Tortoise Soup (27 page)

Back in New York, I’d failed as an actress. I had no intention of returning to New Orleans to fail as a wife. I had compromised my sense of self too many times for too many men to do it again.

“I need more time, Santou,” was all I could say.

Santou looked as if I had slugged him with all of my might. He turned without another word and took off down the street and out of sight.

I stood there as the happy young couple came out, blissfully unaware that anyone else existed. Then I felt a heavy arm drape itself across my shoulders.

“That man of yours gone and got cold feet, darlin’?”

I turned my head to find the pompadoured replica of Elvis at my side.

“I’m afraid it was the other way around, Elvis.”

“Darlin’, nothing comes easy in the course of true love. Just remember what wise men say: Only fools rush in.”

The gold frame on Elvis’s sunglasses was alive with the reflection of neon lights, capturing the soul of the Vegas Strip in his wraparound band.

“Isn’t that from one of your songs?” I ventured a guess.

“Yes, it is, darlin’,” he said. “And don’t you forget it. I just want you to know that there isn’t a couple or ever will be a couple that won’t experience hard times. But there’s one thing that always prevails, especially when two people do indeed love each other from the heart. And that’s love.”

Great. A dose of Graceland wisdom from an Elvis impersonator. Even worse, I was standing here listening to it. I’d managed to hit a new low.

“You just wait till you’re good and ready, darlin’.” Elvis gave my shoulder a squeeze.

I caught a whiff of his aftershave and wondered if the real Elvis had also been an Aqua Velva man.

“And if that man really loves you, he’ll stick around. Then you come on back to old Graceland to say the I do’s with Elvis. Ya hear?” Elvis said, giving me one last squeeze.

I headed back toward the Treasure Island Hotel with a medley of oldie but goodie Elvis tunes stuck in my head. I had a feeling Santou hadn’t gone back to the room. My guess was that he was probably sitting at a bar somewhere, cursing me out between shots of scotch and chasers of Mylanta. I couldn’t say that I blamed him.

Faced with the choice of going to a bar myself or sitting and waiting for Santou to return, I did what any other sane woman would do. I retrieved my Blazer and raced down the Strip to Lizzie’s house. I snuck inside, where Pilot was only too happy to join me for a midnight ride.

Putting the pedal to the metal and our back to the lights, we roared down an empty highway, leaving Vegas and Elvis far behind. Darkness hugged the road as night galloped along keeping pace with my tires, while Bonnie wailed the blues, Pilot sniffed the air, and I tried to clear my head. Santou would have called it running away. I called it running for my life.

Turning off the highway, I swung onto the desert floor and drove for a while before shutting off the engine. A thick blanket of silence enveloped me. Getting out of the Blazer, I stared up at the night sky more full of life than all the neon in Vegas. I knew I’d have to go back and face Santou sometime. But I couldn’t just yet. I scrambled up onto the Blazer’s roof with Pilot by my side, as the stars gyrated wildly above, pulling me up into them.

Caught up in my own despair, for once I didn’t worry about snakes and tarantulas or other bugaboos of the night. Sensing my mood, Pilot lay down beside me and placed his head in my lap.

That was all it took—I started to cry. Just a few tears at first, but they slowly turned into a torrent that threatened never to stop. Santou was right. I was afraid. I was afraid of the night and of the dark, afraid of failing at yet another career, and afraid of losing my heart.

Tears ran down my cheeks, crash landing in Pilot’s fur. Burying my face in his neck, I hugged him close, eternally grateful to have him. I knew I could love him and never be hurt.

The silence was broken as a coyote howled off in the distance, sending goose bumps up my spine. Pilot quickly sat up, his golden eyes burning holes in the night. Pricking his ears, he listened as the cry was picked up and returned and then picked up again. Throwing back his head, he joined in the chorus with a mournful wail, expressing for me what my heart couldn’t say. The cry raced up to the moon and circled the stars before hurtling back down to earth to fill the still valley.

Closing my eyes, I let the sound fill me as well. And for the first time since moving to Nevada, I understood the pull of the desert.

By the time I dropped Pilot off at Lizzie’s and tiptoed into the hotel room, the night was half gone and Santou was in bed, fast asleep. Easing in beside him, I barely breathed, not daring to wake him.

