Golden Orange Read online

  Continuing down the shadowy hallway past a ceramic tile of the Madonna set into the wall, he found a room with the door closed. He opened it a few inches, then nudged the door wide. It was another bedroom, larger than the guest room, and this one had been lived in. For a long time. This was Winnie’s kind of room. There was a fireplace in the windowless wall bordered with patterned tile. It was a real fireplace, not a Gold Coast fireplace, blackened and smelling of eucalyptus and oak and ashes. Like the rest of the house, this room was done in Southwestern decor, but it seemed even more masculine than the others. The chairs beside the fireplace sagged with the contoured imprint of a man. Or two men, since there were two chairs side by side. The entire house suggested partnership.

  On the carved walnut mantelpiece were photos in an array of frames, of Tess mostly. But there were lots of pictures of a broad-shouldered handsome man: fishing, playing golf, jumping a black horse, chasing a lob in tennis whites. The man had dark curly hair and a friendly smile. He was various ages in the photos.

  Winnie walked to the four-poster and examined the photograph on the lamp table by the window. It was the same man, but he was nearly sixty in this one. He wore an ascot and a white long-sleeved cotton shirt with epaulets. He wore breeches and boots. He had aged very well indeed. He had his arm around Tess, who was about thirty years old. He looked at her like a loving father would.

  Winnie entered the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Empty. He opened the drawers under the tiled countertops and it was the same. No one had lived in this bedroom for some time.

  Before he left the room he opened the armoire and found suits and blazers, cleaned and pressed and hung neatly. This had obviously been Conrad Binder’s room. Winnie was beginning to admire that handsome, stylish, athletic man in the photographs. But the man didn’t look anything like Tess. Winnie expected to find a painting or photo of Tess’s mother, but there was none. No pictures of a woman except for Tess herself.

  There was one last bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was closed, but what the hell, he’d gone this far. Winnie turned the heavy brass knob and pushed the door open. Another bedroom, also masculine, but this one without a fireplace. This one had the drapes thrown wide which offered a dramatic mountain view with the desert in the foreground. He could hear Tess still splashing in the pool, for the French doors were open onto that jasmine-covered balcony overlooking the patio.

  More photos. Photos everywhere. On the mantel, covering the bureau, on the dressers, blanketing the walls. And above the king-sized bed there was an oil painting, a portrait of a middle-aged man in a dark blue three-piece business suit. He sat on the edge of an enormous desk in the standard mogul pose. Behind him in the portrait was a wall of windows through which whitecaps crested on the ocean. The painting suggested a tall office building in The Golden Orange, overlooking the Pacific.

  There were some shots of Tess, but most were of this man at various times in his life. In the earliest ones he looked to be about thirty-five, a more sedentary man than the dark, curly-haired athlete in the other bedroom. In most he posed quietly, often with a book in his hands or one resting beside him on the pool deck, or, in one photo, in his lap as he sat sunning himself on the deck of a cruise ship. This man was also handsome, but fairer. His hair had turned silver in the later photographs. Tess Binder looked a lot like this man, except that in the close-ups, you could see that his eyes were pale blue. In one, presumably the latest, the man was perhaps seventy years old.

  Winnie went to the door, listened, but heard nothing except Tess swimming relentlessly. He entered the bathroom and found that it was like the one in the adjoining bedroom. There was a tub, a shower stall, a tile counter with drawers and a medicine cabinet. Winnie opened the cabinet. It contained toiletries and medication of various sorts, mostly over-the-counter stuff. He examined a prescription and saw that it was a blood pressure drug issued by a Doctor G. Lutz in Palm Desert for Mr. Warner D. Stillwell.

  Before he left the bedroom Winnie found a photo he’d almost overlooked. It was on a small reading table on the window side of the king-sized bed. There was a reading glass and two financial journals on the table. Winnie picked up the photograph and examined it in the light.

