Fancy Pants (34 page)
Two years ago, she had nearly married a charismatic young California
congressman. He was handsome, successful, and
wonderful in bed. But he nearly went crazy whenever she brought home
one of her runaways and he hardly ever laughed at her jokes, so she had
finally stopped seeing him. Prince Stefan Marko Brancuzi was the first
man she'd met since then whom she cared enough about to sleep with.
They had met several months before when she'd interviewed him on her
show. She had found Stefan both charming and intelligent, and he had
soon proven himself to be a good friend. But was caring the same thing
as loving, she wondered, or was she just trying to find a way out of
the dissatisfaction she
had been feeling with her life?
Shaking off her melancholy mood, she toweled herself dry and slipped on
her robe. Knotting the sash,
she moved to the mirror, where she applied
her makeup efficiently, allowing no time for either scrutiny
or
admiration. She took care of herself because it was her business to
look good, but when people raved about her sage green eyes, her
delicate cheekbones and gleaming chestnut hair, Francesca found herself
withdrawing from them. Painful experience had taught her that being
born with a face like hers was more of a liability than an asset.
Strength of character came from hard work, not smoky-thick eyelashes.
Clothes, however, were another matter.
Surveying the four evening outfits she had brought with her, she passed
up a silver-studded Kamali and a yummy Donna Karan, deciding instead on
a strapless black silk faille designed by Gianni Versace. The gown
bared her shoulders, cinched her waist, and then fell in soft, uneven
tiers to mid-calf. Dressing quickly, she gathered up her purse and
reached for her sable. As her fingers brushed the soft fur collar, she
hesitated, wishing Stefan hadn't given her the coat. But he'd been so
upset when she'd tried to refuse it that she'd eventually given in.
Still, she disliked the idea of all those furry little animals dying so
she could be fashionably dressed. Also, the lavishness of the gift
subtly offended her sense of self-reliance.
With a stubborn set to her jaw, she passed over the fur for a flaming
fuchsia shawl. Then, for the first time that evening, she really looked
at herself in the mirror. Versace gown, pear-shaped diamond studs,
black stockings sprinkled with a mist of
tiny jet beads, slim Italian heels—all luxuries she had bought for
herself. A smile tugged at the comers of her mouth as she draped the
fuchsia shawl around her bare shoulders and made her way to the
elevator. God bless America.
scowling at the back of the cab driver's neck as the taxi crawled down
Fifth Avenue. "You can try to paint a pretty face on it, talkin' 'bout
new opportunities and expanding horizons, but what you're doin' is
giving up."
"What I'm doing is being realistic," Dallie answered with some
irritation. "If you weren't so goddamn ignorant, you'd see that this is
just about the chance of a lifetime." Riding in a car with someone else
driving always put Dallie in a bad mood, but when he was stuck in a
Manhattan traffic jam and the man behind the wheel could only speak
Farsi, Dallie passed the point of being fit for human company.
He and Skeet had spent the last two hours at the Tavern on the Green,
being wined and dined by the network brass, who wanted Dallie to sign
an exclusive five-year contract to do color commentary during their
golf tournaments. He had done some announcing for them the year before
while he was recovering from a fractured wrist, and the audience
response had been so favorable that the network had immediately gone
after him. Dallie had the same humorous, irreverent attitude on the air
as Lee Trevino and Dave Marr, currently the most entertaining of the
color commentators. But as one of the network vice-presidents had
remarked to his third wife, Dallie was a hell of a lot prettier than
either one.
Dailie had made a sartorial concession to the importance of the
occasion by putting on a navy suit, along with a respectable maroon
silk tie neatly knotted at the collar of his pale blue dress shirt.
Skeet, however, had settled for a corduroy jacket from J. C. Penney's
along with a string tie he'd won in the fail of 1973 pitching dimes
into goldfish bowls.
"You're sellin' out your God-given talent," Skeet insisted stubbornly.
Dailie whipped around to glower at him. "You're a damn hypocrite, is
what you are. For as long as I can remember, you've been pushing
Hollywood talent agents down my throat and trying to get me to pose for
pinup pictures wearing nothing but my jockstrap, but now that I have an
offer with a little dignity attached to it, you're getting all
indignant."
