Kept Animals Page 16

  “Where should we go?” Vivian asked. Meeting at the bus stop, before the bus had even arrived, had been Vivian’s idea, but apparently the plan stopped there.

  “I know most of the trails,” Rory said, pointing to the sign for the state park.

  “How well?” Vivian asked. “I’ve had my share of off the beaten path already.”

  “It’s not like that,” Rory said, smiling.

  Vivian pulled the car into the shade and Rory stole a look at her, how the light broke through the trees, dancing on her cheeks. She still experienced, semiregularly, the purest disbelief that she was with Vivian Price at all.

  She kept them on the narrowest portion of trail, the single track, where bikes weren’t supposed to go, where at this early hour on a weekday they were least likely to encounter anyone. And in a half mile or so they’d come to a clearing with a view.

  Vivian ran her hands over the patches of wild horsetail grass. And this was sagebrush, mugwort, saltbush, chamise. “How do you know all this?” Vivian asked. She was wearing sandals, her toes skimmed in dust.

  “Gus,” Rory said.

  He used to bring Rory here, before Mona had moved them in with him, telling her the names of the flowers and trees. They’d named Chaparral after this canyon’s foliage, its biome, Gus used to correct her. Not a single plant, but a whole tier of drought-tolerant and dogged gray-green shrubs. An underappreciated wonder, like her mare, but most people just saw this chaparral as a fire hazard. It was hard to clear and as combustible as old newspaper. “The core of it dries out, saving the moisture for its outer leaves,” Rory said. “So, that outer layer, the stuff that the sun can reach, is all that grows green. It’s kind of like a beautiful lie and it only grows on the California coast.”

  “Of course,” Vivian said.

  “We’re going to breed my mare,” Rory said. “In Colorado. Gus is hauling Wade’s horse out there—I assume he told you—but we’re taking my mare along cause this guy, he has a stallion and he’s really something, honestly, and—”

  “Wait,” Vivian said. They’d just arrived at the clearing, but the ocean was shrouded beneath a low-lying fog that had yet to burn off. “You’re leaving, too?”

  “Well, Gus can’t go alone. It’s work for me, in a way. I mean, if it goes well, there will be a foal worth a lot to somebody—”

  “It isn’t even for you?”

  “We need the money,” Rory said. She sat on an outcropping of sandstone, letting her backpack down. Her camera was inside, wrapped in an old saddle pad. She’d yet to bring it out in front of Vivian, sensing it would be an intrusion. Vivian had told her about the cameramen, the way they ate their meals sitting on the road outside her house. “Like vultures,” Rory had said.

  “Do you want to go?” Vivian asked. “I mean, Wade is gone for two weeks—”

  “He’s flying,” Rory said. “I probably won’t even see him. This barn, it’s supposed to be enormous—” She stopped, remembering June, how she’d asked if Rory could come to dinner with Mark Adler. Rory dug the water from her bag and drank.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Vivian said. She sat directly on the dirt, her legs stretched out in front of her, her toes turned in. “I don’t care if you see Wade,” she said. “I just—”

  “I won’t say anything to him,” Rory said. There existed an unspoken understanding that their friendship was a secret. That Wade, in particular, could never know. Rory was aware of enjoying a clandestine competition with him.

  “Can I have some of that?” Vivian asked, reaching for the water.

  The sun was lifting behind them, shadows unrolling at their feet. Vivian drank, then put the cap back and wiped her face with the back of her hand. There was a roughness to her gestures that Rory hadn’t been able to see from her window, a humanity. “I’m going to tell you something and you can’t repeat it, because you can’t know,” Vivian said. “Because no one can know it.”

  “We’ve never even met,” Rory said, smiling.

  “Sit next to me?” Vivian said, patting the ground.

  Rory got up and came closer. The scratch on Vivian’s leg had scabbed, looking like a lion’s scratch. She was hesitating, waging a debate with herself. “You can tell me,” Rory said. “For real.”

  Two hawks were riding a thermal above them and Vivian looked up, watching. She tucked her hair back, revealing the small freckles that dotted the edges of her ears. Then she said, “My mom is missing.”

