The Influence(34)

“Do you still paint?”

“Oh sure.”

“So…can I see some of your paintings?”

She shook her head, her face flushing as she turned away.

“Why not?”

“Maybe when I know you better.”

Jill had continued to cook while she talked, tossing the salad, draining the pasta, and now she plated the dinner and brought it over to the table. She was a good cook, and between her food and Lita’s meals, Ross realized how deprived he had been growing up. “Home cooking” to him had always meant his mom’s dry pork chops and overdone meatloaf, but he understood now that there were home cooks able to create dishes as good as those served in restaurants.

Like Lita, Jill was one of them.

Dinner was leisurely, relaxed, and though Jill offered to uncork another bottle of wine, Ross switched instead to water. The roads back to the ranch might be dirt and deserted, but he was such a lightweight that drinking even a moderate amount of alcohol could end up with him spinning his wheels in a ditch.

Jill seemed to have a pretty large DVD collection, and he expected the date to be a variation on the traditional dinner and a movie, but she seemed to have other ideas. After they finished eating, she put the dishes in the sink, telling him she’d take care of them later. “Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested.

“A walk?”

“Yes. An after-dinner stroll. Don’t tell me that you don’t like to take walks.”

“No, I do,” he said quickly, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually done it. In Phoenix, his condo was adjacent to a charmless business district, and Lita’s place was so remote that, while he’d walked around the ranch doing chores, he had never even thought about strolling around the neighborhood—not that there was a neighborhood. “Is there anyplace to walk?” he asked. “I mean, we’re kind of out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I walk to town all the time.”

“That’s at least a mile!”

“Come on. You’re not afraid of a little exercise, are you?”

“No,” he said, but he hoped they wouldn’t be walking all the way into town. That seemed a little far. He had a sudden flashback to when he was a kid and his whole life had been spent on foot. At the age of nine, he’d been on a rock-hunting kick, and he remembered getting up early one Saturday, before his parents were awake and going out on an expedition. He’d walked down the street, rock pick in hand, looking through neighbors’ front yards for fossils and petrified wood. He’d found nothing more than a few pieces of slightly shiny, reddish gravel that he misidentified as jasper, but he’d incorporated the pieces into his next batch of rocks for his tumbler, and they’d actually polished up nicely.

Back then, every foray into the neighborhood had been an adventure, and he wondered when walking had lost its allure for him.

Probably when he’d learned to drive.

It was dark out, and Jill disappeared down the hall for a moment, returning with a flashlight. She flipped the light on and off, making sure it worked. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They walked outside and headed down the lane, sauntering slowly. She pointed out a type of purple flower growing in abundance by the side of the road, shut off her flashlight to show him phosphorescent bugs dotting the sides of the ditch, and he thought he could understand why she liked to walk, what she saw in it. Ahead of them, down the slope, the lights of Magdalena made the town look much bigger than it actually was.

They held hands, like schoolchildren, and it was nice. He liked her. More than he had liked anyone in a long time. He liked being with her, liked walking with her, and he was glad they hadn’t stayed inside and watched a movie.

Twenty minutes later, they reached the town, the road they were on meeting the main street in front of the church. They turned right, heading toward the small downtown. Jill sighed. “I don’t know where we’re going to get our hair done around here,” she said.

Ross pointed toward the salon. “There’s a—”

“Oh. I guess you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Xochi and Maria? The mother and daughter who run the place? They won the lottery.”

He wasn’t sure if she was speaking literally or metaphorically. “The…actual lottery?”

“Yeah. They won six million dollars.”

“Holy shit.”

“They closed the place up, and they’re not coming back. So we’re down two beauticians.” She toggled her hand back and forth. “Sort of.”

Ross laughed, running his fingers through his too-short hair. “Tell me about it.”