Twenty
NOT ALL DESERTS ARE HOT ALL THE TIME. THE HIGH ones can be as cold in winter as a Canadian plain. We were near the end of winter, but a chill had come with nightfall. The breeze smelled faintly of the rain that we had outrun but that soon would catch us again.
A huge tricked-up Harley-Davidson stood next to the limousine, basic black but, in the light from the diner, bright with intricacies of chrome.
The couple standing by the motorcycle, taking off their helmets, looked nothing like Hells Angels. Perhaps fifty, tall, muscular but lean, clean-shaven, the man had a salt-and-pepper lion’s mane of hair. He was character-actor rather than lead-actor handsome, his face subjected less to emollient lotions and toning gels than to wind and sun, and never to Botox. The woman might have been forty, with the high cheekbones, proud but chiseled features, and polished-bronze complexion that suggested she had floated into this world from the headwaters of the Cherokee gene pool. If Soldier of Fortune magazine had merged with Vogue, these two might have been models in those pages. I would have bet my liver that neither had the smallest tattoo or love handles, that they didn’t care what anyone’s opinion of them might be, that they didn’t give a thought to fashion yet owned not a single unfortunate item of clothing, and that they didn’t tweet in any sense of the word.
In a baritone voice as mellow as fifty-year-old port, the man said to Mrs. Fischer, “We heard on the grapevine that Oscar completed his tour of duty and went home.”
Mrs. Fischer hugged the woman and said, “He finished his last spoon of the best crème brûlée we ever had, and the maître d’ said nobody who ever died in that restaurant before had passed away more discreetly.”
As the man hugged Mrs. Fischer, he said, “Oscar was always a class act.”
“How’s his mom coping?” the woman asked.
“Well, dear, you don’t get to be a hundred and nine without having taken the world on your shoulders a time or two.”
Offering his right hand to me, the man said, “My name’s Gideon. This is my wife, Chandelle. You must be Edie’s new chauffeur. You’re Thomas, aren’t you? May I call you Tom?”
“Yes, sir.” I shook his hand. “But I haven’t taken the job yet.”
Mrs. Fischer said, “He’s very independent, self-reliant.”
“That’s the way, isn’t it,” Gideon said.
“That’s the way,” Mrs. Fischer confirmed.
When the motorcyclist smiled, his countenance crinkled in the most appealing way, as if all the good weather he had ever known had been stored up in his face but none of the bad.
From somewhere came a memory that I at once put into words. “Chandelle is French for ‘candle.’ ”
Her smile was as warming as her husband’s, much more luminous than a single candle.
Mrs. Fischer said, “Tom and his girlfriend, Stormy, once got a card from a carnival fortune-telling machine that said ‘You are destined to be together forever.’ ”
“I would take that very seriously,” Chandelle said.
“I do,” I told her.
Mrs. Fischer said, “Stormy passed away young, but he’s still faithful to her and believes in what the card said.”
“Of course you do,” Gideon said. “What kind of fool would you be if you didn’t believe in it?”
“Several kinds, sir.”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” Mrs. Fischer said, “we’ve got something of a crisis to deal with, a real life-or-death thing, and Tom here is eager to get into the thick of it, though I suspect he thinks he’ll be dead by morning.”
“Exhilarating,” Gideon said.
I said, “Yes, sir, to an extent it is.”
Chandelle and Gideon kissed Mrs. Fischer’s cheek, and Mrs. Fischer kissed their cheeks, and I kissed Chandelle’s cheek as she kissed mine, and I shook hands with Gideon again.
Carrying their helmets, like figures more suited to a dream than to Barstow, the couple moved toward Ernestine’s. After a few steps, Gideon looked back and said to Mrs. Fischer, “Will we see you in Lonely Possum, come July?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she assured them.
“And it is for the world,” Chandelle said to me. “I hope we’ll see you there, too.”
“I’m certainly intrigued, ma’am.”
“Call me Chandelle,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
They went into the diner.
The Harley-Davidson was an impressive machine. It looked as if it should be quietly purring like a well-fed and contented panther.