Fancy Pants

Chapter 13

Naomi Jaffe Tanaka let herself into her apartment, a Mark Cross briefcase in one hand and a bag from Zabar's perched on her opposite hip. Inside the bag was a container of golden figs, a sweet Gorgonzola, and a crusty loaf of French bread, all she needed for a perfect working night dinner. She set down her briefcase and placed the sack on the black granite counter in her kitchen, leaning it against the wall, which had been painted with a hard burgundy enamel. The apartment was expensive and stylish, exactly the sort of place where the vice-president of a major advertising agency should live.

Naomi frowned as she pulled out the Gorgonzola and set it on a pink glazed porcelain plate. Only one small stumbling block lay between her and the vice-presidency she craved-finding the Sassy Girl. Just that morning, Harry Rodenbaugh had sent her a stinging memo threatening to turn the account over to one of the agency's "more aggressive men" if she couldn't produce her Sassy Girl in the next few weeks.

She kicked off her gray suede pumps and nudged them out of the way with a stockinged toe while she removed the rest of her purchases from the sack. How could it be so difficult to find one person? Over the past few days, she and her secretary had made dozens of phone calls, but not one of them had run

the girl to ground. She was out there, Naomi knew, but where? She rubbed her temples, but the pressure did nothing to relieve the headache that had been plaguing her all day.

After depositing the figs in the refrigerator, she picked up her pumps and headed wearily out of the kitchen. She would take a shower, put on her oldest bathrobe, and pour herself a glass of wine before she started on the work she'd brought home. With one hand, she began unfastening the pearl buttons at the front of her dress, while with the elbow of her other arm, she flicked on the living room light switch.

"What's doin', sis?"

Naomi shrieked and spun toward her brother's voice, her heart jumping in her chest. "My God!"

Gerry Jaffe lounged on the couch, his shabby jeans and faded blue work shirt out of place against the silky rose upholstery. He still wore his black hair in an Afro. He had a small scar on his left cheekbone and tired brackets around those full lips that had once driven all of her female friends wild with lust. His nose was the same-as big and bold as an eagle's. And his eyes were deep black nuggets that still burned with the fire of the zealot.

"How did you get in here?" she demanded, her heart pounding. She felt both angry and vulnerable. The last thing she needed in her life right now was another problem, and Gerry's reappearance could only mean trouble. She also hated the feeling of inadequacy she always experienced when Gerry was around-a little sister who once again didn't measure up to her brother's standards.

"No kiss for your big brother?"

"I don't want you here."

She received a brief impression of an enormous weariness hanging over him, but it vanished almost immediately. Gerry had always been a good actor. "Why didn't you call first?" she snapped. And then she remembered that Gerry had been photographed by the newspapers a few weeks before outside the naval base in Bangor, Maine, leading a demonstration against stationing the Trident nuclear submarine there. "You've been arrested again, haven't you?" she accused him.

"Hey, what's another arrest in the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave?" Uncoiling himself from

the sofa, he held out his arms to her and gave her his most charming Pied Piper grin. "Come on, sweetie. How 'bout a little kiss?"

He looked so much like the big brother who used to buy her candy bars when she had asthma attacks

that she nearly smiled. But her temporary softening was a mistake. With a monstrous growl, he vaulted over her glass and marble coffee table and came for her.

"Gerry!" She backed away from him, but he kept coming. Baring his teeth, he turned his hands into

claws and came lurching toward her in his best Frankensteinian manner. "The Four-Eyed Fang-Toothed Phantom walks again," he growled.

"I said stop it!" Her voice rose in pitch until it was shrill. She couldn't deal with the Fang-Toothed Phantom now- not with the Sassy Girl and the vice-presidency and her headache all plaguing her. Despite the passing years, her brother never changed. He was the same old Gerry-larger than life,

just as outrageous as ever. But she wasn't nearly as charmed.

He lurched toward her, his face comically distorted, eyes rolling, playing the game he'd teased her with

for as long as she could remember. "The Fang-Toothed Phantom lives off the flesh of young virgins." He leered.

"Gerry!"

"Succulent young virgins!"

"Stop it!"

"Juicy young virgins!"

Despite her irritation, she giggled. "Gerry, don't!" She backed away toward the hallway, not taking her eyes off him as he advanced inexorably toward her. With an inhuman shriek he made his lunge. She screamed as he caught her up into his arms and began spinning her in a circle. Ma! she wanted to shout. Ma, Gerry's teasing me! In a sudden rush of nostalgia, she wanted to call out for protection to the woman who now turned her face away whenever her older child's name was mentioned.

