The alchemy worked on Sam. “Every time I come into this bar,” he said, “I get the distinct impression something wonderful is about to happen.”
Junior’s agent was in his sixties now and had traveled nearly the entire globe. He represented an eclectic gathering of artists and actors, plus a novelist who was making him wealthy with film options and a world-famous playwright who wasn’t earning squat but expected Sam at his beck and call anyway. Junior snapped the leash onto his dog’s harness. “Does it generally pan out for you?”
Sam spit an ice cube back into his scotch and petted the dog, who seemed content to receive the attention. “Infrequently.”
“Well, pardon me for saying so, but that sounds kind of pathetic, Sam.”
“My boy, we’re not staring down the odds in Vegas. That’s hardly my point by any stretch of the imagination. Remaining in the moment when all things are possible, that’s what I’m talking about. That singular, divine, possibility-filled moment.”
The bartender appeared before them. “I’ll have a Coke,” Junior said. “Maybe that way one of us will make sense.”
“Diet, sir?”
“Whatever’s handy.”
“And for your companion?” The barkeep indicated his dog.
Junior smiled. “I believe his current beverage of choice would be water.”
“Certainly, sir.”
The barkeep returned shortly with the soda and a plastic water bottle bearing the distinctive Biltmore logo. He cracked the cap and, with a flourish, poured half its contents into a white china bowl. Little no-name stared briefly into the bowl, then eyed the cut-glass dish of nuts set alongside it. Junior gave his lead a tug. “None of that.”
Sami Gee laid his arm across Junior’s shoulders. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“The silver. I’ve been patient.”
“Like I told you, Sam, I’ve been working on matters closer to home.”
“I know what you told me, and now I want to hear the truth.”
His agent wanted to hear Junior’s enthusiastic description of designs that were burning through his fingers. He expected Junior’s talk about burnout to prove nothing more than artistic complaint. He longed to feel the smooth metal in his fingers, to imagine what he could best place where, and to know for how much the pieces would sell. That kind of work kept his heart beating. Junior sensed all of that and said, “After you and me are done, I’m going to see these two women who run a wolf preserve northwest of here. This dog’s half wolf and fully nuts. He steals everything unless I’m wearing it. Opens cupboards, digs dens the size of a basketball court, takes apart the furniture. I can’t leave him alone long enough to take a dump on my own. If I’m ever going to work again, I need a little advice.”
“Perhaps you could leave the animal with these women, make a donation, and be quit of the problem.”
Junior thought of what Chloe might say about that. “Not an option. I’m signed on for the whole enchilada. Not sure about hybrids, but I heard wolves have a fifteen-year life-span.”
“Perhaps that will prove to be rumor.” Sam mulled things over for a few moments. “On the positive side, this animal could benefit your image, Junior. We’ll get some Avedon-ish head shots of the two of you, redesign your publicity kit, capitalize on the ‘wildness’ aspect, the ladies will swoon, and your sales will skyrocket. That is, if we have anything to sell. The galleries are starting to sound a little restless. Unless I give them something to nibble on, they’re going to stop calling.”
Later on, Junior wouldn’t know why he’d said what he did. The words just seemed to slide out of his mouth. “I’ve been thinking of trying some sandcasting. All this fancy shit bores me silly. Tiny little shards, so many colors, it makes my eyes ache just to look at it, you know?”
“Sandcasting’s where it all began, correct? With that fellow Crybaby Something or Other?”
“Crying Smith. He wasn’t the first, but everybody remembers his name.”
“Well, then. I called that close enough for jazz. I’m with you, Junior. Really I am. What have you got to show me? Wax casts? Photos? Drawings?”
“I can show you a wild dog that’s finally learned to sit.”
His agent signaled to the bartender for a refill. He was drinking the oldest scotch in the house. “Does this reticence to commit have to do with your father’s passing?”
“Of course not.”
“These things do affect us, Junior. Did you have a service, put some closure on the situation?”
Junior shook his head. “Still haven’t picked up his ashes.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll get to it when the time is right. Jimmy ain’t going anywhere.”
