T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

She did. And though she'd never have another dog again, never, she wanted those hateful sneaking puppy-killing things kept off her property no matter what it took. She still had a cat. And a son. What if they started attacking people next?

“Sure, Jack,” she said finally. “I'll help. Just tell me what to do.”

She started with Delaney that night after work. He'd fixed a salade niçoise for dinner, really put some effort into it, with chunks of fresh-seared tuna and artichoke hearts he'd marinated himself, but all she could do was pick at it. Without Jordan and Osbert around, the house was like a tomb. The late sun painted the wall over the table in a color that reminded her of nothing so much as chicken liver-chicken-liver pink-and she saw that the flowers in the vase on the counter had wilted. Beyond the windows, birds called cheerlessly to one another. She pushed her plate away and interrupted Delaney in the middle of a monologue on some little bird he'd seen on the fence, a monologue transparently intended to take her mind off Osbert, coyotes and the grimmer realities of nature. “Jack asked me to work on the wall thing,” she said.

Delaney was caught by surprise. He was in the middle of cutting a slice of the baguette he'd picked up at the French bakery in Woodland Hills, and the bread knife just stuck there in the crust like a saw caught in a tree. “What 'wall thing'?” he said, though she could see he knew perfectly well.

She watched the knife start up again and waited for the loaf to separate before she answered. “Jack wants to put a wall around the whole place, all of Arroyo Blanco. Seven feet tall, stucco over cinder block. To keep burglars out.” She paused and held his eyes, just as she did with a reluctant seller when she was bringing in a low bid. “And coyotes.”

“But that's crazy.” Delaney's eyes flared behind his lenses. His voice was high with excitement. “If chain link won't keep them out, how in god's name do you expect-?”

“They can't hunt what they can't see.” She threw her napkin down beside the plate. Tears started in her eyes. “That thing stalked Osbert, right through the mesh, as if it wasn't even there, and don't you try to tell me it didn't.,”

Delaney was waving the slice of bread like a flag of surrender. “I'm not. won't. And I'm sure there's some truth in that.” He drew in a breath. “Look, I'm as upset about this as you are, but let's be reasonable for a minute. The whole point of this place is to be close to nature, that's why we bought in here, that's why we picked the last house on the block, at the end of the cul-de-sac-”

Her voice was cold, metallic with anger. “Close to nature,” she spat back at him. “Look what good it did us. And for your information, we bought in here because it was a deal. Do you have any idea how much this house has appreciated since we bought it-even in this market?”

“All I'm saying is what's the sense of living up here if you can't see fifty feet beyond the windows-we might as well be living in a condo or something. I need to be able to just walk out the door and be in the hills, in the wild-I don't know if you noticed, but it's what I do, it's how I make my living. Christ, the damn fence is bad enough-and that fucking gate on Arroyo Blanco, you know I hate that, you know it.”

He set the bread down on his plate, untouched. “This isn't about coyotes, don't kid yourself. It's about Mexicans, it's about blacks. It's about exclusion, division, hate. You think Jack gives a damn about coyotes?”

She couldn't help herself. She was leaning forward now, belligerent, angry, channeling it all into this feckless naive unrealistic impossible man sitting across the table from her-he was the one, he was guilty, he was the big protector of the coyotes and the snakes and weasels and tarantulas and whatever in christ's name else was out there, and now he was trying to hide behind politics. “I don't ever,” she shouted, “want one of those things on my property again. I'd move first, that's what I'd do. Bulldoze the hills. Pave it over. The hell with nature. And politics too.”

“You're crazy,” he said, and his face was ugly.

“Me? That's a laugh. What do you think this is-some kind of nature preserve? This is a community, for your information, a place to raise kids and grow old-in an exclusive private highly desirable location. And what do you think's going to happen to property values if your filthy coyotes start attacking children-that's next, isn't it? Well, isn't it?”

He put on his exasperated look. “Kyra, honey, you know that's not going to happen-that incident in Monte Nido, that was an aberration, a one-in-a-million chance, and it was only because the people were _feeding__ the animals-”

“Tell that to the parents. Tell it to Osbert. And Sacheverell, don't forget Sacheverell.”

Dinner didn't go well. Nor the rest of the evening either. Delaney forbade her to work on the wall committee. She defied him. Then she took over the living room, put on her relaxation tapes and buried herself in her work. That night she slept in Jordan's room, and the next night too.

All that was on her mind as she punched in the code, waited for the gate to swing back, and turned into the long, familiar Da Ros drive. The gate closed automatically behind her and she felt the flutter in her stomach, but it wasn't as bad as usual-she was in too much of a hurry to dwell on it and she was preoccupied with Delaney and the wall and too many other things to count. She did take what had now become the standard precaution of dialing Darlene, the receptionist at the office, to tell her she'd just entered the Da Ros property. They'd agreed on a fifteen-minute time limit-no lingering anymore, no daydreaming, no letting the house cast its spell. If Kyra didn't get back to Darlene at the end of those fifteen minutes to say she was leaving, Darlene would dial 911. Still, as Kyra cruised slowly up the drive, she was intensely aware of everything around her-it had been almost three weeks now, but she couldn't shake the feeling that had come over her that night when she understood just how vulnerable she was out here in the middle of nowhere. And in a way, she didn't want to shake it. Get complacent, and you become a statistic.

The house emerged through the trees, the front windows struck with light. She softened when she saw it. The place was something, after all, one of a kind, the fairy-tale castle you see on the underside of your eyelids when you close your eyes and dream. And it was hers in a way no other had ever been, white elephant or not. She'd seen it happen a thousand times with her buyers, that look in their eyes, that click of recognition. Well, this was her click of recognition, the place she would have bought if she was in the market. And yes, Delaney, she thought, I'd wall it in with seven feet of cinder block and stucco, that's the first thing I'd do.

Kyra swung round in the driveway, the car facing the way she'd just come, and before she switched off the engine she took a good long penetrating look out across the lawns and into the trees at the edge of the property. Then she lowered the window and listened. All was still. There was no breeze, no sound anywhere. The shrubs and trees hung against the backdrop of the mountains as if they'd been painted in place, flat and two-dimensional, and the mountains themselves seemed as lifeless as the mountains of the moon. Kyra stepped out of the car, leaving the door open behind her as a precaution.

Nothing's going to happen, she told herself as she strode up the walk. They were hikers, that was all. And if they weren't, well, they were gone now and wouldn't be back. She concentrated on the little things: the way the grass had been hand-clipped between the flag-stones, the care with which the flowerbeds had been mulched and the shrubs trimmed. She saw that the oleander and crape myrtle were in bloom, and the bed of clivia beneath the library windows. Everything was as it should be, nothing amiss, nothing forgotten. She'd have to remember to compliment the gardener.