  They were young then, probably in their late thirties. Warner Stillwell and Conrad Binder—the man whose photos and portraits filled this room—were clowning on the diving board just below this master bedroom. They wore swimsuits, and Conrad Binder had on tennis shoes. He was pretending to be losing his balance while Warner Stillwell pretended to be pushing him into the pool. They were both fit and tan, having a very good time.

  Winnie put the photo down, left Warner Stillwell’s bedroom and closed the door. He was feeling depressed and anxious and suddenly sad. Now this didn’t seem like a place for a fantasy weekend. Now this seemed like a real house where two men had grown old together. And now there was only one.

  When Winnie got downstairs he found Tess standing naked on the diving board, panting from the mini-marathon she’d just swum. She was looking down on him with those impenetrable gray eyes, so unlike the transparent blue eyes of her father. Licking water drops off her lips, she stood there as if to say, Well?

  She was so smooth and tan, so firm and strong from the waist down that Winnie unconsciously hid behind the bath towel he was carrying.

  “Win, what’re you doing in swim trunks?” she demanded with a little grin.

  “Helps me hold my gut in,” he said. “I got the drawstrings so tight, my eyeballs ache.”

  “Take those things off and let it all hang out!” Tess commanded. Then she laughed, took two steps, leaped straight up on the spring board, and did a one and a half, cutting the water with hardly a ripple.

  “Kee-rist!” Winnie said, shuffling to the hammock and plopping himself into it. Suddenly his lower back was hurting.

  Tess erupted from the pool in one lithe movement, pulled herself up to the pool deck and crossed the grass toward him, sweeping her butterscotch hair back behind her flat tiny ears.

  “What are you doing, Win Farlowe?”

  “You make me feel old, lady! Older than iron. Older than coal, even. I can’t compete with you in anything!”

  “Oh dear!” she cried with mock alarm. “My old son’s turned forty and it’s depressed him!”

  Then she stood over him, dripping pool water onto him and the hammock.

  “You ain’t gonna dump me outta this are you?” he said. “I might break a hip, old guy like me.”

  “What if I told you a secret I wouldn’t tell anyone else, even if they sentenced me to life imprisonment at my club?”

  “So tell me.”

  “I’m older than you. I’m forty-one.” Then she paused and said, “No, goddamnit, that’s a lie! I’m forty-three!”

  “Forty-three! So get a wrinkle, for chrissake!” Winnie looked her over from point-blank range. “Turn around.”

  Tess pirouetted for him, and he said, “Not a dimple! Nothing! Ageless! You’re smooth as that marble statue. The one in your bedroom. Come to life jist to intimidate me.”

  Tess looked very serious then, even solemn. She said, “I don’t think you’ll ever stop being a cop. Analyzing everybody and everything.” Then the solemnity vanished, and she gave him an impish smile and said, “I know how to make you stop being your gloomy old self. I’ll give you something else to worry about. Danger!”

  Tess grabbed him by the swim trunks and pulled. He yelled, “Whoa!” and almost tumbled out of the hammock, and his back did hurt. When he got righted, his swim trunks were around his knees.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” he hollered, but she stripped them off.

  Then Tess Binder squealed and leaped into the hammock and they both swayed back and forty precariously while Winnie held on.

  “Hey, at least lemme outta here first!” he cried, while she giggled loud enough for Jaime to hear her from the stables. She apparently didn’t mind.

  When the hammock stopped swaying, she scooted
to a kneeling position over him, balanced the hammock and said, “Ready?”

  “This can’t be done,” Winnie said. “Why don’t we go over there on the grass? Or on the lounge chairs so we don’t fracture our skulls on the tile deck?”

  “No danger over there,” Tess said. “You’ll remember it this way. I don’t want you to ever forget a moment of our time together. You’ll never forget me, will you, Win?”

  She ran her hands down his body, balancing the hammock with her knees. She crept forward, astride him. She smiled, and as her eyes went on down his body, her hands became busy.

  “This can’t be done,” Winnie croaked.

  “I haven’t steered you wrong yet, have I?” Tess replied.

  10

  Shells

  The fun and frolic and the six beers at poolside had exhausted him and he’d gone up to their room thinking Tess would follow. When he awoke he looked at the other twin bed and saw he’d been napping alone. It was nearly six o’clock.