“Is it about the boy, Junior?”
“Walter? We’re getting along great. I almost brought him along today, but his mother wasn’t quite ready for an overnight that involved skipping school. Next time for sure. He’s a great kid, Sam, and what an artist. Too soon to tell where he’ll focus his energy, but he’s definitely got the curse. I’ve been staying out at this friend of mine’s place, a painter, and when Walter comes for the weekend, he spends half his time going through Aaron’s sketchpads. He’s mad for those oil-based pastel crayons—”
Junior looked up to see Sam’s eyes widening in an all-too-familiar expression. He opened his mouth to speak, but as soon as Junior pointed a finger, he shut it tight.
“Buddy, I know what you’re thinking. Father and son, now wouldn’t that make for an even greater publicity stunt than the freakin’ wolf-dog? He’s not even nine years old, Sam. The kid is going to grow up normal. If he wants to pump gas for a living, that’ll be what he does. Hey, you want to get on my good side? Buy my dog here a BLT. He’s eyeing those nuts like they’re horse-meat.”
“Sure.” Sam smiled, swirling the ice in his drink. “But first let me ask you something, Junior. Why is it such a crime that I want to make you rich?”
“Because what I do’s not about money, it just happens to bring some in.”
“Some? Some? His holiness on rollerblades, Junior. I could quote from your schedule of earnings if you like.”
“Hey, I know how much I made last year. And I know how much I paid the goddamn government.”
“Which is a superlative situation to find one’s self in, Junior. Much preferable to scrambling. I’m not prohibiting you from taking whatever time you need to get going again. Just remember, I need to keep myself in greens fees and decent booze.”
“Your wallet might stay fatter if you roomed at the Motel Six.”
The man snorted. “Motel Six would neither serve your wild bow-wow his repast nor would it come remotely close to making me feel that good things are within the realm of possibility. Mind this, my friend. I have chosen a lifestyle from which I shall not be budged.”
And then just outside of Cordes Junction, as he was driving along, balancing the map in his lap, attempting to keep the pup in line while ruminating over Chloe Morgan, who had sunk her teeth into his heart, who held the market on toughness and unavailability, who said she might meet him later today at the lookout point, “might” being the operative word, he blew a tire on a long, lonely stretch of rutted road. His kidneys, sore from bouncing over rocks, were grateful for the break. He cracked the window, tied no-name’s leash to the interior door handle, and set about changing the tire.
Can’t call this simple lust, he chided himself as grit blew down his collar, sandblasting his neck. If I wanted to, I could sleep with some other woman, say that airline girl in Phoenix, but I know what’d happen. I’d close my eyes, and she would be Chloe under me. I’d be substituting that girl’s body for the one I don’t get to call my own. He remembered his mother and father, how they’d get to loving on each other sometimes in the kitchen, say, if she fixed him mutton stew and biscuits. Jimmy’s way of saying thanks was to take her down to the bedroom for an hour. Sometimes, when the joy of sex overflowed the shabby rooms, he could hear them. The s
ounds of his parents making love always reassured him. That was because the flip side was his father’s drunken rages, or the long walks his mother took Junior on to escape the yelling, the fists that might come flying their way. He wondered if maybe all his screwing around in the past was linked to that childish idea of keeping danger distant—if that was why he’d left Corrine. Would Walter be as messed up at thirty-eight? Would his son believe that the only women worth love and respect worked eighty hours a week and lived on junk food? That fathers came into the picture only to drift out, like poor television reception? Corrine still loved him. He could tell if he asked, she would find space for him. She’d alter her life and take him on whatever terms he offered. But the bottom line was he didn’t love her, and pretending he did could not be sustained.
Junior scraped his knuckles raw hammering the lug nuts loose. Whoever’d owned this car before him had been lucky to go this long on such cheap tires. He’d have to get some new ones, quick. The pup scrabbled at the window, anxious to be with him, so every now and then Junior lifted his raw hand up for the dog to sniff. He finished changing the tire and sat on the ground, weary, grit everywhere, even between his teeth. Arizona had its stretches of ugly, and this road had just been inducted into Junior’s personal top ten.
