small, neat, with an untraceable accent and a tight black uniform with white trim and a little white apron Delaney found excessive: who would dress a servant up like somebody's idea of a servant, like something out of a movie? What was the point? They followed her down a corridor of genuine hand-troweled plaster, spare and bright, past a pair of rooms furnished in a Southwestern motif, Navajo blankets on the walls, heavy bleached-pine furniture, big clay pots of cactus and succulents, floors of unglazed tile. At the rear of the house, in the room Delaney used for his study, was a den with a wet bar, and eight men were gathered round it, drinks in hand. They were noisy and grew noisier when Jack stepped into the room, turning to him as one with shouts of greeting. Delaney recognized Jack Cherrystone and the bearded fat man from the meeting-Jim Shirley-and two or three others, though he couldn't place their names.
“Jack!” a voice cried out behind them and Delaney turned to see the man he presumed to be their host coming up the hallway. Flood looked to be about sixty, tanned and hard as a walnut, with.
“Dom,” Jack sang, shaking the older man's hand, and then he turned to introduce Delaney.
“The naturalist,” Flood said without irony, and fixed him with a narrow look. “Jack's told me all about you. And of course I follow your column in _Wide Open Spaces,__ terrific stuff, terrific.”
Delaney made a noise of demurral. “I didn't think anybody really paid that much attention-”
“I subscribe to them all,” Flood said, “-_Nature, High Sierra, The Tule Times,__ even some of the more radical newsletters. To me, there's nothing more important than the environment-hey, where would we be without it, floating in space?”
Delaney laughed.
“Besides, I have a lot of time on my hands”-at this, they both glanced down at the box on his ankle and Delaney had his first intimation of just what its function might be-“and reading sustains me, on all issues. But come on in and have a drink,” he was saying, already in motion, and a moment later they were standing at the bar with the others while a man in a blue satin jacket and bow tie fixed their drinks-Scotch, no ice, for Jack, and a glass of sauvignon blanc for Delaney.
It was a convivial evening, a social gathering and nothing more-at least for the first hour-and Delaney had begun to enjoy himself, set at ease immediately by his host's praise and the easy familiarity of the others-they were his neighbors, after all-when the smaller conversations began to be subsumed in a larger one, and the theme of the evening gradually began to reveal itself. Jim Shirley, sweating and huge in a Disneyland T-shirt, was leaning forward on the sofa with a drink in his hand, addressing Bill Vogel and Charlie Tillerman, the two men Delaney had recognized on entering, and the room fell silent to pick up his words. “Go unlisted, that's what I say. And I'm going to raise the issue at the next community meeting, just to warn everybody-”
“I don't think I'm following you, Jim,” Jack Cherrystone rumbled from the bar, the seismic blast of his everyday voice setting the glass ashtrays in motion on the coffee table. “What do you mean, go unlisted? What difference would that make?”
Jim Shirley was a querulous fat man, bringer of bad tidings, a paranoiac, and Delaney didn't like him. But the moment belonged to Jim Shirley, and he seized it. “I'm talking the latest rash of burglaries? The three houses on Esperanza that got hit two weeks back? Well, the gate helps, no doubt about it, but these characters came in in a pickup truck, ratty old clothes, a couple rakes and a mower in back, and said they were doing the Levines' place, 37 Via Esperanza. The guard waves them through. But the thing is, they got the address out of the phone book, called the Levines to make sure they were out, and hit the place. And while they were at it, they got the Farrells and the Cochrans too. So my advice is, go unlisted. And I mean everybody in the development.”