Dust Devil (32 page)

“
Oh,
Liz, are you sure?” Sarah’s green eyes were dark and
haunted by shadows. “Because I just couldn’t bear to lose
Alex.”

“
I
know. And I’m sure. So put it from your mind, sweetie.”

“
Are
we interrupting anything? I mean, the two of you look as though
you’re deep into some real serious girl talk over here. How you
doing, ladies? Long time, no see, now that you’ve both moved
out of Miners’ Row and up the corporate ladder.” Dody
Carpenter’s words were slightly slurred, and her voice held a
hint of jealousy and bitterness, even as she smiled at Sarah and Liz.
Since graduating from high school, Dody had worked as a secretary at
the Genovese Coal Mining Co., never making it out of Miners’
Row herself. She was still single.

“
Hey,
Sarah, Liz. Come on, Dody.” Krystal Watkins tugged futilely on
her friend’s arm, clearly embarrassed by
her
demeanor. “It’s getting late. We need to be going home,
and you’ve had too much to drink, besides.”

“
Well,
it ain’t every day that either one of
us
can
afford to splurge on a night out, especially at the grandiose Grain
Elevator, is it now?” Mulishly ignoring Krystal, Dody, as
overweight as ever, determinedly heaved herself in next to Liz on the
banquette. “Oh, go on and sit down, Krystal! It ain’t
even quite nine o’clock yet, for crying out loud! We’ll
all have a drink together for old-time’s sake. Krystal and I
are out on the town tonight, partying in celebration,” she
announced with bright brittleness to Sarah and Liz. “Krystal
got a raise today at the clinic.”

“
Oh,
Krystal, that’s wonderful news!” Sarah declared,
genuinely glad for her friend. Following graduation from high school,
Krystal had become a registered nurse and was now married to Junior
Barlow, who managed one of the gas stations in town. “Liz and I
were finished with our discussion, anyway...just some boring old
legalities having to do with J.D.’s senatorial campaign,”
she lied, shooting Liz a warning glance that spoke volumes.

“
That’s
right,” Liz drawled affably in confirmation. “I have to
keep Sarah on the straight and narrow about all those tiresome FCC
rules and regulations concerning political ads on television and
radio. So, Krystal, business at the clinic must be booming, huh?”
Liz smoothly changed the topic of conversation, earning a smile of
heartfelt gratitude from Sarah.

“
Yes,
fortunately for me, since that’s why I got a raise. I’ve
been working extremely hard, putting in a whole lot of extra hours
just to keep up, because of course, we’re always understaffed
at the clinic,” Krystal explained, while Dody ordered another
round of drinks from the waitress who had appeared at their table.
“We just don’t have the funding required to hire the
additional personnel we need. I can’t believe there’re so
many poor, sick people in a town this size, but there are. I see
quite a few older patients who’ve got everything from cancer to
inexplicable rashes, and children, especially, who are physically or
mentally handicapped and sometimes both. It’s so sad.”

“
Well,
it’s like I’ve told you before, Krystal—those kids’
mothers are probably all drunks or dopers—or, worse, hookers
with AIDS. I mean, most of the people you treat at the clinic are on
Medicaid or welfare and food stamps, aren’t they?” Dody
asked dryly, plainly feeling as though government assistance were
offered only to the miserably undeserving.

“
Yes,
a lot of them are,” Krystal admitted. “Still, it kind of
bothers me, you know. I just think that, statistically speaking, we
seem to have an inordinately disproportionate share of diseases,
deformities and other disabilities in this town. I know some of them
can legitimately be put down to disadvantaged backgrounds. But I
can’t help but wonder... well, Genovese Coal Mining and
Field-Yield, Inc. are the two largest employers in town, really,
along with the dog-food factory, I suppose. I keep thinking it just
can’t be good for people, breathing all that coal dust and
fertilizer and dead-animal stench every day. Besides which, heaven
only knows what’s being dug up out of the earth along with the
coal, or what kinds of chemicals are being mixed up for crops, or
what bacteria all those old cows and chickens and horses being ground
up for dog food might be carrying.”

“
That’s
true, Krystal,” Liz observed thoughtfully, the wheels in her
legal mind obviously churning speculatively. “Still, industries
have to conform to OSHA’s rules and regulations, and companies
are periodically inspected by government officials to be certain
they’re operating within the boundaries prescribed by law.”

“
I
know Field-Yield, Inc., at least, has fairly strict controls,”
Sarah added as, with her straw, she poked idly at the ice in her
second Tom Collins. “Employees who work in the factory and
warehouse, for example, where they actually handle the fertilizers
and other farm products day in and day out, are required to wear
goggles, masks and gloves. As a result, Field-Yield, Inc. has a
pretty good safety record, Krystal.”

“
It’s
the same way at Genovese Coal Mining,” Dody reported.
“Honestly, Krystal, do you think either Papa Nick or J. D.
Holbrooke wants the government on his back for safety and health
violations? Papa Nick’d probably wind up charged somehow under
the RICO statutes, and J.D.’s running for the Senate, for God’s
sake! He’d be front-page news, his political career finished.
He’s a former governor, too. If there were any dirt to be dug
up on him, somebody would surely already have done it by now, don’t
you think? And the worst thing I ever heard happened at the dog-food
factory—other than that rumor about Jimmy Hoffa, of course—was
that some guy accidentally got his thumb and a couple of fingers
sliced off by a processing machine. And hell, any fool could do that
while working with a power saw in his own damned backyard!”

