As we strolled, Katharine pointed out the various flora around us, bushes and trees and even some flowers here and there along the roadside, telling me what everything was called. I’m unredeemably a city boy; the names she quoted fell out of my head just as rapidly as she put them in. Still, it was nice to hear her talk about what was, after all, her subject, which led me at last to say, “What made you decide to be a landscape architect in the first place?”
She gave me a sidelong look: “What made you decide to be a cabdriver?”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Nothing, you know that. The only reason I’m driving a cab is because my father had one around the house. I take the path of least resistance. You don’t. This whole journey is you taking the path of most resistance.”
She laughed, then said, “Well, I usually take the path of least resistance, just like anybody else. I didn’t start out wanting to be a landscape architect, it just happened.”
“Sure.”
“No, truly. When I was a little girl, what I wanted to be was a wife and a mommy, like everybody else. Then, around the time I went to college, the world opened up a little and it was all right to think of alternative futures, and then I decided what I wanted to be was personal secretary to a major politician, like a senator. Or maybe a movie executive. I was an American History major, with a Poli Sci minor, and I also learned shorthand and typing and all that, and when I graduated the placement office found me a job with a landscape architect.”
“Oh, no!”
She was laughing at me. “Did you think I was a saint? Did you think I had a vocation?”
“Yes!” I gestured wildly yet vaguely, like Raggedy Andy. “That road of yours, those eight miles—”
She stopped, and turned, and looked at me very seriously. “That’s one of the things you don’t know, Tom,” she said, “and it’s probably why you’re such a layabout.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You really believe, don’t you, that a heavenly messenger has to appear in a circle of fire and tell you what to do with your life before you’ll take any of it seriously. I love what I do, Tom, it uses whatever talents I have, it absorbs my interest, I think I’m very good at it; but until I got that secretarial job I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a landscape architect. If I’d gone to work for a rug manufacturer instead, I’d probably be designing carpets at this very minute, and I’d most likely be pretty good at it.”
“But don’t landscape architects have to go to college for it and pass tests and things?”
“Of course,” she said. “And I did, too, once I got involved. I’m fully accredited.” She smiled, amused at the opportunity to shock me. “But the whole thing came from a three by five card in that placement office.”
I clutched my brow. “Do you mean,” I demanded, eyes widening, “that accident plays a significant part in human life? I don’t think I can stand it.”
She studied me from under lowered brows, as though I hadn’t been joking. “No,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t believe you can.”
What terrible route the conversation might have taken from there I know not, because at that instant we were saved by the halting just beyond us of a black and gleaming Rolls Royce, out of which popped a tall lithe old woman in a lawn-party white dress, marcelled silver hair glistening in the sun, big cheerful smile on her lined and slender face as she called to us, “No more of that! You two just get in the car here and behave yourselves!”
31
“We’re the Chasens,” she said, half-turning in her seat so she could smile back at us as the Rolls rolled forward. “I’m Laura and this grim person at the wheel is Boyd.”
“Delighted, I’m sure,” said Boyd. In the rearview mirror his eyes seemed cheerful, not at all grim, behind round wire-framed glasses. As for what else I could see of him, his head was covered with a close-cropped layer of gray-white fuzz, his right shoulder was clad in pepper-and-salt tweed and his right ear was very clean. The car itself was lumpy and surprisingly small inside but comfortable, and smelled of oil and old leather.
“I’m Tom Fletcher,” I said, to Laura’s smiling face and Boyd’s clean ear, “and this is Katharine Scott.”
“There,” Laura Chasen said, nodding at her husband. “Didn’t I tell you, Boyd?”
“You certainly did, my dear.” Boyd seemed perpetually amused by his wife’s utterances.
Turning back to us, Laura said, “I knew you two weren’t married, by the way you were arguing.”
“We weren’t arguing,” I said.
“We were going for a walk,” Katharine explained. “In fact, I’m not even sure why we got into this car.”
“It’s my wife’s personality,” Boyd assured her, complacently. “People simply do whatever she tells them, and then afterwards wonder how they got into such godawful jams.”
“Now, don’t turn these sweet people against me, darling,” she said, in an offhand way, and leaned forward to take something out of the glove compartment, which she then extended over the back seat toward us. It was a smallish very attractive silver flask. “Care for a noggin?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
She turned her bright smile on Katharine. “It’s a martini,” she said. “Excellent, excellent martini. Of course, you have to imagine the onion.”
“Or the olive,” offered Boyd.
“Exactly.” Pleased, Laura patted Boyd’s pepper-and-salt shoulder, while saying to Katharine, “That’s the great advantage, you see, you can imagine it any way you want.”
“Even lemon peel,” suggested Boyd.
Laura made a face. “Absolutely not,” she said. “Boyd, I forbid you to imagine lemon peel.”
“Perhaps,” Boyd said, his eyes crinkling with pleasure in the rearview mirror, “I’ll imagine a big dollop of Rose’s Lime Juice.”
“Beastly man,” Laura said, and held out the flask to Katharine. “Pay no attention to the Neanderthal, my dear. Just imagine a perfect tiny white cocktail onion, and have a little sip of this.”
“It’s a bit early in the day for me,” Katharine said, hesitantly. I’d never seen her this tentative before. “I don’t think I’m ready to drink just yet,” she explained.
“Well,” Boyd said, “you’d better be ready when we get there.” Meantime, his wife was unscrewing the top from the flask.
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“Max’s,” he said.
Laura took a ladylike sip, and a faint, sweet not unpleasant aroma of gin floated in the air. I could smell no vermouth at all. Recapping the flask, she explained, “It’s a speak. Our favorite place in all the world.”
“A speak?” I didn’t get it. “You mean a speakeasy?”
“Let me warn you,” Boyd said, “nothing pleases my wife more than the debauchery of the young.”
I said, “I thought alcohol was legal in Colorado.”
“Oh, it is,” Laura said. “Max’s is across the state line, in Kansas.”
“There are still some counties in Kansas, I’m happy to say,” Boyd told us, “that keep the banner of Prohibition flying.”
“After all,” Laura said, “what’s the fun in drinking if it’s legal?” Showing me the flask again, she said, “Sure you won’t change your mind?”
When in Rome. “Well, maybe just a sip,” I said.
“Mind you don’t imagine lemon peel,” she said, handing me the flask. It was very cold to the touch.
“You go ahead, Tom,” Boyd said. “Your mind’s your own, you can imagine whatever you want.”