  Winnie got out of bed, went in the bathroom and shaved. He dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt he’d brought along for the desert evenings. He wore deck shoes and heavy socks to protect his ankles from the stirrups. Then he went down to face Sally and show her that she was boss and it was okay with him.

  He found Tess in the stables with Jaime, discussing an oat mix he’d been giving to Dollar.

  “Hi, sleepyhead,” Tess said, as the old man led the horses outside.

  “Tell me you weren’t gonna let me sleep through this,” Winnie said. “Tell me there was no way to avoid it.”

  “No way,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you miss this ride if your life depended on it.”

  Winnie looked at Sally, saddled and already moist with sweat. She was tied to the hitching post and looked impatient. Tess put her foot in Jaime’s cupped hands and jumped up onto a little English saddle on Dollar’s silver back. She was wearing breeches and boots, a blue cotton blouse with a matching scarf around her hair, and a neckerchief.

  “Thought you hated riding boots,” Winnie said.

  “I keep them here for emergencies like this.”

  “This really ain’t an emergency,” Winnie said, walking reluctantly toward the Arabian. “I mean, I could probably live my life with no regrets if we called this whole thing off.”

  Sally was saddled western, a relief to Winnie. He reached up, grabbed the horn, but couldn’t get his foot in the stirrup. The horse moved a step, and Winnie would have fallen on his ass except that the surprisingly strong Mexican cowboy caught him and held on to Sally. Jaime boosted him with his bent shoulder under Winnie’s buttocks. Once in the saddle, Winnie’s back started aching even before the horse stirred.

  Tess turned the silver horse in two circles, held the reins expertly in both hands and clucked to him.

  “There, there, big boy,” she crooned. “There, there, handsome.” Then she turned to the cowboy and said, “Go on home, Jaime. See you in the morning.”

  “I should stay, Miss Tess,” Jaime said. “Mister Warren likes me to give them a good brushing after a ride. I don’t mind staying.”

  “I still know how to unsaddle and brush a horse. You go home, Jaime,” she said firmly.

  “Yes, Miss Tess,” the old man said. “I see you in the morning.”

  “Sleep in,” Tess said. “You don’t have to come to work till ten o’clock.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Miss Tess,” the old man said.

  Winnie got to thinking how it is with them, with rich people. The old Mexican cowboy didn’t work for her. She didn’t own the property, but she gave orders and he obeyed them. Rich people.

  Tess walked Dollar behind Sally and said to Winnie, “Just squeeze her with your thighs when you want her to go. She’s western-trained, so just lay the reins against her neck when you want her to turn. And out of respect for flattened disks we are not going to trot, canter or gallop. We’re just going for a walk.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Winnie said. “You’re my hero for sure!”

  After they got going he almost enjoyed it. He would have enjoyed it except every time Sally stumbled, or stepped over a ditch, or climbed a rise, his back hurt. But the scenery was magnificent. The Santa Rosas were sometimes chocolate, sometimes pink, depending on the setting sunlight. The golden light looked silver when it streamed through the canyons, and the sky at dusk was streaked with color: pastels, lavenders, even scarlet. It might be even more beautiful than the ocean sky, he thought.

  When they got deep into the mountain shadows, the smell of sage mixed with the aroma of leather and horse sweat. Now he did enjoy himself, sore back or not. It was dramatic.

  The mountain loomed over them. Tess was right. The stark volcanic landscape, swept by desert wind and pitiless sun, gave a sense of foreboding. Winnie had the feeling of being watched by the forces of nature in this place where nature could strike with ferocity.

  “Where do you want to have dinner?” Tess asked, dropping back to ride beside him.

  “How would I know? I’m a stranger in these here parts, ma’am.”

  “I mean, in or out?”

  “Let’s see, how about out?”

  “Fancy restaurant or desert homey?”