  “Like kidnapped?” Rory asked, her hand going to the concave of her throat.

  Vivian shook her head. “Not like that. She bought a car and she drove off into the sunset.”

  “When?”

  “It’s been twenty-two days since she checked out of Cliffside.”

  “What? Are the police looking?” Rory asked. “Why isn’t this in the news?”

  “Why is anything the way it is?” Vivian shrugged. “Money. My dad’s agent, Bobby, he’s good at managing this kind of thing. And he hired a private detective. My dad knows that if it got out that his wife’s missing, he’d look like a fool. She’s embarrassing to him.” Vivian paused, lifting the silty earth and letting it fall back down, a dust waterfall. “And he’s embarrassing to her. Which leaves me …”

  “Alone,” Rory said, realizing. She knew Everett Price was leaving for Mexico, making a movie there.

  Vivian was pressing her hands to her face, leaving dirt on her cheeks and around her eyes. Rory took the cloth from her pocket, the one she kept ready for her lens. Vivian opened her eyes, blinking back tears, then looking at her hands, covered in gray dirt, laughing. “Oh my god, I’m a mess.”

  Rory showed her the cloth and Vivian nodded, her eyelashes wet and clumped together.

  “Maybe I don’t have to go,” Rory said, pouring water onto the cloth and wringing it out before bringing it to Vivian’s face.

  “Seriously?” Vivian asked.

  Gus was staking everything on this foal steering them back around, but here was Vivian Price, telling her things that no one else knew, looking at her with eyes that were now bright and clean and suddenly hopeful. “I mean, I won’t go,” Rory said, feeling the sun on her back. “If you don’t want me to.”

  Vivian tipped toward her, putting her head to Rory’s shoulder, saying, “I don’t. I really don’t want you to go.”

  * * *

  FROM OUTSIDE THE screen door, Gus watched Mona at the stove. She was stirring a wooden spoon around a steaming pot, while Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” played from the living room stereo. Her hips were swinging, her mouth moving over the words. He could still see her the way he had seen her the first time, from across the room. He still loved her. There was sage burning on the mantel, its smoke drawn between them. To the music, she spun from the stove, past the sink, over to the kitchen cabinet, drawing out bowls, dancing them to the table, then shimmying backward to the counter, rattling open the silverware drawer. Exactly what was she so pleased about? He cracked the door. “Hey, my lady,” he said, and she turned, surprised to see him.

  “You’re home early,” she said.

  His cane preceded him inside. “Rory hasn’t been to the barn,” he said. “This morning she said she’d get a ride and then she didn’t show, so I thought I ought to—”

  “Track her down,” Mona said. “The inseparable horse-loving duo.”

  Gus didn’t want trouble, not today. Not ever. “You’re making dinner already?” He’d wanted to come inside with her good mood, feel the sway of her hips against him, like he used to, a tower of quarters for the jukebox. “What is it?” he asked, hooking his cane over a kitchen chair.

  “This chicken thing Becky told me about. Curry something—you just buy this—”

  “Becky?”

  “New girl at the bar,” she said dryly.

  He liked this idea, that she’d just been busying herself with a new girlfriend. He put his hands on her hips and smelled her hair. “So, he hired a fresh young thing after all?” She shrank f
rom his touch. “Hey now, things are looking up here, aren’t they?”

  She stepped down the counter, picked up the salad bowl, and slung it onto the table.

  “Hey,” he said. “Easy.”

  “You stopped taking the Prozac,” she said.

  “You’re counting my pills?”

  “I do look out for you, Gus. I know you don’t think so, but—”

  “I was kind of stepping down. It’s been weeks since we’ve been together, Mona. And I thought maybe, well, I wanted to be—”

  “What, depressed?”

  “No. I miss you,” he said. “I sleep on the couch, hoping I’ll hear you come in or that you’ll wake me, that you still want me. And now we’re leaving the day after tomorrow and we haven’t been together in months—”

  She touched his arm, telling him with lowered eyes and a jut of her head that he ought to turn around. Of course Rory was standing there, in the doorway.

  She adjusted the strap of her backpack and stepped into the kitchen.

  “Where have you been?” Mona asked, without any real concern.

