Another Kind of Cowboy (13 page)

FEBRUARY 4

JENNY SAYS IT'S
a miracle that I hadn't taken up partying earlier. She can barely believe I grew up in L.A. I told her I went to an all-girl private school with a conservative dress code and an emphasis on academics. She said she would have guessed that I went to a private nunnery just north of Neverland.

Since I started hanging out with Jenny a couple of months ago, I've finally begun to experience life. I am such a late bloomer, I can barely believe myself sometimes! I mean, I'm ahead of other people on TV knowledge and getting taken advantage of by certain guys named Chad and getting banished from my home nation as a result, but when it comes to drinking and having fun, I'm practically an infant. Jenny's
helping me to fix all that, though.

At that first party I went to with Jenny, back in December, I got drunk for the first time
and
I met a guy! Hello, red-letter day!

The boy, whose name I didn't quite catch because I was a bit drunk, was a superfox. He was so cute he could have been from home. He had killer black hair and freckles across his nose and blue eyes with little flecks of white in them. Ten minutes after we met we ended up kissing in a stairwell. It was fantastic. It may have been the best time I've ever had in my life.

I was still high from the experience (and the clouds of secondhand pot smoke) when I went home for the holidays. Even the crappy twenty-four hours spent with my parents, being reminded about my poor judgment every sixty seconds, and the crappy week that followed, spent with Consuela, whom my parents paid time and a half to act as my chaperone over the holidays, couldn't dampen my excitement to get back to school and Jenny so we could go to another party and see the boy again.

After the clinic with Herr Humorless, I promised Fergus and Ivan that when I got back from California I'd start attacking my chores like I cared and riding for all I was worth during lessons and so on, but I
just haven't been able to do it. For one thing, since I got back a month ago, I've been going out with Jenny at least twice a week and it takes me at least two days to feel normal again after one of our “expeditions,” as she calls them. On top of that I have school, which is nowhere near as demanding as Marlborough, but they do sort of expect me to attend classes.

Riding is starting to feel like it's interfering with my life or at least the part of my life that could lead to seeing the black-haired boy again. Fergus and Ivan have mentioned about twenty times that the spring show is coming up next month, and I can't make another spectacle of myself. The spring show includes show jumping, hunter, and dressage, so Jenny should be getting ready, too, but she's not. Getting ready isn't her thing.

She almost never goes to class and misses at least half her riding lessons and even quite a few shows. She's had two conferences with Ms. Green about “pulling up her boots” and several strong talking-tos from her jumping coach, but she doesn't seem fazed.

“Aren't you worried about getting kicked out?” I asked her after she got back from yet another disciplinary meeting.

“Nah. They aren't going to kick me out. I'm the best rider they've got.” It was true. Jenny might not be very consistent with her training, but when she does get on her horse, they are unstoppable. I've seen Jenny's mare, a Selle Francais named Rio, make it over jumps with Jenny nearly passed out on her back. If Jenny tried even a little bit she could totally make Young Riders. But Jenny's not a trier. There's something kind of refreshing about that.

As we talked, she lay in bed, fully dressed, but with her quilt pulled up to just under her nose. It was four o'clock in the afternoon and she hadn't ridden her horse for at least a week.

“But what if they do?” I couldn't believe she could be so nonchalant.

She closed her eyes. “Don't worry. I won't get kicked out. You won't get kicked out. They expect us to get into trouble. They'd be disappointed if we didn't. I'm going to take a short nap now, but be ready to head out tonight at around nine.”

 

This morning, Fergus was in the indoor ring when I arrived.

“Oooooh! Hiiiiii,” he said,
very
sarcastic.

“Hi,” I whispered. Speaking too loudly made my
head hurt worse. Jenny and I worked on the doing-shooters part of my education last night.

“Well, it's just been such a delight waiting for you,” he said. “You'll notice Ivan isn't here. He left after ten minutes.”

“I'm not
that
late.”

“Miss Cleo, you are twenty minutes late for a forty-five-minute lesson. And I know for a fact that you only arrived fifteen minutes ago because on my way out to the barn to give you hell, I passed Mrs. Mudd as she was leaving. She gave me a terrible look.”

“She's a…” I let my voice trail off before completing that thought.