But he knew I was there. He raised himself on one elbow as I looked up at the profile I would have known anywhere.

“You don’t trust me, do you, Porter?” he quietly asked.

I didn’t answer, knowing he would see through me, whatever I said.

“You never have. But you will,” he whispered.

Then, leaning over, he kissed me hard. I responded with a heat I hadn’t expected, enveloped by Santou’s red-hot anger and white-hot lust. And for once, I was glad there was no light as I let go of all inhibitions.

When I woke the next morning, Santou was already dressed and packed. Sitting up in bed, I clasped the sheet tightly around me.

“Where are you going?” I asked, my heart beating so hard I was scarcely able to catch my breath. He hadn’t bothered to shave. The rough edge gave him an undeniable melancholy mystique that came close to breaking my heart.

“I’m catching a cab to the airport,
chère
. There’s no reason for me to stay,” he said simply.

I stared at him, not wanting to believe that he would leave this way. And then I started to cry again. I’d never been more confused. All I knew was that I didn’t want Santou to go.

Jake walked over and sat down on the bed. Taking my face in his hands, he gently kissed the tears away. “I love you, Rachel. You’re hard-headed and can be foolish as hell. And lord knows, you make me crazy. But I want you in my life. It’s your call,
chère
.”

Santou stood up and grabbed his bag. “Get in touch with me when you’ve made up your mind one way or the other. There’ll be no more games between us.”

And then he was gone. Just as if it had all been a dream.

My cell phone rang
while I was still crying and cursing Santou for turning me into a watering pot. Lunging for my duffel bag, I frantically dug beneath the clothes in search of the muffled ring. Out flew the lacy camisole I’d ordered, the bras I’d never worn, the panties I’d been saving for that special occasion. It seemed they were destined to be buried inside a drawer forever, never to be worn. My hand brushed against the receiver. Pulling it out, I hoped against hope that the caller was Santou.

“Hey, gal! Tell me I didn’t disturb anything good.”

My heart sank as I heard Lizzie’s voice. “You didn’t disturb anything at all,” I said between sniffles.

“Uh-oh. You guys fighting already? Or can’t you talk now?” she asked in a theatrical whisper.

Lizzie loved gossip. Her choice of reading material verified the fact. She devoured everything from
People
magazine to
Soap Opera Digest
. Unfortunately these days, my life was qualifying as filler.

“I can talk. We fought. He’s already gone.” I figured I might as well tell her. She’d find out anyway.

“Pond scum! That’s what they all are!” Lizzie fumed, a true-blue friend loyal to the end. “What did he do?”

“He asked me to marry him,” I wailed.

“And?” Lizzie asked, her voice rising an octave. “What did you say?”

“I said no!”

Her shriek sent shock waves through the phone directly into my inner ear. “What are you? Crazy? This is the guy you’re nuts about, right?” she ranted.

“Right,” I responded, feeling more miserable than ever.

“Then what’s the matter with you? Go and stop him!” Lizzie screamed.

“He’s gone already, Lizzie,” I reminded her. “He left about forty minutes ago.”

“That’s nothing! It wouldn’t stop Barbra,” she said emphatically. “You remember
Funny Girl
? When she jumps on that tugboat to go after Omar Sharif, who’s off to gamble his way across the ocean to Europe?”

I couldn’t take anymore. “Lizzie! Please stop. I’m not going after him. Is this what you called about?”

There was a long moment of silence and I could tell she was miffed. “No. I called because I came into the office this morning to get some work done and decided to do some snooping around while I was here.”

I waited for her to continue. Finally I gave her a prod. “What did you find?”

“First tell me why you said no,” she insisted.

I sighed as I thought about it. “Because I’m afraid of being hurt and of losing myself. I know it may not make sense, but there’s something I have to prove, and it has to be without Santou’s help.”

“You’re right. You’re not making any sense at all,” Lizzie agreed, affirming my insanity. “That’s why it’s lucky you have me around. Don’t worry; we’ll figure something out. There are a million old movie plots where the lovers fight and then get back together. We just have to decide which one fits your situation best.”