"Those other offers didn't interfere with your golf. Dammit, Dailie,
you wouldn't have missed a single tournament if you'd done a guest shot
on 'The Love Boat' during the off" season, but we're talking about
something entirely different here. We're talkin' about you sitting up
in an announcer's booth making wise-ass remarks about Greg Norman's
pink shirts while Norman's out there making golf history. We're talking
about the end of your professional career! I didn't hear those network
honchos say anything about you coming up into the announcers' booth
only on the days you don't make the cut, the way Nicklaus does, and
some of the other big boys. They're talkin' about having you there
full-time. In the announcers' booth, Dailie—not out on the golf course."
It was one of the longest speeches Dallie had ever heard Skeet make,
and the sheer volume of words held him momentarily in check. But then
Skeet muttered something under his breath, aggravating Dallie almost
past the point of endurance. He managed to keep a rein on his temper
only because he knew that these past few golf seasons had just about
broken Skeet Cooper's heart.
It had all started a few years back when he'd been driving home from a
Wichita Falls bar and had almost killed a teenage kid
riding a ten-speed bike. He'd given up taking illegal Pharmaceuticals
in the late seventies, but he'd continued his friendship with the beer
bottle right up until that night. The boy ended
up with nothing more
serious than a broken rib, and the cops had gone a lot easier on Dallie
than he'd deserved, but he'd been so badly shaken that he'd given up
booze right after. It hadn't been easy, which told him just how much
he'd been kidding himself about his drinking. He might never survive
the cut at the Masters or finish in the money at the U.S. Classic, but
he would be damned if he'd kill a kid because he drank too goddamn much.
To his surprise, going on the wagon had immediately improved his game,
and the next month he'd taken a third in the Bob Hope, right in front
of the television cameras. Skeet was so happy he almost cried. That
night Dallie had overheard him talking to Holly Grace on the telephone.
"I knew he could do it," Skeet had crowed. "You just watch. This is it,
Holly Grace. He's going to be one of the greats. It's all going to come
together for our boy now."
But it hadn't, not quite. And that's what was pretty much breaking
Skeet's heart. Once or twice each season Dallie took a second or third
in one of the majors, but it had become pretty obvious to everyone
that, at thirty-seven, his best years were just about gone and the big
championships would never be his.
"You got the skill," Skeet said, staring out the murky window of the
cab. "You got the skill and you got the talent, but something inside
you is keeping you from being a real champion. I just wish I knew what
it was."
Dallie knew, but he wasn't saying. "Now you listen to me, Skeet Cooper.
Everybody understands that watching golf on television is about as
interesting as watching somebody sleep. Those network honchos are
getting ready to pay rne some semi-spectacular money to liven up their
broadcasts, and I don't see
any need to throw their generosity back in
their faces."
"Those network honchos wear fancy cologne," Skeet grumbled, as if that
said it all. "And since when did you get so all-fired concerned about
money?"
"Since I looked at the calendar and saw that I was thirty-seven years
old, that's when." Dallie leaned forward and
abruptly rapped on the glass separating him from the driver. "Hey, you!
Let me out at the next corner."
"Just where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to see Holly Grace, that's where. And I'm going by myself."
"It won't do you any good. She'll just say the same thing I been
sayin'."
Dallie pushed open the door anyway and jumped out in front of Cartier.
The cab pulled away, and he stepped directly into a pile of dog shit.
It served him right, he thought, for eating a lunch that cost more than
the yearly budget of most Third World nations.
Oblivious to the attention he was attracting from several female
passersby, he began scraping the sole of his shoe on the curb. It was
then that the Bear came up behind him, right there in the middle of
Midtown.
You 'd better sign while
they still want you
, the Bear said.
How much longer are you going to kid
yourself?
I'm not kidding myself.
Dallie
started back up Fifth Avenue, heading
toward Holly Grace's apartment.
The Bear stayed right with him, shaking his big blond head in disgust.
You thought giving up booze was going
to guarantee you 'd make those
eagle putts, didn't you, boy? You thought it was going to be that
simple. Why don't you tell old Skeet what's really holding you back?