  “Homey,” he said. “One a those down-home places where the desert rats hang out. You know, where the owner’s some good-old-boy that when he tries to fix his place up, he puts in little cutesy stuff like dwarf statues and windmills. Kinda place you don’t know whether you’re supposed to eat or play miniature golf. I always been lucky in those kind a places. Never got a dishonest meal from people like that.”

  “I know just the place,” Tess laughed, and suddenly Dollar tried to break into a run, but for Winnie’s sake, Tess reined him in immediately.

  “Easy, Sally!” Winnie said. “Easy, girl! You and me, we don’t have to try and compete with those athletes! Easy, girl!”

  They rode along for another five minutes and Winnie was starting to hurt enough that he began worrying about the ride back. He wondered if he would look too much like an invalid if he got off and walked partway.

  Tess pointed up to the sheer side of the cliff, to a pale discoloration on the rosy rock.

  “That’s a waterline,” she said. “An ancient lake once filled this basin. That’s forty-two feet above sea level, that line.”

  “Yeah?” Winnie reached back and grabbed on to the saddle to relieve some pressure. The unbroken line was clearly visible along the rock face.

  Tess noticed Winnie’s discomfort and said, “This might be a good place to rest before we start back.” She halted Dollar and jumped off in a way that would have had Winnie on his knees writhing in pain.

  “Whoa, Sally! Whoa, girl!” he said to the skittish Arabian, and Tess grabbed Sally’s bridle while Winnie climbed down with utmost care.

  “You’ve survived so far,” she said.

  “Yeah, the last guy this lucky with an animal was that guy Androcles. He didn’t get eaten either.”

  “That’s the latest level of Lake Cahuilla,” she said, gesturing up to the waterline. “During the last couple thousand years the lake was born and died several times, depending on what the Colorado River was up to.”

  Winnie looked up and could actually see shells protruding from the rock. “I never knew about this!” he said. “A freshwater lake?”

  “An inland sea in prehistoric times. The last lake went from horizon to horizon.”

  “Look!” Winnie said, kneeling down in the sand. “Shells! Hundreds a them!”

  “Thousands,” she said. “From freshwater clams and other creatures. Several million years ago something happened. A fantastic upheaval. Mountains bursting up from the water.”

  “Up from the sea,” Winnie said, genuinely fascinated. “Maybe that’s how we all came about. Up from the sea!” He examined the shell fragments in his hand and said, “Looks like oyster, some of ’em.”

  “Originally it was seawater,” she said. “There’re beds of oyster shell
s a thousand feet up the mountainsides in this valley, but it’s been fresh water for thousands of years. Those’re freshwater shells you’ve got.” Tess then got down on one knee and started sifting sand, picking out larger unbroken shell specimens.

  “Like tiny seashells,” he said. “But smaller than the ones from the ocean.”

  “They’re pearly and cute,” Tess said. She put several into Winnie’s shirt pocket.

  “Thousands and thousands a years!” Winnie said, sitting back on his heels, looking up at the mountain. “Makes being broke and hungry in Orange County kinda unimportant, don’t it?”

  Tess moved toward him and, still kneeling on one knee, her boot buried in white sand, took his face in her hands and said, “My poor, poor boy. Are you hungry as well as poor? Don’t worry, Auntie Tess’ll see to it that you’re never hungry again.” Then she took off her glasses and kissed him. It was the longest, most tender kiss yet. When she broke away, he reached for her.

  “Hammocks’re one thing,” she said, jumping to her feet, “but not on a sand dune. Besides, the desert scares me.”

  Then she took his hand and pulled him to his feet.

  “Damn, you’re strong,” Winnie said. “I wouldn’t wanna arm wrestle. And I bet nothing really scares you.”

  “You’d lose that bet, old son,” she said. “You surely would.”

  If she hadn’t tied both horses to a stunted tamarisk tree, they might have bolted. A gunshot ricocheted off the face of the rock ten feet from Tess. The pop echoed through the canyon.

  “Down!” Winnie screamed, and his shout frightened the horses. Dollar reared, breaking the limb off the dying tamarisk. The splitting wood sounded like the crack of a rifle. Then the horse panicked.