Frank felt the pretty, loaded girl’s warmth against his shoulder, her body sliding over to his side of the backseat as the Lincoln bounced and swayed across the hardpan.
Felt pretty damn good.
Something he was missing these days, that type of warmth.
Thinking about it, he realized he’d pretty much always had a girlfriend of some sort, steady or part-time, since high school. This was the longest he could recall being without a consort.
But that scene back in Scottsdale—the club and all—he’d been through that shit too many times. Pickup bars seemed tedious, repetitive and meaningless to him now.
And as much as it pained him to admit it, it was true: He was getting too old for this shit.
So this was the point in the movies where he’d start falling in love with the pretty girl in the backseat.
She did have beautiful tan legs coming out of a pair of white shorts and her chest was perky under a satiny green T-shirt.
But it wasn’t gonna happen.
Evelyn seemed nice enough—if you could tell such things about someone as loaded as she was—but Frank was holding out for someone smart enough to avoid men like Clayton Cook and Bryce Parker.
Or Larry Richards.
Someone independent.
And definitely not possessive.
But he couldn’t deny that Evelyn’s warmth was intoxicating.
Then he heard Clayton say, “Time for another perk up, Evie, come back over here and I’ll powder your nose for you.”
Evelyn murmured like someone stirring in her sleep and pushed in tighter against Frank’s shoulder. Then she uttered a sleepy sound, giggled and straightened up on the seat before sliding across toward Cook.
Up front, Parker was fooling with the radio, dialing across static, Spanish language broadcasts, old-time country music, top forty stations and finally coming to rest on Linda Ronstadt singing “Weed, Whites and Wine,” the Lowell George classic that was another one of Frank’s favorites.
Linda Ronstadt.
Now there was a woman worth pursuing.
She was looking gorgeous these days.
He wondered if she lived somewhere in California.
Frank glanced over at Evelyn sniffing coke off Clayton’s fist.
The girl bore a resemblance to Linda Ronstadt, if you looked at her from a certain angle. Evelyn’s face was a little rounder and her skin was a little browner but she definitely was a looker.
And the song on the radio had her singing along now.
In a pretty damn good voice, considering.
“Care for a toot, Frank?” Clayton said, damn near shocking Frank out of his shoes.
“No, thanks,” Frank said, closing his eyes again and leaning against the doorframe. They’d be back to Sonora North soon and his trials would be over.
Or maybe just starting.
Drifting in and out, Frank at one point heard Evelyn say to Clayton, “You smell nice.”
And then he thought he heard her say, “Who’s the big guy? You never introduced us.” But he could have been dreaming.
Up in the front seat, Parker had the tunes humming. Radio waves skipping across the desert skies to serenade the love boat on its journey home. A station out of New Mexico was playing two consecutive songs by each artist in honor of the station’s second anniversary. Playing songs by groups that were as new to the scene as the fledgling radio station. Bands Frank had heard of, but never actually heard.
Aerosmith. Sex Pistols. The Clash, Ramones…
Like Dylan said many years ago, “The times they are a changin’.”
In music anyway.
As for the interaction of males and females—not so much.
Frank wasn’t a big fan of the new sound they were calling punk rock, but as the Lincoln topped the last rise and started the descent toward Rancho Deluxe, the compound an oasis of light in the stone dark desert, the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant” seemed to aptly sum up his state of mind.
As he watched Parker push the buttons on the control panel and the gate swing slowly open, he felt the tingle of adrenaline percolating in his legs.
He wondered why.
Larry swung the Lincoln alongside the front door of the main house and shut off the engine.
(End of Chapter 29)
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