Why don't you just come right out and tell him you don't have the guts
to be a champion?
Dallie quickened his pace, doing his best to lose the Bear in the
crowd. But the Bear was tenacious.
He'd stuck around for a long time,
and he wasn't going anyplace now.
Holly Grace lived in the Museum Tower, the luxury condominiums built
above the Museum of Modern Art, which made her fond of announcing that
she slept on top of some of the greatest painters in the world. The
doorman recognized Dallie and let him into Holly Grace's apartment to
wait for her. Dallie hadn't seen Holly Grace for several months, but
they talked on the telephone frequently and not much happened in either
life that didn't get discussed between them.
The apartment wasn't Dallie's style at all—too much white furniture,
with free-form chairs that didn't fit his lanky body,
and some abstract art that reminded him of pond scum. He shucked off
his coat and tie, then stuck a tape of Born in the U.S.A. into a
cassette player he found in a cabinet that looked as if it
was designed
to hold dental equipment. He fast-forwarded the tape to "Darlington
County," which, in
his opinion, was one of the ten greatest American
songs ever written. While the Boss sang about his adventures with
Wayne, Dallie wandered about the spacious living room, finally coming
to a stop in front of Holly Grace's piano. Since he'd last been in the
apartment, she'd added a group of photographs in silver frames to the
collection of glass paperweights that had always occupied the top of
the piano. He noted several pictures of Holly Grace and her mother, a
couple of photos of himself, some snapshots of the
two of them
together, and a photograph of Danny they'd had taken at Sears in 1969.
Dallie's fingers tightened around the edge of the frame as he picked it
up. Danny's round face looked back at him, wide-eyed and laughing, a
tiny bubble of drool frozen forever on the inside of his bottom lip. If
Danny had lived, he would have been eighteen years old now. Dallie
couldn't imagine it. He couldn't picture Danny at eighteen, as tall as
himself, blond and lithe, as good-looking as his mother. In his mind,
Danny would always be a toddler running toward his twenty-year-old
father with a loaded diaper sagging down around his knees and his
chubby arms extended in perfect trust.
Dallie replaced the photograph and looked away. After all these years,
the ache was still there—not as acute, maybe, but still there. He
distracted himself by studying a photograph of Francesca wearing bright
red shorts and laughing mischievously into the camera. She was perched
on a big rock, pushing her hair away from her face with one hand and
propping a chubby baby between her legs with the other. He smiled. She
looked happy in the picture. That time with Francesca had been a good
time in his life, sort
of like living inside a private joke. Still,
maybe the laugh was on him now.
Who would have ever thought Miss Fancy Pants would turn out to be such
a success? She'd done it on her own, too—he knew that from Holly Grace.
She'd raised a baby without anyone
to help her and made a career for herself. Of course, there'd been
something special about her even ten years before—a feistiness, a way
she had of charging at life straight on and going after what she wanted
without any thought of the consequences. For a fraction of a moment it
flashed through his mind that Francesca had taken life on at a full run
while he was still hanging out at the fringes.
The idea didn't please him, and he rewound the Springsteen tape to
distract himself. He then went into the kitchen and opened the
refrigerator, bypassing Holly Grace's Miller Lite for a Dr Pepper. He'd
always appreciated the fact that Francesca had been honest with Holly
Grace about that baby of hers. It had been natural for him to wonder if
the baby might not be his, and Francesca could certainly have pinned
old Nicky's kid on him without too much trouble. But she hadn't done
it, and he admired her for it.
Popping the lid on the Dr Pepper, he walked back to the piano and
looked around for another picture of Francesca's son, but found only
the one. He got a kick out of the fact that whenever the child was
mentioned in an article about Francesca, he was always identified as
the product of an unhappy early marriage—so unhappy that Francesca had
refused to give the child his father's last name. As far as Dallie
knew, he, Holly Grace, and Skeet were the only people who knew the
marriage had never existed, but all of them had enough respect for what
Francesca had done with herself to keep their mouths shut.