  “I stayed late at school,” Rory said. She was avoiding looking at him.

  “You had a list to ride today, Rory. People were expecting you. And Mrs. Keating told me you put her gelding away wet again yesterday. You know that doesn’t just look bad on you?”

  “Right,” Rory said, dropping into the kitchen booth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just, I have a lot more schoolwork this year.” She was embarrassed, he thought briefly, because of what she’d overheard. “And, well, it’s why I can’t go with you, to Colorado, I mean. I just, I really can’t be gone for so long.”

  Gus turned to Mona, wondering if she knew what Rory was talking about, but Mona seemed amused.

  “School, huh?” Mona said. “Well, how do you like that?” She went back to the stove, shaking her head.

  “Rory, what are you talking about?” Gus said.

  Rory picked up a piece of lettuce that had been thrown from the bowl. “I can’t go with you. I want to. I know you need the help, but—school is way more serious this year. I was thinking you could take—”

  “Rory.” He pulled out a chair. “I need your help. She’s your mare.”

  Rory shrugged. “No, not for this. Not for this she’s not.”

  “So you don’t want me to breed her? Is that it? You just want me to drive Wade out and wait around? I can’t do that, Rory. We need this break. If Wade can take the time off from school—”

  “I’m not Wade,” Rory said. “Besides, he’s a senior. Junior year matters more.”

  Mona was setting the chicken concoction down on the table, murmuring out of the side of her mouth, “Thinks she’s a college girl now.”

  “What was that?” Gus said. “If you’ve got some opinion, Mona, come out and say it.” He dropped his fist to the table. “God damn it. Did you know about this? Is this why you’re so worried about me being on the Prozac?” He waited, expecting the two of them to share a look, but Rory just looked at her hands. They weren’t that mother and daughter. He’d forgotten.

  “I want you to stay on the Prozac because I don’t want some sad sack on the couch. And if I have any opinion at all about either of you, it’s that I find it funny as all hell that she’s invested in school now and maybe seeing past the dead end of that fucking ranch.”

  “Nice,” Gus said.

  Rory hadn’t looked up, but he saw the disappointment in her shoulders. Did Mona understand her better than he did now? Why had he always assumed she’d work the ranch with him? “College?” he asked.

  Rory shrugged. Of course she was thinking about it, at least wishing she could.

  “You take your trip, Gus, and Rory and I will look after ourselves just fine. Right, Rag-Tag?” Mona had put plates in front of each of them and she sat down now, motioning for him to help himself. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d all sat down for dinner together. The music had stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” Rory said to him, then, reaching for a roll, “Thanks, Mom.”

  * * *

  TOMORROW, CHAP WOULD be gone.

  It wasn’t yet dark, but the warming lights had already ticked on, a wash of amber light. Rory had taken her on a trail ride, nothing strenuous.

  “How’s she doing?” Tomás asked, pulling open the stall door. “It’s like a sauna in here.” Preston Fisk had already asked Tomás to go to Craig as Wade’s groom, so now he was going to make the drive out with Gus, at Gus’s request. Rory knew it might be uncomfortable for each of them, but Gus needed good help and she was relieved Tomás would be with Chap.

  “Crazy to think she’s coming back pregnant,” Rory said, running her hand down the mare’s belly. “I suppose I should knock on wood or something. I mean, there’s no sure thing.”

  “Yeah,” Tomás said. “I bet she wishes you were going.”

  “I know. Just promise me you’ll be there. I mean, I know you’ve got to look after Journey, but if you can help out, when it’s time, promise me you will?”

  “I’ll do whatever I can.” Tomás stuck his hands in his jeans then, sheepish.“So why aren’t you going?”

  It was hard not to tell him. She’d come to trust him, to realize that he was one of her oldest friends and that their friendship had a resiliency others clearly didn’t. But she lied. “Just school,” she said. “Honestly—mostly because of my photography class,” she heard herself say, recognizing the absurdity; driving over four state lines, through a thousand miles of vistas and open skies, was far more picture worthy than staying home.

  “Oh,” Tomás said. “I’m glad. I’d assumed it was Wade.”

  “No,” Rory said. “I don’t care about him.” It felt true enough.