“A fine and patient woman who must be sorely tried having to deal with the likes of you,” said Fergus.

“So is my lesson canceled?” I asked, trying not to sound as hopeful as I felt.

He ignored me.

“In this life, we only get so many chances. Some of us squander our chances. Others make the most of them. Which type are you?”

I wished I was the type who was still in bed, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

“You are riding today—with me. And I plan to be every bit as fierce as Ivan. You've been an absolute
twit since you returned from Los Angeles. I don't know what that town did to you, but we've got to get you straightened out before the spring show.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. You need to get used to riding in public without making a scene. Competitive dressage riders compete.”

“I'm not competitive,” I grumbled, leading Tandy over to the mounting block.

“Quite right. You certainly aren't. That's why you are going to spend the next forty-five minutes riding your tail off, and when we're done in here, you and I are going to have a conference with your young colleague, Alex. I understand that you both plan to ride a freestyle. That means you only have a few weeks to prepare your music and your choreography.”

“I don't feel ready to ride a freestyle.”

“A month ago you insisted that the freestyle was your favorite event. If I recall, you implied you'd
die
if you were't allowed to ride a freestyle. Well, I'm here to assure you that that's correct. You
will
die if you don't do the work to prepare and to ride one.”

“God,” I muttered.

“Yes?” said Fergus.

Then the ride began.

FEBRUARY 4

ALEX COULDN'T SEEM
to stop working. Sometimes he wondered whether he had a disease of the nervous system. Lately he'd been even more of a maniac for chores than usual. He went to school full time, worked at the barn, looked after two horses, and trained dressage. Cleo kept asking him if he was on drugs. This afternoon it was even getting on Fergus's nerves.

“Lad, please. I'm trying to nag here and you're making me feel superfluous,” said Fergus.

“Sorry,” said Alex as he put down one of Tandava's leg wraps he was untangling.

“As I was saying,” Fergus began again. “You both plan to ride a freestyle in the schooling show next month. You two will be representing this fine estab
lishment and we don't want you embarrassing us by riding some terrible tests set to dreadful music. So how are they coming?”

“I did my choreography,” said Alex quietly.

“That's wonderful. Have you picked your music?”

Alex shook his head.

Fergus leaned against the doorway of the tack room where Alex worked while Cleo watched.

“We've timed your horses with the metronome. Now you both need to pick music. And Miss Cleo has to design her choreography, since she has done nothing.”

Fergus pointed at Alex. “Ride home safely. I'm still not comfortable with this wagon-train arrangement of yours.”

“It's okay,” said Alex.

He knew his coach got a kick out of the way Alex rode Turnip and led Detroit behind, like the world's biggest pack pony. The routine kept Turnip feeling useful and as long as the old paint led the way, Detroit was happy to follow.

After Fergus left, Alex extracted another polo wrap from the large tangled pile at his feet.

“Sorry,” Cleo said. “I guess I shouldn't wash so many at once.”

“Don't worry about it.”

Things between Alex and Cleo had been strained ever since their argument at the clinic. It didn't help that Cleo seemed to have gone wild over the holidays. Instead of hanging around his place, she went out with her roommate several nights each week. He was surprised to find that he missed her and her constant questions and advice, and he worried about her drastic change in lifestyle. It was like watching Mary Poppins get mixed up with the wrong crowd.

“You want to go look for music for your freestyle?” Cleo asked.

“I might have something I can use at home.”

“Please, I've seen your music collection and it sucks. You've got like four CDs and they were all gift with purchase. You can't ride a good freestyle to soft jazz hits. The judges might be old, but that doesn't mean they'll be deaf. You need to find something exciting. We'll go to the record store and listen to different stuff to get ideas.”

Alex sighed, pulled another polo wrap free of the pile, and began to roll it, inside out, on top of his knee. There was no use arguing with her once she got an idea. And he didn't completely hate the idea of spending time with Cleo. He was just about to say
yes, when she spoke up again.

“Tell you what. Mrs. Mudd has been complaining about driving me back and forth from school every day, so my parents said I could get a car. We can go music
and
car shopping this weekend.”

Alex shot Cleo a sideways glance.
Car shopping?
This he had to see.