Truth always seemed to slap his face in such vapid places. His heart beat out its lonely rhythm: Face up. Corrine was a practice run. You are in love for real this time. That’s all your problem is. The mighty redskin has fallen like the old carved-up tree he truly is. For the first time in his life, the situation appeared simple, straightforward, and its outcome entirely unworkable. Chloe didn’t want her picture taken so she could parlay their alliance into a modeling career. She didn’t want a signed piece of jewelry to flaunt as a memento of one night’s passion. She didn’t even want him. She wasn’t happy, she was satisfied with her unmarried but live-together status, nursing little Reed and waiting for warm-enough weather so she could start in training the colt. I can’t leave now, Junior said to himself. I can’t miss that. Her taming that horse will be something to behold.
Thinking of her was like unleashing some wild virus in his blood. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop the mental pictures. He imagined her astride the colt, bareback, at the lope, her strong legs holding her fast, moving fearlessly, fluidly, at one with the animal. Or the two of them riding alongside each other on Sally and the colt, taking cinder-laden trails through the pine forest. He knew how dark and quiet those trails could be. The kinds of looks you traded in thick, congested silence. What you could say without exchanging a word. He envisioned her seated at one of those rough-hewn tables at the steak house out by swampy old Lake Mary, where eating red meat was akin to worship. Chloe’d tear into a barely cooked ten-ounce and laugh at how good it felt to be hungry, how satisfying it was to feed that emptiness. Then he allowed himself to remember the taste of her kisses, that night in the motel room, and when he did he swore he could savor the exact essence of her on his tongue, that unmistakable tang he craved. When he discarded all the rationalizations, he could admit his intentions had truly been wicked, but in his defense, at least he hadn’t acted on them. At the very moment of her surrender, Junior had seen the wisdom of holding back, and kept himself in check, dammit, and if that was all it ended up being that one night of kissing and stroking and this full-blown yearning chained like a yoke around the heart, he’d truly lose his grip on the world.
He fingered the Lander’s ring on his pinkie and wondered again how best to set the stone. In silver or gold? In platinum, surrounded by old-timey baguette diamonds, pried from some junky piece of estate jewelry? He’d occasionally played around with gold, and it was costly, but if you decided to set something in platinum, it had best be eternal. If Sam heard him talking like this, he’d cheer and lift his glass. Junior blinked hard, but the picture didn’t go away, and he knew that sooner or later he’d have to get back to work in order to afford the vision.
The wolf lady and her friend owned twenty-two acres, wisely purchased ten years before the Californians invaded and claimed Arizona as a vacation spot. They lived in a log house surrounded by twenty chain-link enclosures and one rickety outhouse that worked well enough, it seemed, as Junior scooped lime into the pit. With Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti the only nearby draw, and in its own way exquisitely weird, two women and thirty-six wolves weren’t likely to interest or bother anyone.
Anne had moved to the ranch in the eighties, she said, “sick to death of LA.” She had one of those intriguingly weathered faces, high-set cheekbones, and kinky silver hair that reached halfway down her back. She looked to be anywhere from in her early forties to fifty-something, no facelift, but a natural attractiveness still resided there. “In another life,” she explained, “I was an actress. To sum it up, I prefer the company of wolves to sharks.” She led him through the compound to where her partner, Teresa, was at work in a small studio off-building, painting a likeness of a wolf on illustration board. She was using egg tempera, dipping her brush quickly, as the medium was at best fickle and brief.
“Not easy stuff to work with,” Junior commented.
She smiled, then raised her arm to show off one of his bracelets. “Recognize this?”
“Sure.” He’d made it three years ago, when he was enamored of sugilite. The grape-colored stone was inlaid with thin strips of coral and lapis, and all of that set off one small but fine chunk of spiderweb turquoise. “My purple phase.”
“This bracelet was the last thing I charged on my VISA before I left my cheating son-of-a-bitch husband. Figured for all that marriage cost me, he owned me one beautiful souvenir.”
