Джо Горес - Cases

And what a great scary movie to take a girl to! When the old-time carny worker was crawling bug-eyed through the muck and mire under the out-of-control roller coaster near the end of the film, Penny jammed her head up against Dunc’s chest with her eyes squeezed tight shut.

They ate in an Italian restaurant called Louise’s Trattoria in shabby old Pasadena on East Colorado Boulevard. In a dark-wood booth, in the voluble care of dark-haired waiters, they split an Italian-sausage pizza and drank draft beer and talked about their whole lives.

Penny had never met anyone before who was actually trying to be a writer, and was full of questions. She said she loved Hemingway’s romanticism, and Dunc explained at great length that you had to call it doomed romanticism.

“How about you, Penny?” he asked finally. “What do you want when you get out of college? Love, marriage, kids?”

“All of the above — doesn’t everyone? But after I broke up with Gerald, I knew that I really want to come back out west.”

“California,” said Dunc with not a little complacency.

“Not really. The real West. I want to work on one of those great ranch estates that have horses and real western food, and people who come to stay, like a hotel.”

“A dude ranch,” said Dunc.

“Is that what they call them? All right, someday I want to have a dude ranch of my own.”

When they had stopped in front of Aunt Goodie’s house, Penny brought up the question of the Mexican illegals again.

“If you’re right that you saw the one with the knife scar on his face out at Rephaim’s church—”

“Alejandro,” said Dunc. “He was one of them, all right.”

“So you mean that most of the farmworkers at Rephaim’s don’t have their green cards at all.”

“We don’t know for sure, of course, but Rephaim could be smuggling them in. Wouldn’t the Church of Melchizedek be a good transfer point after they get up here? I don’t know much Spanish, but I think Alejandro said that they pay a hundred bucks each, up front, to get smuggled across the border.”

“Rephaim is too tied up in his church to—”

“Even Uncle Carl thinks he’s a con man.”

“That’s because he’s jealous of the way Aunt Goodie listens to what Rephaim says.” She paused. “Oh, Dunc, be careful!”

She was worried about him! Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, kissing almost wildly, tongues darting, panting for breath. Her head was back, her arms clinging to him.

Somehow, Dunc’s hand was on one of her brassiered breasts through the thin fabric of the blouse. His other hand moved up inside her skirt along the silken length of her inner thigh. He was wild with desire. She wrenched herself away.

“Dunc! No! Please!”

He stopped instantly, panting. “I... I’m sorry, I...”

She came back into his arms, whispered against his throat, “It’s just that... so soon... not here... not now...”

He walked her to the door, both of them still a little breathless. She pressed against him again.

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“I can’t.” She gestured at the house. “Next Friday?”

“Next Friday,” he said, then added quickly, “and Saturday.”

She laughed. “And Sunday. Good night, darling.” And she kissed him and was gone.

Dunc drove home feeling the agony and the ecstasy — ecstasy over the “darling,” agony over his case of lover’s nuts.

On Monday Dunc asked Joshua if he’d meant the immigration people might give him a hard time over hiding the Mexicans.

“Trouble I’m talking ’bout come, you be knowin’ it for sure.”

Which told him nothing. At least being shorthanded meant Dunc had to concentrate on what he was doing instead of spinning emotional and sexual fantasies about Penny all the time.

Driving home from work, Gus was in a foul mood. “I couldn’t get near Birdie last Saturday. After a whole summer of practically handing her to me on a platter, all of a sudden Hector tells me he never wants me to speak with her again.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t come at you with a shotgun.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Last week he walked into the bedroom when we were humping away.”

Dunc was amazed. “What’d he do?”

“Called her the Whore of Babylon and said ‘Excuse me’ and stalked out again.”

“You’re making it up.”

Gus made the old Boy Scout sign with two raised fingers. “Scout’s honor. I tell you, Dunc old son, I’m out of my depth. Where are the honest, virtuous virgins of St. Mary’s?”

“Maybe he heard we hid the Mexicans in the cornfield.”

“What’s this ‘we,’ white man. And anyway, what difference would it make to him?”

“I’m just saying ‘What if?’ Alejandro was at Rephaim’s on a Sunday morning and at the seminary construction site on the Monday. This weekend Hector tells you to get lost.”

Gus nodded. “And he knows we’re buddies.” Then he shrugged. “Whatever the hell reason, I’m like the guy lost the key to his girl’s apartment. Now I get no new-key.”

There was no smog, nobody could figure out why it sometimes didn’t appear. The traffic on Sepulveda was at a standstill. Somewhere ahead of them flashing lights pinpointed an accident.

Gus leaned back in the seat and crossed his hands behind his head. “I’ve got a special place I’d like to show to you and Penny, Dunc. How about I take you guys there on Sunday?”

“I’ll ask her about it — but if she comes, don’t mention Birdie. Birdie is one of her aunt’s best friends.”

Penny chose the movie on Friday night, a romantic comedy called Roman Holiday. They both were wild about it. Audrey Hepburn was like a delicate bird, and Gregory Peck had been one of Dunc’s favorite actors since he’d played the writer dying on the African veldt in Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

After they had thoroughly discussed everything from Roman Holiday to Gregory Peck to Hemingway, Penny brought up Rephaim.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought, Dunc, and I still don’t think he’s involved in smuggling illegal aliens. I don’t believe in him any more than you do, but he believes in himself. Totally. And he wouldn’t profit by turning them in. Who would?”

“Well, the Immigration Service, for one.”

“Do they pay informers?”

“I doubt it, but maybe those guys have a quota to fill.”

“All right, who else profits in this whole thing?”

“Whoever gets them across the border.”

As he said it, Hector popped into his mind. But he didn’t say anything to Penny. Neither of them mentioned her impending departure, as if the infinity of time lay before them.

Dunc hadn’t ridden a horse since he was ten, when his family’d had a very sly pony named Tricksy. But Senator was a big horse, sedate and good-natured as he plodded along the winding bridle trails through the scrub brush and dusty-leaved live oaks of Griffith Park. Penny rode Yankee. She was a terrific rider. He’d have to practice so he could keep up...

Except it all ended in three weeks. Don’t think about it.

She spread a tablecloth under a smooth red-boled manzanita and gathered a bunch of wildflowers for a centerpiece. They ate fried chicken and potato salad and drank lemonade out of a thermos. Senator nudged between them to eat the bouquet.

As they returned to the stables on the northern rim of the park, Penny brought Yankee up beside Senator for a fierce saddle-to-saddle hug. “This has been one of the best days of my life!”

“Since you’re gonna own a dude ranch, I thought we’d better practice up.”

Their unsaddled horses ambled about the enclosure; Dunc mentioned Gus’s mystery location the next day.