“Good night, Uncle Carl,” said Dunc.
Carl followed his wife inside, laughing. Dunc and Penny sat on the old-fashioned front porch swing. He moved them lazily forward and backward with little shoves of his toe. The moment of truth: was Penny the still water that didn’t run very deep, or...
“Dunc, I’ve been thinking about those men the Immigration Service picked up. How often do they come out there?”
What had Joshua said? “Every two weeks.”
“Can’t you do something?”
Her hazel eyes were wide with compassion. Responding synapses seemed to suddenly crackle in his brain.
“Maybe there is a way — I’ll tell you in a week.”
She said teasingly, “Why do I have to wait so long?”
“So you’ll have to go out with me again to find out.”
She nudged him with her shoulder. A comfortable silence fell. Dunc found himself edging an arm around her.
“Aunt Goodie didn’t suggest asking you over,” she said abruptly. “I did. To thank you and apologize for getting—”
“Apologize? You don’t—”
“So drunk. Gerald and I had a big fight about what I was wearing and...” She was watching her fingers twist together in her lap as if by their own volition. “He was sweet as pie Sunday before he left, he said he was sorry he’d hit me—”
“Hit you!” Dunc realized he was on his feet.
“Dunc. Don’t. Please.” She tugged him gently down beside her again. “It’s just so... Nobody’s ever...”
“Nobody ever should.”
“He wants to talk it all through when I go back for the fall quarter.”
He didn’t like anything about that, her going back to Iowa, her talking things over with Gerald. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Her lips responded. It was a long kiss, closed-mouth but tender and passionate. When they finally drew back, he felt dizzy, as if he’d drunk too much.
“I didn’t want that to happen,” said Penny. “Not yet.”
“I’ve been wanting it to happen since I first saw you.” His voice was shaky. Their faces were still only inches apart. “And that was in a dream I had on the road.”
“You saw me in a dream?” She was pleased. “When you hadn’t met me yet? How can you be sure she was me?”
So he told her about it, though not about the killer being a dead man from a Georgia chain gang with a new face. “She was you, Penny. She was wearing your same red knit dress.”
“Maybe your mind supplied the dress after seeing me in it.”
“Nope,” he said, “that dress, exactly.”
She believed him, but almost wished he hadn’t told her. It was too strange. She gently disengaged herself to stand up.
“I have to go in, Dunc. It’s really late...”
“Tomorrow is Saturday. You can sleep in.”
“We’re going down to Newport Beach for the weekend with some friends of Aunt Goodie’s...”
He stood up and took her upper arms, drew her close. “Okay. But don’t forget we have a date next Friday night for the next dynamic installment of the Saga of the Misplaced Mexicans.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
They both laughed, she raised her face to be kissed. For a long moment she melted against him, then stepped back hastily.
“G-good night, Dunc.”
He went back to Grey Ghost Two, wondering if she’d stepped back so fast because she’d felt the instant erection he’d got from kissing her. Or maybe he’d been too insistent... No matter. Penny was going out with him next weekend!
On the way home he got lost, didn’t care, finally got back onto the parkway and drove to Eagle Rock singing “Vaya con Dios” at full voice. Go with God. And God, what a great girl!
When he went down to breakfast on Saturday morning, Gus waylaid him to shove a letter under his nose. It was from the office of architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago. Gus Trabert had been accepted for a two-year all-expense-paid architectural fellowship. He was supposed to show up at Taliesin West in Phoenix by the end of the month.
“Hey, Gus, that’s great! Tonight I guess we’d better—”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Gus led him out on the porch where the rest of the family couldn’t hear them. “I... ah... want to spend the weekend in the sack with Birdie.”
“Sure,” said Dunc. “I don’t blame you.”
“Thing is, I... ah, well, I’d like to take her somewhere away from the trailer park. You know, get a motel room, really have a weekend with her.”
Dunc dropped the keys to Grey Ghost Two into Gus’s palm. “This’ll give me time to finally get caught up on my notebook.”
He was really just looking forward to some time alone. That was one thing being on the road gave you — time alone.
He walked all the way to downtown Pasadena, in the huge old ornate library returned the Faulkner and checked out The Long Goodbye. Two of his favorite movies had been based on Raymond Chandler novels: The Big Sleep and Murder, My Sweet.
Goodbye hooked him completely. He read it at the library, he read it on the bus home, he read it in bed far into the night and finished it at three in the morning.
The rich beautiful woman who attracted P.I. Philip Marlowe, Linda Loring, was nothing at all like Penny but reminded him of Penny all the same. It took a hell of a good writer to get his characters into your mind that way. How did you get that good?
Dunc was always saying that writing was all he would want out of life, but then was always getting himself sidetracked, neglecting his own dream for Nitro Ned’s, letting Penny take over his whole mind. Where would he find the discipline?
“Put your typewriter on a table and your butt on a chair,” his creative writing teacher at Notre Dame, Mr. Sullivan, had said, “and start typing. When you stand up ten years later, you’ll be a writer.”
But Hemingway had implied that if all you did was write, you’d end up with nothing to write about — and here was Dunc with a whole summerful of experiences, and he wasn’t even keeping up his notebook.
Sunday morning after church he helped around the house, then sat out under a tree with his notebook and started writing. He had nothing down about Las Vegas, was already forgetting details, and some of the details he remembered were almost too painful to write down.
Nitro Ned, his huge spirit stilled at last, being carried out of the Flamingo Hotel... Artis, covered with blood, dying eyes burning fierce into his... He wished he had the notebooks Falkoner had driven off with in El Paso. He had to get them back. Sometime...
Chapter Twenty-three
Gus would leave for Taliesin before Labor Day; Penny would go back to school right after the holiday. Dunc would move on then, too. Like Shane. The lone gunman, fixing things up before riding off into the sunset. Friday would tell for sure.
He talked to Gus as they wheeled liquid “mud” up the ramps and across the top of the building on the spidery network of two-by-twelves. “Who around here do you think knew that the immigration guys were coming, and knew when they’d come?”
“Osvaldo,” said Gus promptly. “He’s got his green card and he’s been around long enough.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s the Judas goat, but he just happened to go to the John just before the immigration guys came — right at the morning break, so they were all together.”
“So it’s safe to assume he’s the one. What do we do?”
“You’re the architect. Design something — like a sticking door on the crapper so he can’t get out and see what I’m doing.”