The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“It’s just an inappropriate gift,” Carla said of the ring. “What do you suppose he thinks it means?”
“Honey, accept it,” Mary Beth advised. “When he chooses a house, we’ll sell the damn thing and split the profit as part of our commission.”
“He wants to get me in bed, I just know it,” Carla sighed.
“Well, sure he does. You’re a looker and he’s clumsy as a goose. He didn’t know what to do, so he just bought that damn ring.”
When they emerged, Boomer was showing Luke how to throw a curve ball and, somehow, baseball made everything natural again. Mary Beth actually flirted, bumping Boomer with her hip, and they all grinned and went out for burgers. At the Dairy Dip, Boomer played pinball and, later, showed Luke a switchblade knife with a curved ivory handle, but something happened so that Luke came over with his root beer float and sat beside his mother as if he didn’t want anything more to do with Boomer.
“What happened, Honey?” Mary Beth asked, but Luke wouldn’t respond.
“Did Boomer hurt your feelings?” Carla persisted, but Luke just crushed his baseball cap in his fist — a pinstripe cap in the New York Yankees style — and sucked the straw of his empty root beer float. Meanwhile, Boomer slapped the sides of the pinball machine, his face and raw hands illumined in its glow.
“What, Luke? Tell me,” his mother kept on.
“Oh, it’s some male conspiracy thing,” Carla decided, so they let it go.
The weekend arrived and Carla continued to fret. It was illegal to run a credit report, but she considered it. She didn’t want to ask Boomer to allow himself to be investigated because she might offend him and lose a sale. Too awkward, she told herself, yet her skepticism annoyed her, especially since she had accepted the ring. She scolded herself for having doubts.
The weather turned hotter.
According to the listing information, the house out on 165 had sixteen adjoining acres, no pool, no stable, and no view, but Boomer wanted to see it that weekend, so Carla made arrangements. Mary Beth would attend another Little League game with Luke, Carla would show another house to the young couple with only a thousand dollars, then they would meet Boomer out in the hill country late on Saturday.
A wind blew up, but hot: swirls of dust in the flats, trees bending on the ridges, great pavilions of cloud rising on the southern zephyrs. Deadly humidity, too: Carla’s blouse stuck to her back and the young couple perspired and whined. She wanted Boomer to write a big fat check, so she could go off to the mountains, up in New Mexico, say, where the nights turned cold even in summertime.
She drove west behind an old slow pickup and couldn’t pass in the traffic, then turned off on a farm road quivering with a mirage of rising heat. The twang of an irritating guitar jangled her nerves, so she turned off the radio.
Following another realtor’s instructions she found the house: an angular rock, cypress, and glass monstrosity — no architect would do such a thing — along a dry creek bed in a stand of live oak and cottonwood trees. The house could barely be seen from the highway and she wondered how Boomer had found it, but there he was, waiting, leaning against his big Continental beside a rock archway and gate, grinning and waving. He had sweated through his T-shirt and his Stetson was pushed back on his head.
“Found me,” he said, as Carla got out of her car.
“Lordy, I feel like I’ve driven all day,” she managed in reply, and she manufactured a smile. The heat bore down on them.
“The house is already open,” Boomer told her. “I peeked inside.”
With that they started up the flagstone walkway. She felt relieved to be rid of the young couple and confident that Mary Beth and Luke would soon be along.
“You know, I like this place,” he said when they stood in the living room.
“Nice,” Carla agreed, though she didn’t completely mean it.
The high windows let in a brass-colored and stifling heat of late afternoon.
“It’s nothing like I wanted,” he admitted. “But it has a good feel to it.”
“This happens a lot,” she said, as they made their way toward the kitchen. “A client will have a very specific idea about what he wants, then buy something completely different. Just goes to show.”
“I’m not anybody’s usual client,” Boomer reminded her, and his voice did that thing again: formality crept in in an aloof arch tone.
“No, I don’t want to imply that you are. You’re one of a kind, Boomer, really, I mean it.”
“Hey, you’re not wearing the ring.”
“It’s in my purse. I intend to have it sized right away.”
They admired the kitchen and breakfast nook decorated with bright Mexican tiles, then they stepped outside on the wide deck across the back of the house. At one corner of the deck an outdoor shower surrounded by glass brick emptied into a drain that led through the cottonwood grove to the dry creek. Boomer stepped inside the shower and found that the water could be turned on.
“Look at this! Nice, huh?”
“It’s a great outdoor shower,” Carla agreed.
“Tell you what. Let’s take a shower and cool off.”
“You go ahead,” she managed, and that nervous laugh came out of her. Before she knew it, he began to skin out of his T-shirt and sat down abruptly on a wooden bench to remove his boots.
“Now come on, don’t leave,” he instructed her. “At least stand guard, so Mary Beth doesn’t barge in on me.” He had a wide grin and as he fumbled with his belt his effort seemed frantic, childlike, as though his big hands couldn’t keep up with his enthusiasm.
She watched until he began to stumble around in his jeans, trying to get them off, then she turned away, laughing, and thinking, no, you’re certainly not the usual client, you’re a doofus, you’re too much, and she caught a glimpse of his bare butt as he entered the shower stall. Above the glass bricks, then, she could see his grinning face and the curve of the chrome shower head.
“Whoa!” he yelled when the water came on. “That’s cold!”
“I’ll bet it’s nice,” she called to him. He made a noise like a goat and ran his long fingers through his hair.
When she started to leave, he once again called her back, saying, “You know, I think I’ll buy this place. I’d have to add a stable, but it could be small. I only intend to keep a coupla horses.”
She found herself getting used to this silliness of his: talking business while buck-naked underneath a shower.
“You haven’t even seen the upstairs,” she reminded him.
“Five bedrooms, five baths, all tucked away, very private. I like it. You know, I think I’ll make out a check.”
She began to feel lightheaded. Cash, a solid commission. Then he started talking about an apartment in Austin, too: Something close to the center for nights he might want to stay in town. She sat down on the wooden bench while he yelled out his thoughts. Was there anything for sale around Town Lake? Some real nice condos?
“Carla, are you there?”
“Right here,” she said, standing up again, so he could see her. “Standing guard as ordered.”
“Just drape my T-shirt over the stall,” he said. “I’ll dry with it. And if you don’t mind, lay my jeans over the side, too.”
While he dressed, she suggested that he should make a low bid on the house, but he rejected that. No, the asking price seemed fair, he said, and they went back to a discussion of condos. Maybe something around the university, he added. He liked to watch the kids come and go.
By the time he came out of the shower, dressed, they were laughing so naturally that when he suggested that she should hop into the cold water, too, she considered it.