“Okay,” he said.

“Awesome. So you'll pick me up Saturday morning?”

Alex nodded.

“We are going to have such a good time. Hey, I'm going out with Jenny Thursday night. You want to come?”

Alex shook his head. “No. I better not. I've got stuff to do,” he said.

Cleo got up to leave when she heard the rumble of Mrs. Mudd's truck outside.

“Later skater,” she said.

He nodded and looked back down. He was still up to his knees in tangled polos.

FEBRUARY 10

IT TOOK
A
LEX
only a few minutes to realize that Cleo was a major-league shopper.

The first thing she said to him when she got into the IROC Saturday morning was, “Where are the import dealerships in this town?”

Alex didn't know. But he didn't want to admit that, since he was a guy and his father owned a used RV dealership on the outskirts of town. He felt like it was his job to know exactly where all of the car and tractor places were. After all, car dealerships lined most of the major streets in Nanaimo, their glass-sided buildings marooned in a sea of new cars, flags flying, sun glinting off the windshields.

“I think there's one on Bowen Road. Somewhere
around there, anyway.”

“Excellent,” she said.

“So you're just going to buy a car? Like today?”

Cleo looked at him and frowned slightly. “Yeah.”

“Oh. Are you going riding after?”

She had on a pair of suede breeches under brown leather riding boots and a short shearling jacket.

“Nah,” she said. Then she noticed him looking at her outfit. “I don't want them to think I'm some nobody. You can't drive up to a car dealership in an IROC and expect to be treated seriously.”

“But if you look like you're going horseback riding, everything will be fine?”

“Yeah.”

“What about the whole getting-gouged thing? You know, if they think you have money.”

“I do have money,” she said fondly, as though she was speaking to a learning-disabled child. “The point is to have a nice shopping experience. We're teenagers and they aren't going to let us test-drive nice cars if they think we're poor.”

“Right,” he said, glancing down at his outfit of heavy wool plaid coat, cords, boots, and a knitted cap. He briefly imagined changing into his show clothes, the two of them arriving at the European car
dealership looking like they'd just stepped off the pages of
Vanity Fair
. He imagined bringing along a pair of trusty hunting dogs to complete the picture. He sort of liked the image. Oh well, it was too late to get changed. Cleo would just have to pretend she was shopping with her gardener.

He drove the IROC along the main roads while Cleo looked for dealership signs.

“Ford. Keep going!”

Alex was a bit insulted until he realized she was referring to the dealership.

“Cadillac! Maybe we should stop. It would be so old school to drive a Caddy.”

Her words came too late. He'd already driven past the turnoff. They drove along a stretch of highway lined with malls and car dealerships.

“Think you have enough freakin' malls in this town?” Cleo asked, as though Alex had personally financed and built them all.

“You're the one going shopping,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I don't want to
feel
like I'm shopping. I want to feel like I'm just going for a little walk, cruising cafés and art galleries, gathering culture and worldly knowledge and I just happened to come upon this amazing little car store, tucked among the
trees, birds twittering overhead.”

“Didn't Americans invent the strip mall?” he asked.

“Don't play the blame game,” she said. “It's so unattractive.”

When they reached Rutherford Road, Cleo looked over and saw the VW dealership sign.

“Cool! V-Dub!” she exclaimed.

“I'm in the wrong lane.”

“So turn right and then do a U-ey.”

Alex frowned at her. There would be no U-eys while he was driving. He turned right, then left, and left again, landing them in a McDonald's parking lot. They ended up trapped in the lineup for the drive-through lane.

“May I take your order?” asked the crackly voice emanating from the speaker.

“Nothing,” said Alex.

“I'm sorry,” said the voice. “I didn't hear that.”

Cleo leaned over Alex and shouted, “
Nothing!
We're in the wrong lane. Because he refuses to do U-eys!”

“I'm sorry,” said the voice. “I didn't hear that. May I take your order?”

After they escaped the McDonald's with a small
order of fries, Alex experienced a few tense moments trying to pull into the VW dealership.

“Left! Left!” shrieked Cleo. “You're going to miss it! We're going to end up back in McDonald's.”

“The turnoff is a one-way,” said Alex through gritted teeth. “Going the
other
way.”