The unexpected friendship that had developed between Holly Grace and
Francesca seemed to Dallie one of life's more interesting
relationships, and he'd mentioned to Holly Grace more than once that he
would like to drop in some time when the two of them were together to
see how they got along. "I just can't picture it," he'd once said. "All
I can see is you going on and on about the last Cowboys game while
Francie talks about her Gucci shoes and admires herself in the mirror."
"She's not like that, Dallie." Holly Grace replied. "I mean, she does
talk about her shoes, but that's not all."
"It just seems ironic," he answered, "that somebody like her should be
raising a male child. I'll bet you anything he grows up strange."
Holly Grace hadn't liked that remark, so he'd stopped teasing her, but
he could tell she was worried
about the same thing. That's how he knew
the kid was pretty much a sissy.
Dallie had rewound Bom in the U.S.A. for the third time when he heard a
key turn in the front door. Holly Grace called out, "Hey, Dallie. The
doorman said he let you in. You weren't supposed to show
up until
tomorrow."
"I had a change of plans. Damn, Holly Grace, this place reminds me of a
doctor's office."
Holly Grace had a peculiar look on her face as she walked in from the
foyer, her blond hair sweeping over the collar of her coat. "That's
exactly what Francesca always says. Honestly, Dallie, it's the
spookiest thing. Sometimes the two of you give me the willies."
"Now, why's that?"
She tossed her purse down on a white leather couch. "You're not going
to believe this, but you have
these strange similarities. I mean, you
and me, we're like two peas in a pod, right? We look alike, we
talk
alike. We have just about all the same interests—sports, sex, cars."
"Is there a point in here somewhere, because I'm starting to get
hungry."
"Of course there's a point. You and Francesca don't like any of the
same things. She loves clothes, cities, fancy people. Her stomach gets
queasy if she sees somebody sweat, and her politics are definitely
getting more liberal all the time—I guess maybe because she's an
immigrant." Holly Grace perched one hip on the back of the couch and
looked at him thoughtfully. "You, on the other hand, don't care much
about fancy stuff, and you lean so far to the right on the political
spectrum that you're just about ready to fall off. Looking at the
surface, two people couldn't be any more different."
congressman. He was handsome, successful, and
wonderful in bed. But he nearly went crazy whenever she brought home
one of her runaways and he hardly ever laughed at her jokes, so she had
finally stopped seeing him. Prince Stefan Marko Brancuzi was the first
man she'd met since then whom she cared enough about to sleep with.
They had met several months before when she'd interviewed him on her
show. She had found Stefan both charming and intelligent, and he had
soon proven himself to be a good friend. But was caring the same thing
as loving, she wondered, or was she just trying to find a way out of
the dissatisfaction she
had been feeling with her life?
Shaking off her melancholy mood, she toweled herself dry and slipped on
her robe. Knotting the sash,
she moved to the mirror, where she applied
her makeup efficiently, allowing no time for either scrutiny
or
admiration. She took care of herself because it was her business to
look good, but when people raved about her sage green eyes, her
delicate cheekbones and gleaming chestnut hair, Francesca found herself
withdrawing from them. Painful experience had taught her that being
born with a face like hers was more of a liability than an asset.
Strength of character came from hard work, not smoky-thick eyelashes.
Clothes, however, were another matter.
Surveying the four evening outfits she had brought with her, she passed
up a silver-studded Kamali and a yummy Donna Karan, deciding instead on
a strapless black silk faille designed by Gianni Versace. The gown
bared her shoulders, cinched her waist, and then fell in soft, uneven
tiers to mid-calf. Dressing quickly, she gathered up her purse and
reached for her sable. As her fingers brushed the soft fur collar, she
hesitated, wishing Stefan hadn't given her the coat. But he'd been so
upset when she'd tried to refuse it that she'd eventually given in.
Still, she disliked the idea of all those furry little animals dying so
she could be fashionably dressed. Also, the lavishness of the gift
subtly offended her sense of self-reliance.
With a stubborn set to her jaw, she passed over the fur for a flaming
fuchsia shawl. Then, for the first time that evening, she really looked
at herself in the mirror. Versace gown, pear-shaped diamond studs,
black stockings sprinkled with a mist of
tiny jet beads, slim Italian heels—all luxuries she had bought for
herself. A smile tugged at the comers of her mouth as she draped the
fuchsia shawl around her bare shoulders and made her way to the
elevator. God bless America.
