“All right,” she said, shrugging, her eyes on the road, “we'll have Al Lopez take the fence down; it's not like we need it anymore”-and here was the sting of guilt, the counterattack-“if we ever did.”
“I can't walk out of my own yard,” he said.
She was smiling, serene. The wind blew. Bits of chaff and the odd tumbleweed shot through the thin luminous stream of the headlights. “In the backseat,” she said. “A present. For you.”
He turned to look. A car came up behind them and lighted his face. There was a stepladder in the backseat, a little three-foot aluminum one, the sort of thing you might use for hanging curtains or changing the lightbulb in the front hallway. It was nestled against the leather seat and there was a red satin bow taped to the front of it.
“There's your solution,” she said. “Anytime you want. Just hoist yourself over.”
“Yeah, sure. And what about the ramparts and the boiling oil?”
She ignored the sarcasm. She stared out at the road, her face serene and composed.
Of course, she was right. If the wall had to be there, and through the tyranny of the majority it did, 127 votes for, 87 against, then he'd have to get used to it-and this was a simple expedient. He had a sudden ephemeral vision of himself perched atop the wall with his daypack, and it came to him then that the wall might not be as bad as he'd thought, if he could get over the bruise to his selfesteem. Not only would it keep burglars, rapists, graffiti artists and coyotes out of the development, it would keep people like the Dagolians out of the hills. He couldn't really see Jack and Selda Cherrystone hoisting themselves over the wall for an evening stroll, or Doris Obst or even Jack Jardine. Delaney would have the hills to himself, his own private nature preserve. The idea took hold of him, exhilarated him, but he couldn't admit it. Not to Kyra, not yet. “I don't want to do any hoisting,” he said finally, injecting as much venom into the participle as he could, “I just want to walk. You know, like on my feet?”
There was no one at the Da Ros place, no muggers, no bogeymen, no realtors or buyers. Kyra walked him through the house, as she did every third or fourth night, extolling its virtues as if she were trying to sell it to him, and he asked her point-blank if she shouldn't consider dropping the listing. “It's been, what,” he said, “nine months now without so much as a nibble?”
They were in the library, the leather-bound spines of six thousand books carefully selected by a suicide glowing softly in the light of the wall sconces, and Kyra swung round to tell him he didn't know a thing about business, especially the realestate business. “People would kill for a listing like this,” she said. “Literally kill for it. And with a property this unique, you sometimes have to just sit on it till the right buyer comes along-and they will, believe me. I know it. I know they will.”
“You sound like you're trying to convince yourself.”
A gust rattled the panes. The Santa Anas were in full force and the koi pools would be clogged with litter. Kyra gave him her widest smile-nothing could dampen her mood tonight-and she took hold of both his hands and lifted them as if they were at the very start of an elaborate dance. “Maybe I am,” she said, and he let it drop.
On the way home they stopped in at Gitello's to pick up a few things-odds and ends-for the feast they were planning on Thursday, for Thanksgiving. They were having the Cherrystones and the Jardines over, as well as Kyra's sister and brother-in-law, with their three children, and Kyra's mother, who was flying in from San Francisco. They'd already spent two hundred and eighty dollars at the Von's in Woodland Hills, where nearly everything was cheaper, but the list of odds and ends had grown to daunting proportions. Kyra was doing the cooking, with Delaney as sous chef and the maid, Orbalina, on cleanup detail, and she was planning a traditional dinner: roast turkey with chestnut dressing and giblet gravy, mashed potatoes and turnips, a cranberry compote, steamed asparagus, three California wines and two French, baked winter squash soup and a salad of mixed field greens to start, a cheese course, a home-blended _granité__ of grapefruit and nectarine, and a hazelnut-risotto pudding and crème brûlée for dessert with espresso, Viennese coffee and Armagnac on the side.
Delaney retrieved the preliminary list from the folds of his wallet as Kyra strode brusquely through the door and selected a cart. The list was formidable. They needed whipping cream, baby carrots, heavy syrup, ground mace, five pounds of confectioners' sugar, balsamic vinegar, celery sticks and capers, among other things, as well as an assortment of cold cuts, marinated artichoke hearts, Greek olives and caponata for an antipasto platter she'd only just now decided on. As he followed her down the familiar aisles, watching her as she stood there examining the label on a can of smoked baby oysters or button mushrooms in their own juice, Delaney began to feel his mood lifting. There was nothing wrong, nothing at all. She was beautiful. She was his wife. He loved her. Why mope, why brood, why spend another angry night on the couch? The wall was there, a physical presence, undeniable, and it worked two ways, both for and against him, and if he was clever he could use it to his own advantage. It was Thanksgiving, and he should be thankful.
He stood at Kyra's side, touching her, offering suggestions and advice, inhaling the rich complex odor of her hair and body as she piled the cart high with bright irresistible packages, things they needed, things they'd run out of, things they might need or never need. Here it was, cornucopian, superabundant, all the fruits of the earth gathered and packaged and displayed for their benefit, for them and them alone. He felt better just being here, so much better he could barely contain himself. How could he have let such a petty thing come between them? He watched her select a jar of piccalilli relish and bend to set it in the cart, and a wave of tenderness swept over him. Suddenly he had his hands on her hips and he was pulling her to him and kissing her right there beneath the Diet Pepsi banner, under the full gaze of the lights and all the other shoppers with their carts and children and bland self-absorbed faces. And she kissed him back, with enthusiasm, and the promise of more to come.
And then, at the checkout, he was amazed all over again.
“You want your turkey?” the girl asked after she'd rung up the purchases-a hundred and six dollars and thirty-nine cents, and why not? The girl was dark-eyed, with a wild pouf of sprayed-up hair and penciled-in eyebrows, like a worldly waif in the silent films. She was snapping gum, animated, bathing in the endless shower of all this abundance.
“Turkey?” Delaney said. “What turkey?” Their turkey was home in the refrigerator, eighteen pounds, four ounces, range-fed and fresh-killed.
“It's a special offer, just this week only,” the girl said, her voice a breathless trill playing over the wad of pink gum Delaney could just catch a glimpse of when she opened her mouth to say “special.”
“If your order totals over fifty dollars you get a free twelve-pound turkey, one to a customer.”
“But we already-” Delaney began, and Kyra cut him off. “Yes,” she said, looking up from her compact, “thank you.”
“Carlos!” the girl sang out, shouting toward the distant fluorescent glare of the meat department at the back of the store. “Bring me another turkey, will you?”
For his part, Cándido Rincón didn't exactly welcome the season either. That it was hot, that the winds blew and the sweat dried from your skin almost before it had a chance to spill from the pores, was fine and good, ideal even-if only it could be sustained indefinitely, if only the sun would grace him for another two or three months. But he knew that the winds would soon blow themselves out and the sky would blacken and rot far out over the ocean and then come ashore to die. He couldn't smell the rains yet, but he knew they were coming. The days were truncated. The nights were cold. And where was his son going to be born-in a bed with a doctor looking on or in a hut with the rain driving down and nobody there but Cándido with a pot of water and his rusty knife?