This trip was turning into Alex's worst nightmare. It was bad enough when his sisters and aunt and Cleo teased him about his lack of driving skills. The thought of a group of potentially attractive mechanics seeing him in action was almost too much.

He slowed the IROC to a crawl and drove behind a row of garages and oil-change places. The car rumbled embarrassingly. He prayed it wouldn't stall.

“Pull in there,” said Cleo, pointing to an empty spot between a row of plastic-wrapped VW Bugs.

She was out of the car before he stopped the engine. He grabbed the fries so he'd have something to hold on to and followed her.

Four salesmen stood at the door of the sales center. They looked at the IROC, at Alex and Cleo, and three of them turned away.

“Hello,” said the remaining salesman. Alex had seen enough episodes of
What Not to Wear
to know
that the guy's suit didn't fit very well. The sleeves looked too short and there were strange puckers in the fabric around the arms.

He was young, too, more of a salesboy than a salesman. Alex had expected someone more like his dad's RV sales guys: older, with a paunch and lots of unfortunate jewelry. He hadn't expected a guy who looked like he was just out of high school and wearing his first suit.

The boy extended his hand toward Alex, who quickly stepped back and pointed at Cleo.

“Her. She's looking for a car. I'm just, uh…” He looked down at the container of French fries in his hand. “Eating fries.”

The guy shook Cleo's hand and seemed to notice her outfit for the first time.

“You look like…” His voice trailed off as he struggled for words to describe this look that he recognized but couldn't quite name.

“I attend an
equestrienne
school,” said Cleo.

Alex squinted at her. Was she using some kind of accent?

“Oh,” said the salesboy. His hair was combed back and still damp. Alex felt a rush of sympathy.

“I'm in the market for a vehicle,” Cleo announced.

The salesboy blushed deeply. “Are your, uh, parents coming?”

“I'm nearly seventeen,” said Cleo, her voice now offended as well as self-important.

Alex ate a fry.

“I'll be putting the deposit on my credit card. My mom will send the rest.”

“Oh,” said the salesboy.

The fry stopped halfway down Alex's throat.

“So you're interested in a Golf or maybe a Bug?”

Cleo wrinkled her nose and put her hands on her slim hips. “Noooo. I don't think so.”

She looked around and then pointed at a large, shiny station wagon with elaborate hubcaps.

“What's that?”

“That's the Passat Wagon.”

“That looks nice.”

Alex's French fry was stuck somewhere in the vicinity of his esophagus.

“It's kind of an expensive car,” said the salesboy uncertainly.

Cleo ignored him and spoke to Alex. “I don't want to be some cliché boarding-school girl, you know, driving around in a Beemer or whatever. That car looks mature. Dignified. It looks like a dressage car.”

In Alex's mind a dressage ride was a truck that could pull a horse trailer, but he wasn't about to argue.

The salesboy took a deep breath and started his spiel as though reading it straight out of the sales manual.

“The Passat Wagon is very popular with customers who care about safety and comfort. It's ideal for people with small children. You've got your two-liter, two hundred horsepower, six-speed manual all the way to your three-point-six-liter V6R with two hundred eighty horsepower, six-speed automatic with Triptronic.”

Cleo pursed her lips. “You know,” she said. “I don't really care.”

“Oh,” said the boy.

Alex resisted the urge to offer him a fry.

“I do like the sounds of that Trip stuff, but mainly what I'm after is a big, shiny new car.”

“It's forty-seven thousand dollars before tax or extras,” whispered the salesboy.

“Perfect,” said Cleo. She reached into her purse and handed him her credit card. “I think there's like twenty on there. My mom will send you the rest.”

“Don't you want to take it for a test-drive?” said
the boy in a strangled voice.

“I suppose.” Cleo's tone made it clear that she couldn't care less.

The salesboy looked at Alex, who shrugged and ate another fry.

After the boy went in to get the dealer plates and run Cleo's credit card, he came back accompanied by an older man wearing a much better suit. He was one of the men who'd turned away when Alex and Cleo had first pulled up.

“Well, hey there,” he said. “I'm Peter. I'm the manager here. Sam tells me you're interested in putting a deposit on the Passat Wagon.”

