“Good,” Gregory said.
“Not many Molokans left here, are there?”
“Not really.” Gregory finished off his glass, motioned for another. “Most of the younger ones moved away, and the old ones are slowly dying off.”
“I remember when this town was chock full of Molokans and Mormons. And miners.” He grinned. “Lotta m’s there, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Town had an identity back then, though. Now who knows who lives here? It’s all kinda generic.” He finished his beer. “I miss the old days. Guess that means I’m gettin’ old, huh?”
“Getting old? You are old.”
Odd laughed. “Don’t remind me.” He stood. “I gotta get going. My wife’ll kill me if I’m late.”
Gregory nodded. “See you tomorrow, then.”
Odd waved low as he headed toward the door. “Later.”
Opening night.
Not only was the inside of the café full but all of the sidewalk tables were taken, and there was a line of waiting people snaking up the street past the closed hair salon all the way to Ed’s Variety Store. A photographer from the paper was covering the event, and the paparazzi-like flashes from his camera added to the excitement and gave a show-biz aura to the proceedings.
He and Paul and Odd had been working all day, preparing for the big event, and they were still going over last-minute details even as the band was setting up. Montezuma’s Revenge had their own sound guy, but Paul would be working the lights, and Gregory would take over the soundboard for the open mike set. Even above the din of conversation, the three of them could hear the almost constant ringing of the cash register, and Gregory thought it was that more than anything else that accounted for the big grin that seemed to be permanently etched on Paul’s face.
Julia and the kids showed up a little after seven. Alice, the senior server, tracked him down in the back, and Gregory met his family at the door and took them to the table he’d reserved, telling them to order whatever they wanted, it was all on the house.
He gave his wife a quick, grateful kiss. He and Julia seemed to have put their argument over the house behind them, but it had still been a relief when she’d arrived smiling. Her moods were tough to call these days, and he had given up trying to predict what she was feeling or why.
Adam and Teo were excited, honored to be treated like adults even if only for this one evening, but Sasha was her usual disagreeable self, and Gregory was thankful for small favors. There were a lot of single guys on the prowl here tonight and the four young men in the band were pinup quality themselves. He didn’t want Sasha to make a good impression on any of them. There were also a lot of slutty-looking redneck girls hanging around the fringes of the café tonight, and he certainly didn’t want his daughter falling in with that crowd. Let her stick to the boys at school.
Odd said that his wife was feeling a bit under the weather and wouldn’t be able to make it, but Deanna showed up soon after and sat next to Julia at their table. The two of them immediately started talking, and Gregory and Paul left them together as they went back to the makeshift control booth to go over the light and sound boards.
The night was perfect. Everything ran like clockwork, and even Gregory’s miscues and Paul’s clearly novice manipulation of the stage lights did not detract from the triumph of the evening. The audience was more than kind, applauding wildly for even the most raggedly amateurish open mike acts, and the consensus of everyone, even the Monitor photographer, was that the night had been a rousing success.
After they came home, Julia checked on his mother, he made sure the kids went to bed, and the two of them met in the bedroom. They hadn’t had sex in a while, not since the fight, but she gave him a long, slow kiss, massaged him through his pants, and told him he’d better stay awake while she took her shower if he knew what was good for him.
He took off his clothes, turned on the TV and got into bed, and she was clean and freshly shaved when she crawled under the covers with him fifteen minutes later. They waited a little longer, just to make sure everyone in the house was asleep, then she climbed silently on top of him. He was already hard, and he slid it in and began pumping, grabbing her butt the way she liked, and she muffled the sounds of her pleasure by screaming into his mouth as she kissed hm.
4
The bar closed at one, and except for Jimmy, the owner, Lucinda was the last one to leave. She hung up her apron, counted her tips, and shouted out “I’m leaving!” as she walked out the front and locked the door behind her. Jimmy’s response was muffled and incomprehensible, but it didn’t matter. She knew all of his standard smart-ass replies, and she double-checked the lock before heading up the street toward home.
It had been warm in the bar, but it was chilly outside, and she shivered as she walked along the gravel shoulder. She should’ve brought a jacket. The days were still summer, but the nights were edging toward autumn, and pretty soon she’d have to start driving to and from work.
When she’d first come to McGuane after traveling across the country from Sarasota, when she’d ended up here after Joel had dumped her and moved on to California, leaving her with an empty pocketbook and an unpaid motel bill, it was May and it was hot as hell. She’d assumed that the temperature would remain that way year-round. After all, this was the desert. But desert sand did not hold heat, and the winters here were surprisingly cold. She’d found out that rough first year that she needed sweaters, long pants, and long-sleeved blouses to supplement her shorts and T-shirts and tube tops.
She smiled to herself. It was a dry cold, though.
From somewhere up the canyon came a coyote’s cry, and Lucinda rubbed her arms as she quickened her pace. That was one desert sound she’d never gotten used to. It still frightened her, and it seemed to her that the coyotes had been howling a lot more lately.
Closer in, a dog barked, and other dogs took up the cry, a chain reaction passing through the backyards of houses on several parallel streets.
She turned into Azurite Lane. The narrow road wound along the floor of the upwardly sloping side canyon, and the temperature seemed to drop even lower as she headed up the dirt street toward her house.
The buildings here were few and far between, and it was so late that most of the house lights were off, only an occasional lit porch lamp indicating that anyone lived in this section of town. The dogs had quieted, the coyotes were silent, and behind her she heard a noise she had not noticed before, a rough and ragged scraping that sounded like someone wearing boots was coming up behind her.
She hadn’t seen anyone out, hadn’t passed anyone along the way, and she tried to tell herself that it was merely someone walking home from a friend’s house and that it was purely coincidental that the two of them happened to be walking along this section of road at this time of night, but she was afraid to turn around and look to make sure.
The sound seemed louder now that she was listening for it, and it conjured in her mind stalking scenes from a thousand old monster movies. The horrific image she tried to focus on was that of the shambling, slow-moving mummy, but she could not sustain that fiction against the reality of the noise behind her. There was a sprightliness to the strange step, a hint of quickness and agility in the identifiable sound of movement.
On impulse, she stopped, froze in place, listening.
The sound stopped as well.
It resumed the second she started walking.
Someone was following her.
She began walking faster.