Gerry sank his teeth into her shoulder and bit her just hard enough so that she would squeal again, but

not hard enough to hurt her. Then he stiffened. "What's this?" he cried in outrage. "This is awful stuff. This isn't a virgin's flesh." He took her over to the sofa and dumped her unceremoniously. "Shit. Now

I'm going to have to settle for pizza."

She loved him and she hated him, and she wanted to hug him so much that she jumped up off the sofa and gave him a sucker punch right in the arm.

"Ow! Hey, nonviolence, sis."

"Nonviolence, my ass! What the hell is wrong with you, barging in here like this? You're so damned irresponsible. When are you going to grow up?"

He didn't say anything; he just stood there looking at her. The fragile good humor between them faded. His Rasputin eyes took in her expensive dress and the stylish pumps that had fallen to the floor. Pulling out a cigarette, he lit it, still watching her. He had always had the ability to make her feel inadequate, personally responsible for the sins of the world, but she refused to squirm at the disapproval that gradually came over his expression as he surveyed the material artifacts of her world. "I mean it, Gerry," she went on. "I want you out of here."

"The old man must finally be proud of you," he said tonelessly. "His little Naomi has turned into a fine capitalist pig, just like all the rest."

"Don't start on me."

"You never told me how he reacted when you married that jap." He gave a bark of cynical laughter. "Only my sister Naomi could marry a Jap named Tony. God, what a country."

"Tony's mother is American. And he's one of the leading biochemists in the country. His work has been published in every important-" She broke off, realizing she was defending a man she no longer even liked. This was exactly the sort of thing Gerry did to her.

Slowly she turned back to face him, taking some time to study his expression more closely. The weariness she thought she had glimpsed earlier seemed once again to have settled over him, and she had to remind herself it was merely another act. "You're in trouble again, aren't you?"

Gerry shrugged.

He really did look tired, she thought, and she was still her mother's daughter. "Come on out to the kitchen. Let me get you something to eat." Even with Cossacks trying to break down the door of the cottage, the women in her family would make everyone sit down to a five-course dinner.

While Gerry smoked, she fixed him a roast beef sandwich, adding an extra slice of Swiss cheese, just the way he liked it, and putting out a dish of the figs she had bought for herself. She set the food in front of him and then poured herself a glass of wine, watching surreptitiously as he ate. She could tell he was hungry, just as she could tell that he didn't want her to see exactly how hungry, and she wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten a decent meal. Women used to stand in line for the honor of feeding Gerry Jaffe. She imagined they still did, since her brother continued to have more than his fair share of sex appeal. It used to enrage her to see how casually he treated the women who fell in love with him.

She made him another sandwich, which he demolished as efficiently as he'd eaten the first one. Settling down on the stool next to him, she felt an illogical stab of pride. Her brother had been the best of them

all, with Abbie Hoffman's sense of the comic, Tom Hayden's discipline, and Stokely Carmichael's fiery tongue. But now Gerry was a dinosaur, a sixties radical transplanted into the Age of Me First. He attacked nuclear missile silos with a ball-peen hammer and shouted power to the people whose hearing had been blocked by the headsets of their Sony Walkmans.

"How much do you pay for this place?" Gerry asked as he crumpled his napkin and got up to walk over to the refrigerator.

"None of your business." She absolutely refused to listen to his lecture on the number of starving children she could feed on her monthly rent.

He pulled out a carton of milk and took a glass from the cupboard. "How's Ma?" His question was casual, but she wasn't fooled.

"She's having a little trouble with arthritis, but other than that, she's okay." Gerry rinsed out the glass and set it in the top rack of her dishwasher. He had always been neater than she was. "Dad's good, too," she said, suddenly unable to tolerate the idea of making him ask. "You know he retired last summer."

"Yeah, I know. Do they ever ask about…"

Naomi couldn't help herself. She got up from the stool and walked over to rest her cheek against her brother's arm. "I know they think about you, Ger," she said softly. "It's just-it's been hard on them."

"You'd think they'd be proud," he said bitterly.

"Their friends talk," she replied, knowing how lame the excuse was.

He gave her a brief, awkward hug and then quickly moved away, going back into the living room. She found him standing next to the window, pushing the draperies back with one hand and lighting a cigarette with the other.

"Tell me why you're here, Gerry. What do you want?"

For a moment he stared out over the Manhattan skyline. Then he stuck his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, pressed the palms of his hands together in an attitude of prayer, and sketched a small bow before her. "Just a little sanctuary, sis. Just a little sanctuary."

