“You work hard,” she said, “but you can see the results of your work. It’s something concrete. And you look happy, John. I’ll bet your wife is happy too.”
“Want to see a picture of her?”
“I’d love it, really.”
He took out his wallet and held it under the edge of the table to make the selection of a picture. He was grinning inside with anticipation. There was a little folder of color photographs. He looked through them quickly. Betty in that Dior thing in front of the enormous fireplace. Betty and the kids the day the Mercedes was delivered, with the big ranch house in the background. He decided on the one of the barbecue, with Betty and the kids, and the plane parked off the strip near the horse barn, and the flamboyant bar under carnival canvas. Anticipating her embarrassment, be looked across at her and saw in her eyes an unexpected warmth and vulnerability.
So he put that picture back and dug into the wallet and found the one he had carried for so long, a black and white one, creased and cracked. Only one kid, the first boy. A toddler. Betty, in faded jeans, leaned smiling against the corral fence, squinting into the sun, with nothing in the background but the drab contour of the land. He handed that picture to Gloria.
“She’s pretty, John. And she looks awfully nice.”
As she handed it back, her flight was announced. He walked out with her into the white heat of the sun. and he stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt, hat tilted forward over his eyes, and watched her climb the stairs and turn at the top and wave at him, a dark, slim, handsome woman, smartly dressed, hurrying back into her fabulous life, tense and brittle and not fully aware of her own discontent.
After her flight left he sauntered back to the repair apron and found they were bolting the cowling back in place. After the take-off he sat and looked west at the hill country and the silvery loops of the Guadalupe River. He felt a deeper contentment within himself. The last buried regret was gone. The dark girl of Riverside was now a poised and superficial stranger.
He decided he would tell Betty about meeting her, tell Betty tonight as they sat on the terrace under the starry sky. And in telling her, he would be telling her something else, something beyond words. He knew Betty would understand about the picture.