Chapter 24
"You're sellin' out, is what it is," Skeet said to Dallie, who wasscowling at the back of the cab driver's neck as the taxi crawled down
Fifth Avenue. "You can try to paint a pretty face on it, talkin' 'bout
new opportunities and expanding horizons, but what you're doin' is
giving up."
"What I'm doing is being realistic," Dallie answered with some
irritation. "If you weren't so goddamn ignorant, you'd see that this is
just about the chance of a lifetime." Riding in a car with someone else
driving always put Dallie in a bad mood, but when he was stuck in a
Manhattan traffic jam and the man behind the wheel could only speak
Farsi, Dallie passed the point of being fit for human company.
He and Skeet had spent the last two hours at the Tavern on the Green,
being wined and dined by the network brass, who wanted Dallie to sign
an exclusive five-year contract to do color commentary during their
golf tournaments. He had done some announcing for them the year before
while he was recovering from a fractured wrist, and the audience
response had been so favorable that the network had immediately gone
after him. Dallie had the same humorous, irreverent attitude on the air
as Lee Trevino and Dave Marr, currently the most entertaining of the
color commentators. But as one of the network vice-presidents had
remarked to his third wife, Dallie was a hell of a lot prettier than
either one.
Dailie had made a sartorial concession to the importance of the
occasion by putting on a navy suit, along with a respectable maroon
silk tie neatly knotted at the collar of his pale blue dress shirt.
Skeet, however, had settled for a corduroy jacket from J. C. Penney's
along with a string tie he'd won in the fail of 1973 pitching dimes
into goldfish bowls.
"You're sellin' out your God-given talent," Skeet insisted stubbornly.
Dailie whipped around to glower at him. "You're a damn hypocrite, is
what you are. For as long as I can remember, you've been pushing
Hollywood talent agents down my throat and trying to get me to pose for
pinup pictures wearing nothing but my jockstrap, but now that I have an
offer with a little dignity attached to it, you're getting all
indignant."
"Those other offers didn't interfere with your golf. Dammit, Dailie,
you wouldn't have missed a single tournament if you'd done a guest shot
on 'The Love Boat' during the off" season, but we're talking about
something entirely different here. We're talkin' about you sitting up
in an announcer's booth making wise-ass remarks about Greg Norman's
pink shirts while Norman's out there making golf history. We're talking
about the end of your professional career! I didn't hear those network
honchos say anything about you coming up into the announcers' booth
only on the days you don't make the cut, the way Nicklaus does, and
some of the other big boys. They're talkin' about having you there
full-time. In the announcers' booth, Dailie—not out on the golf course."
It was one of the longest speeches Dallie had ever heard Skeet make,
and the sheer volume of words held him momentarily in check. But then
Skeet muttered something under his breath, aggravating Dallie almost
past the point of endurance. He managed to keep a rein on his temper
only because he knew that these past few golf seasons had just about
broken Skeet Cooper's heart.
It had all started a few years back when he'd been driving home from a
Wichita Falls bar and had almost killed a teenage kid
riding a ten-speed bike. He'd given up taking illegal Pharmaceuticals
in the late seventies, but he'd continued his friendship with the beer
bottle right up until that night. The boy ended
up with nothing more
serious than a broken rib, and the cops had gone a lot easier on Dallie
than he'd deserved, but he'd been so badly shaken that he'd given up
booze right after. It hadn't been easy, which told him just how much
he'd been kidding himself about his drinking. He might never survive
the cut at the Masters or finish in the money at the U.S. Classic, but
he would be damned if he'd kill a kid because he drank too goddamn much.
To his surprise, going on the wagon had immediately improved his game,
and the next month he'd taken a third in the Bob Hope, right in front
of the television cameras. Skeet was so happy he almost cried. That
night Dallie had overheard him talking to Holly Grace on the telephone.
"I knew he could do it," Skeet had crowed. "You just watch. This is it,
Holly Grace. He's going to be one of the greats. It's all going to come
together for our boy now."