Dallie won the Lake Charles tournament.

"Of course you won the damned thing," Skeet grumbled as the three of them walked into the motel room on Sunday night with a silver urn-shaped trophy and a check for ten thousand dollars. "The tournament doesn't amount to a hill of beans, so you naturally have to play some of the best damned golf you've played in two months. Why can't you do this kind of thing at Firestone or anyplace they got a TV camera pointed at you, do you mind telling me that?"

Francesca kicked off her sandals and sagged down onto the end of the bed. Even her bones were tired. She had walked all eighteen holes of the golf course so she could cheer Dallie on as well as discourage any petrochemical secretaries who might be following him too closely. Everything was going to change for Dallie now that she loved him, she had decided. He would start playing for her, just as he'd played today, winning tournaments, making all sorts of money to support them. They'd been lovers for less than a day, so she knew the idea of Dallie supporting her on a permanent basis was premature, but she couldn't help thinking about it.

Dallie began pulling the tail of his golf shirt out of his light gray slacks. "I'm tired, Skeet, and my wrist hurts. Do you mind if we save this for later?"

"That's what you always say. But there isn't any saving it till later 'cause you won't ever talk about it.

You go on-"

"Stop it!" Francesca jumped up from the bed and rounded on Skeet. "You leave him alone, do you hear? Can't you see how tired he is? You act as if he lost the bloody tournament today instead of winning it. He was magnificent."

"Magnificent my sweet aunt," Skeet drawled. "That boy didn't play with three-quarters of what he's got, and he knows it better than anybody. How about you take care of your makeup, Miss Fran-chess-ka, and you let me take care of Dallie?" He stalked to the door and slammed it as he went out.

Francesca confronted Dallie. "Why don't you fire him? He's impossible, Dallie. He makes everything so difficult for you."

He sighed and stripped his shirt over his head. "Leave it alone, Francie."

"That man is your employee, and yet he acts as though you're working for him. You need to put a stop

to it." She watched as he walked over to the brown paper sack he'd brought back to the room with him and pulled out a six-pack of beer. He drank too much, she realized, even though he never seemed to show any signs of it. She had also seen him take a few pills that she doubted were vitamins. As soon as the time was right, she would persuade him to stop both practices.

He peeled a can from its plastic ring and popped the top. "Trying to come between Skeet and me isn't a good idea, Francie."

"I'm not trying to come between you. I just want to make things easier for you."

"Yeah? Well, forget it." He drained his beer and stood up. "I'm going to take a shower."

She didn't want him to be angry with her, so she curved her mouth into an irresistibly sexy smile. "Need any help with those hard-to-reach places?"

"I'm tired," he said irritably. "Just leave me alone." He walked into the bathroom and shut the door, but not before he'd seen the hurt in her eyes.

Stripping off his clothes, he turned the shower on full blast. The water sluiced over his sore shoulder. Closing his eyes, he ducked under the shower head, thinking about that lovesick look he'd spotted on her face. He should have figured she would start imagining she was in love with him. Everything was packaging to her. She was exactly the sort of woman who couldn't see any further than his pretty face. Dammit, he should have left things like they were between them, but they'd been sleeping in the same room for nearly a week and her accessibility had been driving him crazy. How much could he expect from himself? Besides, something about her had gotten to him last night when she'd told that stupid warthog story.

Even so, he should have kept his jeans zipped. Now she was going to cling to him like a string of bad luck, expecting hearts and flowers and all that other horseshit, none of which he had the slightest intention of giving to her. There was no way, not when he had Wynette looming up in front of him and Halloween beating at his door, and not when he could think of a dozen women he liked a whole lot better. Still-although he had no intention of telling her about it-she was one of the best-looking women he'd ever met. Even though he realized it was a mistake, he suspected he would be back in bed with her

before too much more time had passed.

You're a real bastard, aren't you, Beaudine?

The Bear loomed up from the back recesses of Dallie's brain with a corona of Jesus-light shining around his head. The goddamn Bear.

You're a loser, chum, the Bear whispered in that flat midwestern drawl of his. A two-bit loser. Your father knew it and I know it. And Halloween's coming up, just in case you forgot____________________

Dallie hit the cold water faucet with his fist and drowned out the rest.

But things with Francesca didn't get any easier, and the next day their relationship wasn't improved when, just the other side of the Louisiana-Texas border, Dallie began complaining about hearing a strange noise coming from the car.

"What do you think that is?" he asked Skeet. "I had the engine tuned not three weeks ago. Besides, it seems to be coming from the back. Do you hear that?"