Cleo looked bored.

“Do you have another piece of ID, honey?”

Cleo sighed and dug around in her purse and pulled out her passport and her driver's license. The man checked it against her credit card.

“Well,” he said, suddenly much friendlier. “Feel free to ask me any questions Sam hasn't been able to answer.”

“Actually, Sam doesn't need any help,” said Cleo. “He just sold me what I assume is the most expensive car on the lot.” She looked down at her watch. “In five minutes. Sam is quite a salesman.”

Alex and Sam looked at each other, then Alex smiled down at his French fries. Cleo could be a pain sometimes, but she definitely had style.

After the manager went back inside, Sam attached the dealer plates and helped Cleo into the car.

“You coming?” Cleo asked Alex, who stood to the side with the now-empty French fry container in his hand.

“I'll wait here.”

Cleo's behavior as a passenger made him suspect that she might not be a very good driver.

“Oh, shut up, you're coming.”

Sam, the salesboy, opened the backseat and Alex got in. He was immediately enveloped by the smell of leather and new car.

The moment Sam closed his door, Cleo threw the car into reverse.

“Whoa,” said Sam. “I guess you're pretty excited.”

From his vantage point in the back of the car, Alex could see that Cleo was hunched over the steering wheel. There was something about the aggressive tilt of her blond head that made him nervous.

“You'll notice the instrumentation panel is—holy crap!” exploded Sam, as Cleo barely missed clipping a car on her way out of the crowded parking lot.
“I'm sorry. It's just that that was a little close.”

After making a series of illegal turns, Cleo got onto the highway. Traffic was heavy and moving slowly. At least, most of it was. The Volkswagen Passat swerved in and out of the fast lane, darting around slower-moving vehicles like a bionic rabbit in a field of three-legged tortoises.

“Hey, Sam, has this thing got air bags?” asked Cleo after an excruciatingly close call with a panel van.

“God, I hope so,” said Sam in a small voice. When they finally stopped at a light he said, “Okay, I think you've got a pretty good idea of how it runs. What say we head back to the office now and I'll fill out the paperwork for you?”

“Already?” said Cleo.

“Yes!” shouted Alex from the backseat.

When Cleo screeched to a stop in the dealership lot, Sam practically leaped out of the passenger seat.

Cleo turned back to Alex with one of her eyebrows raised.

“I think that young man earned his commission today.”

Alex just nodded as he waited for his heart rate to drop back to its normal range.

 

After establishing that it would take a few days to get the exact car she wanted and that Sam would deliver it to Stoneleigh for her, Alex and Cleo headed downtown. Cleo hadn't spent much time in downtown Nanaimo and pronounced it “way less divey than I thought!” Alex had to follow her into store after store and watch in awe tinged with horror as she bought everything she laid eyes on.

At the Flying Fish gift shop she purchased a leather ottoman, which Alex calculated cost the same as a custom bridle. She also bought a large wicker wall unit (equivalent to the price of a decent saddle or artificial insemination by a so-so stallion) and a fake zebra-skin carpet (three months' worth of horseshoeing).

“Don't they give you furniture in your dorm rooms?” he asked when the saleslady was out of earshot.

“Yeah, but I don't love it,” said Cleo. “I think this will give us a much better atmosphere for studying.”

After she made arrangements to have her new furnishings dropped off at the school and then changed her mind, squealing, “No, wait! I will pick them up next week in my new
station wagon
!”, Alex had had enough. She was like a kid on a sugar high.

He propelled her out of the store.

“Okay. We're here to go to the record shop. Now.”

“Oh, but there's a cute café over there!” She pointed over his shoulder. “And there's an art gallery right beside it!”

“Music first,” he said.

“I was just hitting my stride,” she whined.

They walked down the narrow streets, Alex pulling Cleo back every time she tried to go darting into an “adorable bakery!” or “the most awesome little skater shop!”

“Later,” he said, reflecting that this must be what it was like to try and shop with a toddler—a toddler with a giant credit limit. It occurred to him that he was no longer irritated with Cleo. He felt sort of fatherly, instead. As he ushered her along, his voice deepened. “Come along now,” he said, looking fondly as she skipped up the street in front of him.