“
I
suppose you’re right,” Krystal agreed slowly. “My
job’s probably just getting to me, that’s all. It’s
so depressing to see the children, especially. We had one in today.
.. a little girl by the same of Keisha Rollins, I think it was. Her
grandmother brought her in for what turned out to be just a summer
cold, nothing serious. Keisha is mentally retarded... eight years old
and can’t even speak her own name properly. The grandmother
reckoned it was some kind of brain damage at birth, but she couldn’t
say for sure, since the mother probably used both drugs and alcohol
while she was pregnant. Plus, I doubt if she had much, if any,
prenatal care. Poor environment may certainly have played a role,
too. The mother was unwed and the father unknown. Oh, jeez, Sarah,
I’m sorry. I—I didn’t mean that the way it
sounded—”

“
That’s
all right, Krystal,” Sarah said quietly in the awkward little
silence that had fallen. “I may be an unwed mother, but I don’t
think anyone could ever accuse me of not providing a decent home and
upbringing for my son.”

“
No,
they couldn’t,” Liz asserted firmly.

“
Well,
it really
is
getting
late, and I really
do
have
to be getting home.” Krystal glanced with more interest than
was warranted at her wristwatch. “Junior’s not the
world’s greatest baby-sitter, so I hate to leave him alone with
the kids for too long. They’ve probably destroyed the entire
house by now.”

“
Yeah,
all right, then. Krystal’s driving,” Dody explained as
she slowly pushed herself from the booth and stood. “So unless
I want to call a cab, which I don’t, I have to go on with her,
so she can drop me off.” Clearly, Dody was hoping to be invited
to stay on at the Grain Elevator and catch a ride home with either
Sarah or Liz, but neither of them offered.

“
I’ve
got to run, too,” Liz announced instead. “I promised
Parker I’d go over some briefs with him tonight. So I’ll
walk out with you two. Sarah, what do I owe you?”

“
Not
a thing. You go on, Liz. Supper’s on me.” Picking up the
small leather folder that contained their check, which the waitress
had brought with the round of drinks earlier, Sarah smiled at her
friend. “Thanks for all your advice. I really do appreciate
it.”

“
It
was nothing, sweetie—and since you bought my dinner, I’m
not even going to bill you! See you later, Sarah,”

“’
Night,
Sarah,” Krystal and Dody called over their shoulders.

The
three women departed, leaving Sarah alone at the table, searching in
her handbag for her credit card. Because of work, she had run late
for her meeting with Liz, so hadn’t had time before supper to
stop at an automatic-teller machine for any cash. She placed the card
in the small leather folder and sat back to finish her Tom Collins
while she waited for the waitress to collect the check, noting idly
that the upper level of the Grain Elevator was nearly deserted now,
since it was almost ten o’clock and supper wasn’t served
past nine. A few diehard customers remained in a couple of the
banquettes, but that was all. She bent her head over her drink, not
wanting any of the lone males to get the mistaken impression that she
was interested in being picked up for the rest of the evening, that
that was why she hadn’t left with her friends. So she didn’t
really see the man who approached her booth, mistakenly thought it
was only the waitress returning—until he spoke.

“
Hello,
Sarah.”

A
long, slow, unexpected shudder that made her feel as though she were
about to swoon crawled insidiously through her body at the sound of
his low, silky voice. It was a voice she would have known anywhere;
she had heard it in her dreams for more than a decade. Her hands
began to tremble, abruptly tightened so convulsively around her glass
that she was surprised it didn’t shatter. Her cheeks flushed
with sudden heat, and her heart started to hammer painfully in her
breast as, after a long moment in which she struggled desperately for
control of her emotions, she forced herself to glance up at him. She
wondered apprehensively how long he had been in the Grain Elevator,
watching her. If he had overheard her conversation with Liz.

“
Hello,
Renzo,” Sarah said quietly.

He
was even more devastatingly handsome than she remembered, the
intervening years having polished and refined the rough, awkward
planes and angles of young adulthood, so that now, in his prime, his
body had fulfilled its promise of long bones, hard muscle and sinuous
grace. He moved with the awesome strength and natural suppleness of
some sleek, predatory animal, dark and dangerous, she thought,
shivering a little. His glossy black hair was still long and shaggy,
framing a hawkish visage even more finely chiseled than she recalled.
Faint lines etched the corners of his eyes; the grooves that
bracketed his sulky, sensuous mouth had deepened, giving his good
looks a provocatively seasoned edge. He wore an obviously expensive,
pin-striped black suit cut in the European fashion and a crisp white
shirt, sans tie and unbuttoned at the collar to reveal a glimpse of
throat and chest.

“
You
haven’t changed a bit, Sary—except to grow even more
beautiful. And there’s a distant, elusive quality about you
that I don’t remember, one that reminds me of the princesses in
those fairy tales you used to love, as though you dwell not in the
world of mere mortals, but in some enchanted tower of misted, far-off
lands, listening... waiting...for what, Sarah? Prince Charming? Or a
knight in shining armor?”

He
had been the latter to her—once, long ago. Did he recollect
their childhood game and deliberately seek to remind her of it? “I’m
sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Renzo.”
Sarah tried to shrug off his observations, hurting inside, hating the
fact that after all this time, he should know her so well. For even
now, she I felt as though she had, like Briar Rose, slept for a
hundred years, spellbound, and had only just awakened. She shouldn’t
have had that second Tom Collins, she told herself fiercely. It had
plainly wreaked havoc upon her senses. Renzo Cassavettes was a
cad—and regardless of her daydreams about him, his giddying
effect upon her, she would be the world’s biggest fool to think
any differently.