Skeet was engrossed in an article about Ann-Margret in the newest issue of People and he shook his head.

"Maybe it's the exhaust." Dallie looked over his shoulder at Francesca. "Do you hear anything back there, Francie? Funny grating kind of noise?"

"I don't hear a thing," Francesca replied quickly.

Just then a loud rasp filled the interior of the Riviera. Skeet's head shot up. "What's that?"

Dallie swore. "I know that sound. Dammit, Francie. You've got that ugly walleyed cat back there with you, don't you?"

"Now, Dallie, don't get upset," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to bring him along. He just followed me into the car and I couldn't get him out."

"Of course he followed you!" Dallie yelled into the rearview mirror. "You've been feeding him, haven't you? Even though I told you not to, you've been feeding that damned walleyed cat."

She tried to make him understand. "It's just- He's got such bony ribs and it's hard for me to eat when I know he's hungry."

Skeet chuckled from the passenger seat and Dallie rounded on him. "What do you think is so goddamn funny, you mind telling me that?"

"Not a thing," Skeet replied, grinning. "Not a thing."

Dallie pulled off onto the shoulder of the interstate and threw open his door. He twisted to the right and leaned over the back of the seat to see the cat huddled on the floor next to the Styrofoam cooler. "Get him out of here right now, Francie."

"He'll get hit by a car," she protested, not entirely certain why this cat, who hadn't given her even the smallest sign of affection, had earned her protection. "We can't let him out on the highway. He'll be killed."

"The world'll be a better place," Dallie retorted. She glared at him. He leaned over the seat and made a swipe at the cat. The animal arched his back, hissed, and sank his teeth into Francesca's ankle.

She let out a yelp of pain and screeched at Dallie. "Now see what you've done!" Pulling her foot into her lap, she inspected her injured ankle and then shrieked down at the cat, "You bloody ingrate! I hope he throws you in front of a bloody Greyhound bus."

Dallie's scowl changed to a grin. After a moment's thought, he shut the door of the Riviera and glanced over at Skeet. "I guess maybe we should let Francie keep her cat after all. It'd be a shame to break up a matched set."

For people who liked small towns, Wynette, Texas, was a good place to live. San Antonio, with its big-city lights, lay only a little more than two hours southeast, as long as the person behind the wheel didn't pay too much attention to the chicken-shit double-nickel speed limit the bureaucrats in Washington had pushed down the throats of the citizens of Texas. The streets of Wynette were shaded with sumac trees, and the park had a marble fountain with four drinking spouts. The people were sturdy. They were ranchers and farmers, about as honest as Texans got, and they made sure the town council was controlled by enough conservative Democrats and Baptists to keep away most of the ethnics looking for government handouts. All in all, once people settled in Wynette, they tended to stay.

Before Miss Sybil Chandler had taken it in hand, the house on Cherry Street had been just another Victorian nightmare. Over the course of her first year there, she had painted the dull gray gingerbread trim Easter egg shades of pink and lavender and hung ferns across the front porch in plant hangers she had macramed herself. Still not satisfied, she had pursed her thin schoolteacher's lips and stenciled a chain of leaping jackrabbits in palest tangerine around the front window frames. When she was finished, she had signed her work in small neat letters next to the mail slot in the door. This effect had pleased her so much she had added a condensed curriculum vitae in the door panel beneath the mail slot:

The Work of Miss Sybil Chandler

Retired High School Teacher

Chairperson, Friends of Wynette Public Library

Passionate Lover of W. B. Yeats,

E. Hemingway, and Others

Rebel

And then, thinking it all sounded rather too much like an epitaph, she had covered what she'd written

with another jackrabbit and contented herself with only the first line.

Still, that last word she'd painted on the door had lingered in her mind, and even now it filled her with pleasure. "Rebel," from the Latin rebellis. What a lovely sound it had and how wonderful if such a word actually were to be inscribed on her tombstone. Just her name, the dates of her birth and her demise (the latter far into the future, she hoped), and that one word, "Rebel."

As she thought of the great literary rebels of the past, she knew it was hardly likely such an awe-inspiring word would ever be applied to her. After all, she had begun her rebellion only twelve years before, when, at the age of fifty-four, she'd quit the teaching job she'd held for thirty-two years in a prestigious Boston girls' school, packed her possessions, and moved to Texas. How her friends had clucked and tutted, believing she'd lost her senses, not to mention a sizable portion of her pension. But Miss Sybil hadn't listened to any of them, since she had been quite simply dying from the stifling predictability of her life.

