A Sprig of Blossomed Thorn (17 page)

“They're nice people. I'm sure Joan Timothy would make a new member welcome, whatever her race.”

“Look at it this way. If you wanted to join the Rose Guild, and all the other members were Spanish, would you hesitate?”

“I ... well, no. No, I wouldn't!”

“You just did.”

“That's not fair—”

“No it isn't fair, but it's a fact of life.”

He was right, and I knew it, and it made me feel terrible. It was a fact of life. An ugly one.

He looked at the screen again. “Go back to the top.”

I scrolled up, looking through the names again, vainly searching for an Hispanic surname I might have missed. Tony pointed at Maria's name.

“She's up in the top of the list. She must have donated a huge chunk of change.”

“Yes, Joan said she made large donations every year.”

“Uh-huh. She bought her way in.”

I shot him an angry look, not wanting to believe it. “No,” I said, but my voice lacked conviction.

“They put up with her because she spread her cash around,” Tony said. “That's how you move up in the world if you're a minority.”

“Hispanics are not a minority in New Mexico.”

“Hispanics with big money are.”

I didn't know about that. There were big-name Hispanics around, in politics and in business, but I didn't know what the percentages were. Tony could well be right.

He straightened up. “Well, thanks for the information. I'll look into the Rose Guild. Who'd you say Maria had the fight with?”

“I didn't say.”

I was reluctant to tell him, but I felt obligated. Could withholding the name be considered obstruction?

“It was with Lucy Kingston. She's one of the officers of the Guild.”

“Uh-huh.”

Tony took out his pocket notebook and scribbled in it, glancing at the screen. He'd go through the whole website on his own time, no doubt.

“Thanks. This is helpful.”

“I can't believe Lucy Kingston would do anything to harm Maria Garcia.”

“Yeah, you're probably right. Gotta look into it, though. Cover all the bases.”

He put the notebook back in his pocket. I sat gazing at the screen, feeling depressed.

Tony checked his watch. “Guess I'd better go. Getting on toward dinnertime.”

I looked up at him. Part of me wanted to ask him to stay, offer to make dinner for him, but another part couldn't wait for him to leave.

“Sunday dinner at Mama's,” he said, taking me off the hook. “If I miss it I'll catch hell all week.”

I smiled, not quite able to laugh. Our conversation still troubled me.

Tony went out into the hall and I followed, going with him downstairs. At the front door he paused.

“Thanks for the lemonade.”

“You're welcome. Thank you for the candlesticks.”

“They double as a security system. If the Goths come after you, you can wallop them with one of those pillars.”

This time I laughed. He smiled back, and brushed my chin with a finger.

“Keep safe,” he said, then turned and went down the path to the street.

I watched him put on his helmet, climb onto his bike and leave. Closing the door, I went back up to my suite and cleaned up the lemonade glasses.

I had no appetite and couldn't bear to think about dinner. Suddenly claustrophobic, I grabbed my hat and went back downstairs, fetched my gardening things from the back
portal
along with a bucket and a large vase of water, and went out front to trim my own roses.

Poor Maria. All she had wanted was to garden, to grow her favorite rosebush. The Rose Guild had accepted her, but grudgingly, if Tony was to be believed. Thinking back over my conversation with Joan, I remembered her saying she felt sorry for Maria. That seemed to support Tony's theory.

My feelings about the Rose Guild were now hopelessly jumbled. I liked Joan, but if others in the Guild had subtly opposed Maria, perhaps tried to thwart her deliberately, then I wasn't sure I cared to associate with them.

Perhaps that was the wrong approach to the situation. Perhaps I should join the Rose guild, and work to change things from within. Was that naively optimistic? Maybe, but it was better than giving up.

After an hour I had a bucket full of deadheads and a vase full of fresh roses, and I was hot and tired again. I cleaned up the garden things and carried the vase up to my suite, where I finally took a long shower.

When I emerged, feeling rather better, the sunlight seeping around the edges of the brocade window curtains had a golden hue. I strolled naked into my bedroom and put on a casual, summery dress.

The candlesticks stood huddled together by one end of the chimney where Tony had left them. I moved them to flank the window, stood back to look at them, couldn't decide whether I liked them there or not. I decided to leave them for the time being.

My stomach was no longer in knots and I was able to face the kitchenette, though all I wanted was a salad. I fixed a plate, garnished it with a couple of Greek olives and a dab of cottage cheese, and sat in my living room to eat, as I usually do when alone.

Gazing at my mountain landscape, I was reminded of Tony's desire to replace it with a flatscreen. He'd learned more about me than I about him in that conversation. Cop instinct, maybe, to give away as little as possible about himself.

I realized I was frowning and tried to shake it off. No one wants frown lines permanently etched into one's brow.

Was it a bad idea to pursue a closer acquaintance with Tony? I wondered, not for the first time. On a superficial level it was plainly a bad idea. Cops were notorious for failed relationships. Tony had even said that about himself, or something like it.

Why, then, was he bothering? Was he just after a quick lay? It didn't seem so.

On another level, one we'd danced around that afternoon, was the issue of our different backgrounds. All right, our different racial backgrounds, to be blunt about it.