But it hadn't, not quite. And that's what was pretty much breaking
Skeet's heart. Once or twice each season Dallie took a second or third
in one of the majors, but it had become pretty obvious to everyone
that, at thirty-seven, his best years were just about gone and the big
championships would never be his.
"You got the skill," Skeet said, staring out the murky window of the
cab. "You got the skill and you got the talent, but something inside
you is keeping you from being a real champion. I just wish I knew what
it was."
Dallie knew, but he wasn't saying. "Now you listen to me, Skeet Cooper.
Everybody understands that watching golf on television is about as
interesting as watching somebody sleep. Those network honchos are
getting ready to pay rne some semi-spectacular money to liven up their
broadcasts, and I don't see
any need to throw their generosity back in
their faces."
"Those network honchos wear fancy cologne," Skeet grumbled, as if that
said it all. "And since when did you get so all-fired concerned about
money?"
"Since I looked at the calendar and saw that I was thirty-seven years
old, that's when." Dallie leaned forward and
abruptly rapped on the glass separating him from the driver. "Hey, you!
Let me out at the next corner."
"Just where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to see Holly Grace, that's where. And I'm going by myself."
"It won't do you any good. She'll just say the same thing I been
sayin'."
Dallie pushed open the door anyway and jumped out in front of Cartier.
The cab pulled away, and he stepped directly into a pile of dog shit.
It served him right, he thought, for eating a lunch that cost more than
the yearly budget of most Third World nations.
Oblivious to the attention he was attracting from several female
passersby, he began scraping the sole of his shoe on the curb. It was
then that the Bear came up behind him, right there in the middle of
Midtown.
You 'd better sign while
they still want you
, the Bear said.
How much longer are you going to kid
yourself?
I'm not kidding myself.
Dallie
started back up Fifth Avenue, heading
toward Holly Grace's apartment.
The Bear stayed right with him, shaking his big blond head in disgust.
You thought giving up booze was going
to guarantee you 'd make those
eagle putts, didn't you, boy? You thought it was going to be that
simple. Why don't you tell old Skeet what's really holding you back?
Why don't you just come right out and tell him you don't have the guts
to be a champion?
Dallie quickened his pace, doing his best to lose the Bear in the
crowd. But the Bear was tenacious.
He'd stuck around for a long time,
and he wasn't going anyplace now.
Holly Grace lived in the Museum Tower, the luxury condominiums built
above the Museum of Modern Art, which made her fond of announcing that
she slept on top of some of the greatest painters in the world. The
doorman recognized Dallie and let him into Holly Grace's apartment to
wait for her. Dallie hadn't seen Holly Grace for several months, but
they talked on the telephone frequently and not much happened in either
life that didn't get discussed between them.
The apartment wasn't Dallie's style at all—too much white furniture,
with free-form chairs that didn't fit his lanky body,
and some abstract art that reminded him of pond scum. He shucked off
his coat and tie, then stuck a tape of Born in the U.S.A. into a
cassette player he found in a cabinet that looked as if it
was designed
to hold dental equipment. He fast-forwarded the tape to "Darlington
County," which, in
his opinion, was one of the ten greatest American
songs ever written. While the Boss sang about his adventures with
Wayne, Dallie wandered about the spacious living room, finally coming
to a stop in front of Holly Grace's piano. Since he'd last been in the
apartment, she'd added a group of photographs in silver frames to the
collection of glass paperweights that had always occupied the top of
the piano. He noted several pictures of Holly Grace and her mother, a
couple of photos of himself, some snapshots of the
two of them
together, and a photograph of Danny they'd had taken at Sears in 1969.
Dallie's fingers tightened around the edge of the frame as he picked it
up. Danny's round face looked back at him, wide-eyed and laughing, a
tiny bubble of drool frozen forever on the inside of his bottom lip. If
Danny had lived, he would have been eighteen years old now. Dallie
couldn't imagine it. He couldn't picture Danny at eighteen, as tall as
himself, blond and lithe, as good-looking as his mother. In his mind,
Danny would always be a toddler running toward his twenty-year-old
father with a loaded diaper sagging down around his knees and his
chubby arms extended in perfect trust.