On the airplane from Boston to San Antonio, she'd changed her clothes in the rest room, stripping the severe wool suit from her thin, juiceless body and shaking out the neat knot that confined her salt-and-pepper hair. Re-outfitted in her first pair of blue jeans and a paisley dashiki, she had returned to her seat and spent the rest of the flight admiring her calf-high red leather boots and reading Betty Friedan.

Miss Sybil had chosen Wynette by closing her eyes and stabbing at a map of Texas with her index finger. The school board had hired her sight unseen from her resume, overjoyed that so highly acclaimed a teacher wanted a position in their small high school. Still, when she'd shown up for her initial appointment dressed in a floral-print muumuu, three-inch-long silver earrings, and her red leather boots, the superintendent had considered firing her just as quickly as he'd hired her. Instead, she eased his mind by spearing him with her small no-nonsense eyes and telling him she would not permit any slackers in her classroom. A week later she began teaching, and three weeks after that she lacerated the hbrary board for having removed The Catcher in the Rye from their fiction collection.

J. D. Salinger reappeared on the library shelves, the senior English class raised their SAT verbal scores one hundred points over the previous year's class, and Miss Sybil Chandler lost her virginity to B. J. Randall, who owned the town's GE appliance store and thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world.

All went well for Miss Sybil until B.J. died and she was forced to retire from teaching at the age of sixty-five. She found herself wandering listlessly around her small apartment with too much time on her hands, too little money, and no one to care about. Late one night she wandered beyond the bounds of her small apartment into the center of town. That was where Dallie Beaudine had found her sitting on the curb at Main and Elwood in the middle of a thunderstorm clad only in her nightgown.

Now she glanced at the clock as she hung up the telephone from her weekly long-distance conversation with Holly Grace and then took a brass watering can into the living room of Dallie's Victorian Easter egg house to tend the plants. Only a few more hours and her boys would be home. Stepping over one of Dallie's two mongrel dogs, she set down her watering can and took her needlepoint to a sunny window seat where she allowed her mind to slip back through the years to the winter of 1965.

She had just finished quizzing her remedial sophomore English class on Julius Caesar when the door of the room opened and a lanky young man she had never seen before sauntered in. She immediately decided that he was much too handsome for his own good, with a swaggering walk and an insolent expression. He slapped a registration card down on her desk and, without waiting for an invitation, made his way to the back of the room and slouched down into an empty seat, letting his long legs sprawl out across the aisle. The boys regarded him cautiously; the girls giggled and craned their necks to get a better look. He grinned at several of them, openly assessing their breasts. Then he leaned back in his chair and went to sleep.

Miss Sybil bided her time until the bell rang and then called him to her desk. He stood before her, one thumb tucked in the front pocket of his jeans, his expression determinedly bored. She examined the card for his name, checked his age-nearly sixteen-and informed him of her classroom rules: "I do not tolerate tardiness, gum chewing, or slackers. You will write a short essay for me introducing yourself and have it on my desk tomorrow morning."

He studied her for a moment and then withdrew his thumb from the pocket of his jeans. "Go fuck yourself, lady."

This statement quite naturally caught her attention, but before she could respond, he had swaggered from the room. As she stared at the empty doorway, a great flood of excitement rose inside her. She had seen

a blaze of intelligence shining in those sullen blue eyes. Astonishing! She immediately realized that more than insolence was eating away at this young man. He was another rebel, just like herself!

At precisely seven-thirty that evening, she rapped on the door of a run-down duplex and introduced herself to the man who had been listed on the registration card as the boy's guardian, a sinister-looking character who couldn't have been thirty himself. She explained her difficulty and the man shook his head dejectedly. "Dallie's starting to go bad," he told her. "The first few months we were together, he was all right, but the kid needs a house and a family. That's why I told him we were gonna settle here in Wynette for a while. I thought getting him into school regular might calm him down, but he got hisself suspended the first day for hitting the gym teacher."

Miss Sybil sniffed. "A most obnoxious man. Dallas made an excellent choice." She heard a soft shuffling noise behind her and hastily amended, "Not that I approve of violence, of course, although I should imagine it's sometimes quite satisfying." Then she turned and told the lanky, too-handsome boy slouched in the doorway that she had come to supervise his homework assignment.

"And what if I tell you I'm not doing it?" he sneered.

"I should imagine your guardian would object." She regarded Skeet. "Tell me, Mr. Cooper, what is your position regarding physical violence?"

"Don't bother me none," Skeet replied.

"Do you think you might be capable of physically restraining Dallas if he doesn't do as I ask?"

