“Where is he now?”
“Sally Dee caught the car to Jericho. That’s an expression people in the life used in New Orleans years ago.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Jericho is a dead city. If you got on the streetcar to Jericho, you weren’t coming back.”
Maybe, he thought, he would scare her and she would go away. She got up from the stool and pushed a strand of hair away from her eye, her profile as perfect as a miniature inside a Victorian locket. She tripped in the doorway and fell against him, then blushed and apologized and walked with him into the twilight, neither touching the other.
They did not pay attention to a man leaning against a parking meter down the street. He was smoking a pipe and gazing at the freight cars pulling out of the train yard. His hair was oiled and combed back over the tops of his ears. He puffed on his pipe and let the smoke curl out of his mouth into the breeze. He seemed to take a special pleasure in the purple cast of the hills, backdropped by a sky that was the blue of a robin’s egg. He did not seem to notice Clete and the woman as they walked past him into the restaurant called the Depot.
A locomotive backed into the train yard, pushing a long row of boxcars ahead of it, the couplings clanging with such force that chaff from the boxcar floors powdered in the sun’s afterglow. The man leaning against the meter tapped the bowl of his pipe on his hand, ignoring the live cinders that stuck to his skin. Then he put away his pipe and entered the restaurant through the terrace and took a seat at the bar, staring with self-satisfaction at the face he saw in the mirror.
“What are you having?” the bartender asked.
“A glass of ice water and a menu,” the man said.
“You got it. Visiting?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Saw your tag through the window. How do you like Montana?”
“The state tree of Kansas is a telephone pole,” the man said. “Does that tell you something?”
Two hours earlier, Gretchen had gone up to the main house and thrown a pebble against Alafair’s screen on the third floor. “Want to take a ride?” she said.
“Where to?” Alafair replied.
“A dump by the old train station.”
“What for?”
“To find Clete.”
“Call him on his cell.”
“He turned it off. If he’s doing what I think he is, he doesn’t plan to turn it on again.”
“Leave him alone, Gretchen. He’s a grown man.”
“Except he needs someone to strap a cast-iron codpiece on his stiff red-eye.”
“Do you know how bad that sounds?”
“I heard him talking on the phone to Love Younger’s daughter-in-law. Are you coming or not?”
They drove in Alafair’s Honda to the saloon where Clete sometimes drank. Gretchen got out and went inside while Alafair waited in the car, the motor running. Gretchen came back out and got in the car and closed the door. “The bartender said he left with a woman five minutes ago.”
“Gretchen, don’t get mad at me. What’s the harm if he’s with this woman?”
“Duh, she’s married? Duh, the Younger family would like to turn Montana into a gravel pit?”
“Sometimes Clete drinks at the Depot.”
“I thought he only drank in dumps,” Gretchen said.
“It was James Crumley’s hangout.”
“Who?”
“The crime novelist. He passed away a few years back. Can I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
Alafair pulled away from the curb. “Ease up on your old man. He thinks the world of you. He’s easily hurt by what you say.”
“So don’t hurt your father’s feelings, even if he’s about to walk in front of a train?”
“You’re a hard sell,” Alafair said.
They drove up the street and stopped in front of the restaurant. Gretchen went inside by herself. She looked in the dining room, then went into the bar and gazed through the French doors at the people eating on the terrace. A man hunched on a stool a few feet from her had just said something about the state tree of Kansas. Through a door pane, she could see Clete sitting with a small woman at a linen-covered table under a canopy stretched over the terrace. The woman had a shawl across her shoulders. A candle flickered on the table, lighting her hair and mouth and eyes. She seemed captivated by a story Clete was telling while he drank from a tumbler of ice and whiskey and cherries and sliced oranges, both hands lifting in the air when he made a point, the ice rattling in the glass. Gretchen was breathing hard through her nose as though she had walked up a steep hill.
“Buy you a drink, legs?” asked the man hunched on the stool.
“I didn’t catch that,” she replied, not taking her eyes off Clete’s back.
“You’ve got long legs, lady. I should have called you ‘beautiful.’ I didn’t mean anything by the other name.”
“Blow me,” she said without looking at him. She went out on the terrace and approached Clete’s table. “You shouldn’t be driving,” she said.
Clete and the small woman looked up. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes lit with an alcoholic shine. “Hey, Gretchen. What’s the haps?” he said. “Miss Felicity, this is my daughter, Gretchen Horowitz.”
“Did you hear me?” Gretchen asked.
“Hear what?” he said, grinning, squinting as though the sun were in his eyes.
“You’re sloshed,” she said.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Felicity said.
Clete tried to hold his smile in place. He pushed out a chair. “We just ordered. Did you eat yet?”
“Yeah, by myself. After I fixed supper for both of us.”
He looked confused. “We were supposed to eat together? I must not have heard you. Is Alafair with you?”
“Yeah, I’ll drive the Caddy. She’ll follow us home. Let’s go.”
“Maybe we should do this another time, Clete,” Felicity said.
“No, no,” Clete said. “Sit down, Gretchen. I’ll go get Alafair. Order me a refill.”
Gretchen propped her palms on the table and leaned down. “What’s your name again?” she said to the woman.
“Felicity Louviere.”
“You’re married to Caspian Younger?”
“Yes. How would you know that?”
“I’m making a documentary on your family and your oil and natural-gas explorations. You’re not aware of it?”
“Somehow it escaped my attention.”
“I don’t like to say this, Ms. Louviere, but I think you’ve asked for it. You’re out with a man who’s not your husband after just losing your daughter. Does that seem normal to you?”
“Clete, I’d better get my car,” Felicity Louviere said. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I hope to see you another time.”
Clete pinched his temples as though the pressure of his fingers could impose a modicum of sanity on the situation. “Tell Alafair to come inside,” he said. “We’re going to have dinner. We’re going to talk like civilized human beings. This bullshit ends, Gretchen. Now sit down.”
Gretchen felt the blood go out of her cheeks. The candle on the table seemed to brighten and change shape and shine as though burning underwater. “She looks like Mickey Mouse’s twin sister,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Clete said.
“It’s your life, Clete. Be a public fool if you want. You’re really good at it,” Gretchen said.
She walked toward the French doors, her eyes shiny, an electric grid printing itself all over her back. “Don’t go, Gretchen,” she heard him say.
She gripped the brass handle on the French doors and turned to look once more at the table. Clete had stood up and was leaning over Felicity, his hand resting on the back of her chair, as though he were comforting her. His eyes met Gretchen’s. He smiled and walked toward her. Her heart was pounding so loudly, she could hardly hear his words.