The cost issue always put Junior on the defensive. “A lot of hours went into that bracelet. It’s signed. My agent would say you made a wise investment.”
Teresa set down her brush. “And the card company I broker to wants to pay me a measly hundred bucks for the rights to this painting. Good thing we artists like what we do, huh?”
He gave her a noncommittal shrug. If she liked it, he didn’t want to disillusion her.
“Your pup’s part timberwolf, by the way. No more than half, though, possibly less. We have two of those crosses, one’s three-quarters wolf. I can show you the differences when we take the tour. One got shot by a rancher who said he wouldn’t allow anything on his land that he couldn’t take out with a shotgun. We’re awfully glad he had such a poor aim. The other we bartered for when we heard the owner was using construction rebar to teach the dog ‘manners.’ You’ll have to leave your little guy in the quarantine pen on the other side of the house while we take you around. Vet care’s expensive.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
They walked among the pens, which housed anywhere from two to six wolves each. The women explained they’d sunk the wire mesh six feet down and stretched it across the ceilings, that when a wolf could dig, he would, and that they’d witnessed them jumping eight feet up in the air from a sitting position. It was clear the wolves were thrilled to see their women off-schedule. Anne leaned her head back and howled, which incited an eerie canine chorus. The hair on Junior’s head lifted at the keening sound. “Communication,” Teresa explained, laughing at his stricken expression. “You hang with another species long enough, you learn the basic language.”
Following the tour they checked on no-name, who was content to work the bone they’d given him, then they went inside the log house. The women showed him the rooms, decorated sparsely with secondhand furniture. Anne’s bedroom was last. Atop the patchwork quilt on her king-size bed, five wolf hybrids rested, sprawled over assorted cow bones and well-attended rope-chew toys. “Come on over,” she said. “Meet my house wolves.”
They eyed Junior suspiciously but rolled over for Anne.
“This is Girdwood, and this here’s Nome. Nome lost her eye before we rescued her. The white one I call Anchorage, and he’s the trickster of the bunch, very sneaky. Such a handsome fellow, but not entirely to be trusted. I don’t mean to have fav
orites, but what can I say? He stole my heart. And that’s Sitka and little Skagway, both from the same litter.”
“You must really dig Alaska.”
“I visited there prepipeline. It made an impression.”
“How do you keep on top of them? I mean, they outnumber you.”
“At all times you must remain the alpha animal,” she advised, “and risk looking utterly stupid whenever necessary. If you’re charged, immediately tackle your dog and wrestle it to the ground. For God’s sake don’t hit; a wolf will submit once you get him down. Don’t think, But he outweighs me, and don’t ignore behavior you’re not willing to tolerate. Keep the order intact and be consistent.”
“What about destructiveness? I mean, he took my friend Aaron’s sofa apart.”
“He was curious as to what was inside, that’s all. Wolves are highly intelligent.”
“Does that mean he’ll want to take me apart someday, too?”
“Not if you socialize him properly.”
Teresa brewed them yerba buena tea and laid out a snack of fruit, nuts, and cheese. They sat at the kitchen table talking, and as Junior set down his napkin he noted that there wasn’t a single edge of the table that wasn’t marked with teeth imprints.
“A wolf helps you simplify your life,” Anne said. “In return, and I don’t intend this romantically, you live with spirit and mystery.”
“Plus a lot of wrecked furniture.”
“That, too. But maybe you didn’t need all that furniture.”
“Something to think about.”
Teresa added, “You’ll never be lonely.”
Particularly in the john, Junior thought. “What if I couldn’t care for him? Could I give him away, or would I have to leave him at a place like this?”
The two women exchanged somber looks. “Your wolf-dog would mourn terribly if you gave him to anyone. He’s bonded with you. He can’t survive on his own. He doesn’t know how to hunt, and he isn’t socialized with other wolves. Dogs will never accept him. If you released him anywhere in this state, he’d either be run over or shot. An animal shelter will euthanize him immediately; after all, to them this is a wild animal. Chances are another owner would come up against the same struggles you encountered.”
Loving Chloe Page 27