"Hard to say. I've got him on weight, but he's got me on height. And if he's hurt too much, he won't be able to hustle the boys at the country club this weekend. All in all, I'd say no."

She didn't give up hope. "All right, then, Dallas, I'm asking you to do your assignment voluntarily. For

the sake of your immortal soul."

He shook his head and stuck a toothpick in his mouth.

She was quite disappointed, but she hid her feelings by rummaging in the tie-dyed tote bag she'd brought with her and pulling out a paperback book. "Very well, then. I observed your visual exchanges with the young ladies in the class today and came to the conclusion that anyone as obviously interested in sexual activity as you should read about it from one of the world's great writers. I'll expect an intelligent report from you in two days." With that, she thrust a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover into his hand and left the house.

For nearly a month she relentlessly dogged the small apartment, thrusting banned books at her rebellious student and badgering Skeet to put tighter reins on the boy. "You don't understand," Skeet finally complained in frustration. "Regardless of the fact that no one wants him back, he's a runaway and I'm

not even his legal guardian. I'm an ex-con he picked up in a gas station rest room, and he's been pretty much taking care of me, instead of the other way around."

"Nevertheless," she said, "you're an adult and he is still a minor."

Gradually Dallie's intelligence won out over his sullen-ness, although later he would insist she had just worn him down with all her dirty books. She talked him back into school, moved him into her college-bound class, and tutored him whenever he wasn't playing golf. Thanks to her efforts, he

graduated with honors at age eighteen and was accepted at four different colleges.

After he left for Texas A &M, she missed him dreadfully, although he and Skeet continued to make Wynette their home base and he came to see her during vacations when he wasn't playing golf. Gradually, however, his responsibilities took him farther away for longer stretches of time. Once they didn't see each other for nearly a year. In her dazed state, she had barely recognized him the night he found her sitting in the thunderstorm on the curb at Main and Elwood wearing her nightgown.

Francesca had somehow imagined Dallie living in a modem apartment built next to a golf course instead

of an old Victorian house with a central turret and pastel-painted gingerbread trim. She gazed at the windows of the house in disbelief as the Riviera turned the comer and slipped into a narrow gravel driveway. "Are those rabbits?"

"Two hundred fifty-six of them," Skeet said. "Fifty-seven if you count the one on the front door. Look, Dallie, that rainbow on the garage is new."

"She's going to break her fool neck one of these days climbing those ladders," Dallie grumbled. Then he turned to Francesca. "You mind your manners, now. I mean it, Francie. None of your fancy stuff."

He was talking to her as if she were a child instead of his lover, but before she could retaliate, the back door flew open and an incredible-looking old lady appeared. With her long gray ponytail flying behind her and a pair of reading glasses bobbing on the gold neck chain that hung over her daffodil yellow sweat suit, she rushed toward them, crying out, "Dallas! Oh, my, my! Skeet! My goodness!"

Dallie climbed out of the car and enveloped her small, thin body in a bear hug. Then Skeet grabbed her away to the accompaniment of another chorus of my-my's.

Francesca emerged from the back seat and looked on curiously. Dallie had said his mother was dead, so who was this? A grandmother? As far as she knew, he had no relatives except the woman named Holly Grace. Was this Holly Grace? Somehow Francesca doubted it. She'd gotten the impression Holly Grace was Dallie's sister. Besides, she couldn't envision this eccentric-looking old lady showing up at a motel with a Chevy dealer from Tulsa. The cat slipped from the back seat, looked around disdainfully with his one good eye, and disappeared under the back steps.

"And who is this, Dallas?" the woman inquired, turning to Francesca. "Please introduce me to your friend."

"This is Francie… Francesca," Dallie amended. "Old F. Scott would have loved her, Miss Sybil, so if

she gives you any trouble, let me know." Francesca darted him an angry glare, but he ignored her and continued his introduction. "Miss Sybil Chandler… Francesca Day."

Small brown eyes gazed at her, and Francesca suddenly felt as if her soul was being examined. "How

do you do?" she replied, barely able to keep herself from squirming. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Miss Sybil beamed at the sound of her accent, then extended her hand for a hearty shake. "Francesca, you're British! What a delightful surprise. Pay no attention to Dallas. He can charm the dead, of course, but he's a complete scoundrel. Do you read Fitzgerald?"

Francesca had seen the movie of The Great Gatsby, but she suspected that wouldn't count. "I'm afraid not," she said. "I don't read much."

Miss Sybil gave a disapproving cluck. "Well, we'll soon fix that, won't we? Bring the suitcases inside, boys. Dallas, are you chewing gum?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Please remove it along with your hat before you come inside."