  “Well, he’s driving out with us now.” There was pride in Tomás’s voice. “Mr. Fisk heard Gus needed help on the drive and he said”—Tomás dropped his voice into a baritone—“ ‘if there is work to be done then Wade ought to learn how to do it.’ ” Tomás smiled. “So he’s making him go with us. Wade’s not happy.”

  “Of course not,” Rory said, thinking that had to please Tomás, too, not having to be alone with Gus. “Is Wade still here now?” Rory asked.

  “Nah,” Tomás said. “He went home to pack up a while ago. We’re leaving at dawn.”

  So she could see Vivian tonight. Whichever Vivian it might be. There seemed, each time they met, to be a new facet, an unexpected angle to her.

  “Oh,” Tomás said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I want to show you something.” He was waving her out of the stall and up the path toward his house.

  It was his car, finally down off its cinder blocks. Tires, taillights, washed, maybe even waxed. “It’s amazing,” Rory said.

  Tomás held the door open for her to get in. The interior was upholstered in a pomegranate velour, the dash, the wheel, the gearshift all in a darker ruby. Sitting behind the wheel now, Tomás wiped his pocket rag over the speedometer. “Isn’t it amazing? I wish I could show Papi.”

  “How did you finish it so fast?” He’d been finding parts here and there, but …

  “I got help.”

  Before Rory could even think Johnny Naughton, he came out the front door of Tomás’s house in his blue jumpsuit and six strides later his pocked moon face was hanging outside her window, and he was rapping a knuckle on the glass. “You had him help?” Rory grumbled to Tomás, who was cranking an invisible handle in the air, telling her to roll the window down. “Fuck,” Rory said, complying.

  “What do you think, Spice?” Johnny said, onion on his breath. “She’s a beaut, ain’t she?” He had a shine of grease all around his lips. She drew her finger around her own mouth, suggesting he wipe his face. “Your mom makes one hell of a pozole,” Johnny said to Tomás, drawing the collar of his coveralls over his mouth, unfazed.

  Rory looked at Tomás, disbelieving; Sonja had fed Trouble.

  “Johnny’s been helping me all week,” Tomás said, a hint
of apology in his voice.

  “He was never gonna find the parts to this baby without me,” Johnny said. He leaned into the car and dropped open the glove box in front of Rory and there, inside, was a gun.

  It’s a toy, Rory thought.

  But then Johnny dragged it out, the barrel barely avoiding her knees, and Rory saw the heft of it, the muscles in Johnny’s forearm flexing. “Honestly, if I had the dinero I’d make an offer to take her off your hands, give her the drive she deserves.” Rory heard the uneasy laughter falling out of Tomás and she was sure that the gun was no toy at all. “Sorry about that, Spice,” Johnny said, his face bunched up, grinning. “Didn’t take you for the nervous type.”

  “Why do you have a gun?” Her voice was thin, dry.

  “It’s just something we keep for the shop,” Johnny said. “We had a few break-ins over the summer—that kinda heat, man, it makes people do stupid shit. But I wasn’t gonna bring it in”—he winked at Tomás—“outta respect for his mom’s house.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that,” Tomás said.

  “What’s this I heard about you not going to Colorado, Spice? Wade was looking forward to having you there. I know you weren’t thinking you’d stay to hang around with June.”

  Rory’s hands had gone clammy with sweat.

  Tomás answered for her. “She’s got school. Can’t miss, that’s all.”

  Johnny grunted. “Polk. Nothing to be learned there. Except the girls are so easy. I do miss high school, man.” He had one grease-streaked hand clapped on the open window.

  “She’s taking photography,” Tomás tried again. “She’s got assignments, that’s all.”

  Why did Tomás keep saying that’s all? It had to make Johnny think that wasn’t all. “That right?” Johnny said.

  “Tomás is going to drive me home now,” Rory said.

  “I am?” Tomás asked.

  Rory turned to him. “Yes, please. I’d like to go.”

  “Well, all righty, then,” Johnny said. He knocked the barrel of the gun against the frame of the door, a deep-gutted clap of metal against metal. “I’ll let you two lovebirds go. Gotta christen these wheels, am I right?”