There were plenty of mixed Anglo-Hispanic couples in Santa Fe. It wasn't at all unusual, but it wasn't something I'd ever considered for myself, so I had never thought about the possible repercussions. They were subtle, but I saw now that they definitely existed.

For one thing, he was Catholic, at least in upbringing. I could respect Catholicism, but I would never embrace it.

I'd hung around with Hispanic kids in high school—the band crowd was egalitarian—but I had never dated an Hispanic. Of course, I could count the guys I had dated on one hand.

In college I had mostly been too busy. A couple of brief flings had been it. Also white guys, but I'd been away from home, in a population more heavily Caucasian.

Was I a bigot?

My instant response was indignant denial, but in light of my recent conversation with Tony I had to reconsider. There is such a thing as habitual bigotry, I decided. A bigotry of avoidance, easy enough to slip into. One tended to run with one's own kind. It was natural. Was it, however, worth making an effort to overcome?

I had a sudden urge to watch
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
. Annoying, because the best way to do that was call Gina, and we'd just watched a movie at her place the other night. I could imagine Tony laughing at me.

I got up and washed my plate, then poured the last of the lemonade over ice and carried it downstairs. Too sunny on the front
portal
, with the western light slanting in, but the back was cool and shady. I sat on the bench with my feet curled under me, sipping lemonade, thinking about ways to make the back yard look less like the parking lot it was.

I needed the parking for my staff, but maybe I could create a buffer between it and the house. A hedge, perhaps, to shield the
portal
from the sight of the cars. More lilacs?

The lilacs on the north side of the house were coming to the end of their bloom. I glanced at them, thinking absently that I should cut some for my suite. The fragrance bothered some people, so I couldn't put them in the tearoom, but upstairs I could enjoy them.

A lilac hedge along the
portal
? Hedges were heavy, though, even when something as pretty as lilacs. Maybe trellises instead, with climbing roses? But that might block all the morning sunlight from the dining parlor. Captain Dusenberry might be displeased.

“What do you think, Captain? Would you mind roses outside these windows?”

The captain was disinclined to answer, it seemed. I even glanced at the windows behind me, but the lights were off and remained so.

It was a good thing no one was watching me. I was sitting on the
portal
talking to a ghost. Pretty wacko.

What I was really doing was avoiding thinking about Tony or making a decision about him. The subject was uncomfortable, and I am an unabashed hedonist. I like being comfortable. I go out of my way for it.

So. Continue to explore the potential for a relationship? Or play it safe and keep a distance? The former would no doubt involve continued discomfort. The latter...

The latter was boring. And depressing. And chicken-hearted.

I was more than merely interested in Tony, I realized. I truly liked him. I was on my way to liking him very much, despite his annoying habit of rubbing my face in uncomfortable truths.

I only hoped I hadn't disgusted him to the point he was no longer interested in me.

 

 

17

I
was out of lemonade, and in fact I wanted something stronger to distract me from fretting about Tony. I went upstairs and looked over the selections in my small, climate-controlled wine-cellar, really little more than a specialized mini-refrigerator. The wine industry must be doing well off of such toys, I reflected as I pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay from a New Mexico winery.

I poured myself a glass of wine, then glanced at the book I was currently reading, but I wasn't in the mood. I looked toward the window and decided I didn't like the candlesticks there. If I lit the candles and had the window open, a breeze might blow the curtains against them and start a fire. I moved the candlesticks to stand on either side of my faux fireplace, and stood frowning at them for a while.

They were pretty, but I wasn't sure I wanted to look at them every time I sat down in my living room. And candlesticks—such huge ones, too, seemed to point up the falseness of my little hearth.

I was just debating whether to start a load of laundry—true desperation—when my cell phone played muffled Mozart from the depths of my purse. Mozart meant Gina. I dug the phone out and opened it.

“Gina, my angel of salvation!”

“Hi, girlfriend!” she said cheerily. “Just making sure you're still on the planet.”

I carried my wineglass to the living room and curled up in my chair. “Bless you. You've rescued me from the laundry.”

Her merry laugh was just the medicine I needed. I smiled and sipped my wine.

“Turnabout is fair play,” Gina said. “You rescued me last time.”

“By the way, my chef loved your tiramisu. He wants me to hire you as his assistant.”

Gina laughed again. “No, really? But you can't afford me, darling.”

“Don't I know it.” I took another sip of wine, beginning to feel mellow. “Have a good weekend?”

“Fantastic. Alan took me to a concert at the Lensic last night, and we had dinner after at Santacafé.”

“Oh, I like that place.”

“We shut them down. Then we went up to Ten Thousand Waves.”

“Hot-tubbing in this weather?”

“Oh, it's cooler up in the mountains. It was fabulous.”

I listened to Gina rattle on. I was happy for her, and hoped for her sake that Alan would last a while.

When she asked about my weekend, I hesitated. I didn't really want to talk about my abortive date with Tony and bailing Kris out of jail. Instead I told her about my visit to the Rose Guild.

“Sounds like fun,” she said. “I don't think I've ever been to the rose garden.”