Lizzie made a regular habit of turning to Hollywood to solve her problems. “I like to think of it as a lending library of ideas,” she once explained. “Screenwriters get paid good money to figure out how to deal with life’s problems. Why not take advantage of it?”

“Now will you tell me what you found?” I pleaded.

“Okay. You’re gonna love this. You know that quit claim application you found on Annie McCarthy’s land? Well, I don’t know when the old broad kicked the bucket, but that deed was filed six weeks ago, signed by both McCarthy and Anderson. And believe me, it wasn’t easy finding it, either,” Lizzie complained.

“What do you mean? Wasn’t it listed with the County Recorder’s Office?” I asked.

“Sure,” Lizzie replied, “if you don’t mind digging through every obscure file they have. It would seem as if somebody wanted this deal hidden away real bad.”

I didn’t have to work overtime to guess at who that might be. I just wanted to know why Brian had lied to me.

“There’s more,” Lizzie continued. “Believe it or not, Golden Shaft was just granted a patent by the Bureau of Land Management. They’re now the proud owners of previously held federal land. Don’t ask me how they did it, but somehow they even got McCarthy’s claims included in the deal.”

“Is that unusual?” I asked, my thoughts still on Santou.

“You bet it is! It usually takes forever to get through the red tape and paperwork that allows mining companies to buy the public land they’re working on,” she explained. “All I can say is this company must have powerful friends in high places. Golden Shaft barely had any waiting period at all. That’s unheard of.”

I processed the information while I collected my thoughts and drove home. There was no doubt in my mind that Annie’s death was linked to the quit claim deed. The question was, what made her claims so valuable? If they really held a mother lode of gold, it only made sense that other mining companies would have known about it, as well. But I’d been told over and over right from the start that Annie McCarthy’s claims were worthless.

As I rounded the corner to my house, I was jolted out of my thoughts by the blare of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead saturating the neighborhood. Sitting in my driveway was a beat-up, turquoise-blue Suburban, its dented license plate hanging on by a screw, emblazoned with the words “Nuke M.” I knew it had to be Noah.

I parked my Blazer on the street and walked up to find Noah stretched out inside, with eyes closed and a silver reflector tucked under his chin. A killer ray of sunlight was aimed directly onto his face, while his bare chest heaved up and down, remnants of suntan lotion clinging onto the human blanket of fur. Jenkins’s dogs futilely hurled themselves against the chain link fence, foaming at the mouth in a frenzy.

Noah opened an eye and grinned as he sat up. “Hey there, Red. I heard you had quite the fireworks here the other night. Glad to see you’re still in one piece.”

I was beginning to wonder if the bombing had made front page news without my knowing about it.

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“Word gets around.” Noah winked as he turned down the sound. “Had breakfast yet?”

I shook my head, realizing I’d skipped dinner last night, as well.

“Since it doesn’t look like your place is fit for company these days, why don’t you hop on in and we’ll see what we can find?” he suggested.

I casually snuck a peek, just to make sure Noah wasn’t driving around nude. “You might have trouble getting in anywhere without a shirt,” I offered, not commenting on his cutoff denims and boots.

Noah elevated himself off the seat an inch and whipped a crumpled Hawaiian shirt out from under his rear end with a flourish. He put it on and pulled a pair of Ray Bans from his visor.

“
Voilà!
Who says you can’t take me anywhere?” he grinned.

I shook my head and laughed at the thought of what Santou would have had to say about Noah.

“Hey, gimme a break, Red. With this disguise, I’m your Everyman. Your one-hundred-percent, grade-A, all-beef, all-American tourist,” Noah defended himself. “What do you think? That you might be knocked off some society list if you’re seen with me?”

I had no illusions about that. Besides, I figured breakfast wouldn’t make or break the Cindy Crawford figure I’d been yearning for. I slipped in next to Noah.

Once out of town, we saw an IHOP, which beckoned to Noah from the other side of the road. He cut off two cars as he careened across the highway. Brakes squealed and horns blared, but Noah paid no attention. The Suburban was comfortably ensconced directly in front of the restaurant in record time.

I tried to control the trembling of my fingers as I struggled with the seat belt, having come within inches of being creamed.

“Do you always drive like a maniac?” I asked.