Francesca giggled as the old woman disappeared through the back door.

Dallie flicked his gum into a hydrangea bush. "Just you wait," he said to Francesca ominously.

Skeet chuckled. "Looks like ol' Francie's gonna take some of the heat off us for a change."

Dallie smiled back. "You can almost see Miss Sybil rubbing her hands together just waiting to get at her." He looked at Francesca. "Did you mean it when you said you haven't read Fitzgerald?"

Francesca was beginning to feel as if she'd confessed to a series of mass murders. "It's not a crime, Dallie."

"It is around here." He chuckled maliciously. "Boy, are you ever in for it."

The house on Cherry Street had high ceilings, heavy walnut moldings, and light-flooded rooms. The old wooden floors were scarred in places, a few cracks marred the plaster walls, and the interior decoration lacked even a modest sense of coordination, but the house still managed to project a haphazard charm. Striped wallpaper coexisted alongside floral, and the odd mix of furniture was enlivened by needlework pillows and afghans crocheted in multicolored yarns. Plants set in handmade ceramic pots filled dark corners, cross-stitch samplers decorated the walls, and golf trophies popped up everywhere-as doorstops, bookends, weighing down a stack of newspapers, or simply catching the light on a sunny windowsill.

Three days after her arrival in Wynette, Francesca slipped out of the bedroom Miss Sybil had assigned to her and crept across the hallway. Beneath a T-shirt of Dallie's that fell to the middle of her thighs, she wore a rather astonishing pair of silky black bikini underpants that had miraculously appeared in the small stack of clothing Miss Sybil had lent her to supplement her wardrobe. She had slipped into them half an hour earlier when she'd heard Dallie come up the stairs and go into his bedroom.

Since their arrival, she'd barely seen him. He left for the driving range early in the morning, from there went to the golf course and then God knew where, leaving her with no one but Miss Sybil for company. Francesca hadn't been in the house for a day before she'd found a copy of Tender Is the Night pressed into her hands along with a gentle admonition to refrain from pouting when things didn't go her way. Dallie's abandonment upset her. He acted as if nothing had happened between them, as if they hadn't spent a night making love. At first she had tried to ignore it, but now she had decided that she had to start fighting for what she wanted, and what she wanted was more lovemaking.

She tapped the tip of one unpainted fingernail softly on the door opposite her own, afraid Miss Sybil would awaken and hear her. She shuddered at the thought of what the disagreeable old woman would do if she knew Francesca had wandered across the hall to Dallie's bedroom for illicit sex. She would probably chase her from the house screaming "Harlot!" at the top of her lungs. When Francesca heard no response from the other side of the door, she tapped a bit harder.

Without warning, Dallie's voice boomed out from the other side, sounding like a cannon in the still of the night. "If that's you, Francie, come on in and stop making so damned much noise."

She darted inside the bedroom, hissing like a tire losing its air. "Shh! She'll hear you, Dallie. She'll know I'm in your room."

He stood fully dressed, hitting golf balls with his putter across the carpet toward an empty beer bottle. "Miss Sybil's eccentric," he said, eyeing the line of his putt, "but she's not even close to being a prude. I think she was disappointed when I told her we wouldn't be sharing a room."

Francesca had been disappointed, too, but she wasn't going to make an issue of it now, when her pride had already been stung. "I've barely seen you at all since we got here. I thought maybe you were still angry with me about Beast."

"Beast?"

"That bloody cat." A trace of annoyance crept into her voice. "He bit me again yesterday."

Dallie smiled, then sobered. "Actually, Francie, I thought it might be better if we kept our hands to ourselves for a while."

Something inside her gave a small lurch. "Why? What do you mean?"

The bail pinged against the glass as his putt found its mark. "I mean that I don't think you can handle a whole lot more trouble in your life right now, and you should know that I'm pretty much unreliable where women are concerned." He used the head of the putter to reach out for another ball and draw it close. "Not that I'm proud of it, you understand, but that's the way things are. So if you've got any ideas about rose-covered bungalows or His and Her bath towels, you might want to get rid of them."

Enough of the old proud Francesca still lingered that she managed to slip a condescending laugh past the lump in her throat. "Rose-covered bungalows? Really, Dallie, what on earth can you be thinking of? I'm going to marry Nicky, remember? This is my last fling before I'm permanently shackled." Except she wasn't going to marry Nicky. She'd placed another call last night, hoping that he would have returned by now and she could talk him into advancing her a small loan so she wouldn't be so dependent on Dallie for money. Her call woke the houseboy, who said Mr. Gwynwyck was away on his honeymoon. Francesca had stood with the receiver in her hand for some time before she'd hung up the phone.