Dallie replaced the photograph and looked away. After all these years,
the ache was still there—not as acute, maybe, but still there. He
distracted himself by studying a photograph of Francesca wearing bright
red shorts and laughing mischievously into the camera. She was perched
on a big rock, pushing her hair away from her face with one hand and
propping a chubby baby between her legs with the other. He smiled. She
looked happy in the picture. That time with Francesca had been a good
time in his life, sort
of like living inside a private joke. Still,
maybe the laugh was on him now.
Who would have ever thought Miss Fancy Pants would turn out to be such
a success? She'd done it on her own, too—he knew that from Holly Grace.
She'd raised a baby without anyone
to help her and made a career for herself. Of course, there'd been
something special about her even ten years before—a feistiness, a way
she had of charging at life straight on and going after what she wanted
without any thought of the consequences. For a fraction of a moment it
flashed through his mind that Francesca had taken life on at a full run
while he was still hanging out at the fringes.
The idea didn't please him, and he rewound the Springsteen tape to
distract himself. He then went into the kitchen and opened the
refrigerator, bypassing Holly Grace's Miller Lite for a Dr Pepper. He'd
always appreciated the fact that Francesca had been honest with Holly
Grace about that baby of hers. It had been natural for him to wonder if
the baby might not be his, and Francesca could certainly have pinned
old Nicky's kid on him without too much trouble. But she hadn't done
it, and he admired her for it.
Popping the lid on the Dr Pepper, he walked back to the piano and
looked around for another picture of Francesca's son, but found only
the one. He got a kick out of the fact that whenever the child was
mentioned in an article about Francesca, he was always identified as
the product of an unhappy early marriage—so unhappy that Francesca had
refused to give the child his father's last name. As far as Dallie
knew, he, Holly Grace, and Skeet were the only people who knew the
marriage had never existed, but all of them had enough respect for what
Francesca had done with herself to keep their mouths shut.
The unexpected friendship that had developed between Holly Grace and
Francesca seemed to Dallie one of life's more interesting
relationships, and he'd mentioned to Holly Grace more than once that he
would like to drop in some time when the two of them were together to
see how they got along. "I just can't picture it," he'd once said. "All
I can see is you going on and on about the last Cowboys game while
Francie talks about her Gucci shoes and admires herself in the mirror."
"She's not like that, Dallie." Holly Grace replied. "I mean, she does
talk about her shoes, but that's not all."
"It just seems ironic," he answered, "that somebody like her should be
raising a male child. I'll bet you anything he grows up strange."
Holly Grace hadn't liked that remark, so he'd stopped teasing her, but
he could tell she was worried
about the same thing. That's how he knew
the kid was pretty much a sissy.
Dallie had rewound Bom in the U.S.A. for the third time when he heard a
key turn in the front door. Holly Grace called out, "Hey, Dallie. The
doorman said he let you in. You weren't supposed to show
up until
tomorrow."
"I had a change of plans. Damn, Holly Grace, this place reminds me of a
doctor's office."
Holly Grace had a peculiar look on her face as she walked in from the
foyer, her blond hair sweeping over the collar of her coat. "That's
exactly what Francesca always says. Honestly, Dallie, it's the
spookiest thing. Sometimes the two of you give me the willies."
"Now, why's that?"
She tossed her purse down on a white leather couch. "You're not going
to believe this, but you have
these strange similarities. I mean, you
and me, we're like two peas in a pod, right? We look alike, we
talk
alike. We have just about all the same interests—sports, sex, cars."
"Is there a point in here somewhere, because I'm starting to get
hungry."
"Of course there's a point. You and Francesca don't like any of the
same things. She loves clothes, cities, fancy people. Her stomach gets
queasy if she sees somebody sweat, and her politics are definitely
getting more liberal all the time—I guess maybe because she's an
immigrant." Holly Grace perched one hip on the back of the couch and
looked at him thoughtfully. "You, on the other hand, don't care much
about fancy stuff, and you lean so far to the right on the political
spectrum that you're just about ready to fall off. Looking at the
surface, two people couldn't be any more different."
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