Dallie looked up from the floor. "Are you telling me the truth? No His and Hers? No long-term plans?"

"Of course I'm telling the truth."

"Are you sure? There's something funny in your face when you look at me."

She tossed herself down into a chair and gazed around the room as if the caramel-colored walls and floor-to-ceiling bookcases were far more interesting than the man in front of her. "Fascination, darling," she said airily, draping a bare leg over the arm of the chair and arching her foot. "You are, after all, rather one of a kind."

"It's nothing more than fascination?"

"Gracious, Dallie. I don't mean to insult you, but I'm hardly the kind of woman who would fall in love with an impoverished Texas golf pro." Yes, I am, she admitted silently. I'm exactly that kind of woman.

"Now, you do have a point there. To tell you the truth, I can't imagine you falling in love with an impoverished anybody."

She decided the time had come to salvage another small remnant of her pride, so she stood and stretched, revealing the bottom edge of the black silk underpants. "Well, darling, I think I'll leave, since you seem to have other things to occupy your time."

He looked at her for a minute as if he were making up his mind about something. Then he gestured toward the opposite side of the room with his putter. "Actually, I thought you might want to help me out here. Go on and stand over there, will you?"

"Why?"

"Just you never mind. I'm the man. You're the woman. You do what I say."

She made a face, then did as he asked, taking her time as she moved.

"Now slip off that T-shirt," he ordered.

"Dallie!"

"Come on, this is serious, and I don't have all night."

He didn't look at all serious, so she obediently pulled off the T-shirt, taking her time and feeling a warm rush through her body as she revealed herself to him.

He took in her bare breasts and the silky black bikini underpants. Then he gave an admiring whistle. "Now, that's nice, honey. That is real inspiring stuff. This is going to work out even better than I thought."

"What's going to work out?" she inquired warily.

"Something all us golf pros do for practice. You arrange yourself lying down in the position of my choice on the carpet right there. When you're ready, you slip off those panties, call out some specific part of your body, and I see how close I can get with my putt. It's the best exercise in the world for improving a golfer's concentration."

Francesca smiled and planted one hand on her bare hip. "And I can just imagine how much fun it is to fetch the balls when you're done."

"Damn, but you British women are smart."

"Too smart to let you get away with this."

"I was afraid you'd say that." He propped his putter up against a chair and began to walk toward her. "Guess we'll just have to find something else to occupy our time."

"Like what?"

He reached out and pulled her into his arms. "I don't know. But I'm thinking real hard."

Later, as she lay in his arms drowsy from lovemaking, she considered how strange it was that a woman who had turned down the Prince of Wales had fallen in love with Dallie Beaudine. She tilted her head so that her lips touched his bare chest and gave his skin a soft kiss. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she told herself that she would make him care for her. She would become exactly the woman he wanted her to be, and then he would love her as much as she loved him.

Sleep didn't come so easily to Dallie-either that night or for the next few weeks. He could feel Halloween beating down on him, and he lay awake trying to distract himself by playing a round of golf in his head or thinking about Francesca. For a woman who painted herself as one of the world's great sophisticates just because she'd run around Europe eating snails, Miss Fancy Pants would have learned a hell of a lot more, in his opinion, if she'd spent a few half-times on a stadium blanket under the bleachers at Wynette High.

She didn't seem to have logged enough hours between the bedposts to really relax with him, and he could see her worrying about whether she had her hands in the right place or whether she was moving in a way that would please him. It was hard for him to enjoy himself with all that single-minded dedication coming his way.

He knew she had half convinced herself she was in love with him, even though it wouldn't take her more than twenty-four hours back in London before she would have forgotten his name. Still, he had to admit that when he finally got her on that plane, part of him was actually going to miss her, despite the fact that she was a feisty little thing who wasn't giving up her stuck-up ways easy. She couldn't pass a mirror without spending a day and a half looking at herself, and she left a mess everywhere she went, as if she expected some servant to come along after her and clean up. Even so, he had to admit that she seemed to be making an effort. She ran errands into town for Miss Sybil and took care of that damned walleyed cat and tried to get along with Skeet by telling him stories about all the movie stars she'd met. She'd even started reading J. D. Salinger. More important, she finally seemed to be getting the idea that the world hadn't been created just for her benefit.

One thing he knew for sure. He would be sending old Nicky back a hell of a better woman than the one Nicky'd sent him.