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  “I think you’re right.” She leaned back and gave him an appraising look. “I told the owners about you, by the way. What your upper range is. They said thanks, but they aren’t ready to come down that far. Yet.”

  He was confused. Surely by now she’d figured out that he’d lowballed his range. He could easily meet their price, she had to know that. And yet she played along, wouldn’t call him on it.

  “I’m serious. How about dinner?”

  She cocked her head. She was smiling. Then she laughed. “You really are serious, aren’t you?”

  “I really am.” All in, he thought. The couple of seconds she made him wait, it felt like his face would crack.

  “Screw dinner,” she said at last. “Let’s go look at that house.”

  * * *

  It was deep dusk, almost dark when they arrived. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said as soon as they were inside, and halfway up the stairs she took his hand. His legs went weak, mushy, like he was sixteen again and getting with girls for the first time, almost sick with the hormone rush of it. Stupid. No way he should be this nervous, this absurdly worked up. A faint wash of light filtered up through the stairwell to the master bedroom, where they managed to get most of their clothes off before he scooped her up in a bulldoze charge toward the bed, Laney screeching, laughing, locking her legs around his waist, and down they went with a mighty thump, his weight forcing a satisfied ahhh from her chest. She laughed. She was game. He loved the feel of her whippet body as they shucked the rest of their clothes, and once they were naked he pulled back and grazed the length of her, her skin yielding, springing back at his touch. The thrash and torque of her response were marvelous, but he wouldn’t lose himself in it. By this point in his life he’d learned some things. He knew how to ward off messes, entanglements, awkward situations, though right now he was tempted to let himself go, let the infatuation get the better of him. And when the infatuation passed? By then she’d be thinking certain understandings had been reached. She’d have assumptions, expectations. It wouldn’t be fair to her.

  All the crazy shit that goes through your head during sex, he thought. You wanted it to be clean, no more or less than it was, yet so much else was always pressing in at the edges. They were well into it when she climbed on top. He laughed at the deliberate way she took charge, and she chuckled, nodding, acknowledging the moment, approving his good-natured acquiescence. She settled onto him with a dreamy half-smile, planting her hands on his chest and rolling her hips. She seemed so pleased with him, that was the thing. Once again he was conscious of the need to be careful. She was on top, but it felt like he was the one who was barely hanging on, and he watched her all the way to the end, when her eyes closed and her face clenched and her fingernails curled into his chest.

  He wanted to see her when she was most herself, as if that knowledge might give him some sort of advantage. She collapsed on him when they were done, her embrace so jumbled and headlong that he saw possibilities even in this, her spontaneous tenderness. For what seemed like several minutes, they didn’t move.

  “I hope nobody’s planning to do a showing right now.”

  Her laugh was deep, languorous. She turned her head so she could see him, flipped the hair out of her face. “Not much chance of that. The house-buying crowd’s all watching 60 Minutes.” She rolled off of him.

  “That was nice.”

  “Ummm.” She was leaning over the side of the bed, rummaging through her satchel from the sound of it.

  “Don’t tell me you’re looking for a cigarette.”

  “Nope. This.” She propped a pillow against the headboard and sat back. Her solar-powered pocket calculator was in her hands. “You can get this house for one point two.” She’d just told him her other client’s bottom line. The red needle-thin numbers appeared on the screen: 1200000. “How much can you put down?”

  “How much do I need to put down?”

  “Ten percent. Twenty if you don’t want to carry mortgage insurance.”

  “All right, twenty.”

  Her fingers on the keypad made a light snicking sound. She turned the calculator his way. 240000. “Can you handle that?”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Good! Which leaves a balance of . . .” More tapping. The numbers blinked onto the screen. “The going rate for jumbo mortgages is around six and a quarter. Which would give you a monthly payment of seven thousand, give or take. How much do you make?”

  “Two fifty, two sixty. Maybe better if my hours are good.”

  She hesitated, as if surprised. “Then we’ll have to get the owners to finance part of this. A second note for, say, two hundred fifty, three hundred.”

  “They could do it?”

  “The question is, would they do it?” She laid the calculator on her smooth little belly. “But even then it’d be a reach for you. I don’t know if the banks will go for it.”

  “How about if I just pay cash?”

  She turned to him. “How about if you just pay cash,” she echoed in a flat voice. He laughed. She really didn’t know by now? It was impossible to read her face in the near dark.

  “Yeah, cash. You know, wire transfer, cashier’s check, paper sack full of bills. However they want it.”

  “Really. However they want it.” A kind of challenge. She was turning sassy, playful. Like flipping a switch, he was hard again.

  “We can meet with my banker tomorrow,” he said. “He’ll start setting it up.”

  She tossed the calculator overboard and slid toward him. “Well congratulations, player. How do you like your new house?”

  * * *

  That it was an all-cash sale greatly simplified things, though there was still a lengthy checklist to work through. The title insurance company found an array of minor encumbrances that had to be cleared. A new survey was made, various inspections done; the property insurer had its own high-handed list of demands. Laney guided him through the process, dropping by his apartment in the evenings with the latest batch of documents to be reviewed and signed. Sometimes she stayed for dinner. Sometimes, with a little cajoling and wine, she’d stay the night.

  They weren’t really dating. They seemed to have skipped that stage, though Brice supposed all of their house-hunting trips might qualify as dates. He didn’t invite her to any of the parties or dinners he had with his friends during these weeks. To introduce her to his group seemed complicated; it would raise too many questions he didn’t feel like answering. How to explain his attraction to this older woman when most of his friends were seeing women not much more than half her age?

  He tried to imagine how Laney would see his friends, and it was then that he realized he’d grown tired of them, of the perpetual adolescence they encouraged in one another. He just wanted to be with her, only her. Which was hard, because she was always working.

  His new neighborhood turned out to be more marginal than he’d thought. The low-income apartments nearby spun off a constant seep of minorities and homeless types. One day Brice was coming up the front walk to meet an inspector and was startled by an elderly black man sleeping in his bushes. A few days later a different black man rang his doorbell. He offered to wash windows, clean gutters, whatever Brice needed, but the man was ragged, empty-handed, not even equipped with a coat against the chill. He fussed when Brice said there was nothing for him to do, then grew belligerent when Brice refused to give him a handout.

  These encounters were depressing, vaguely suggestive that he was making a mistake. He moved in over the weekend before Thanksgiving. There wasn’t much to move, and his possessions seemed to get swallowed up by the house like a boy flopping around in a man’s suit. He spent most of Sunday getting the kitchen and closets organized. The day was overcast, solemn, cool: fall bordering on winter. He kept encountering stray drafts as he moved about the house, and realized it was going to be a beast to heat.

  Laney arrived around five with a bottle of champagne. She helped herself to a Diet Coke from his fridge, th
en took a walk through the house while he put the champagne on ice, the tap of her heels across the hardwood floors marking her progress. He caught up with her in the master bedroom. She was standing in the middle of the mostly empty room, laughing.

  “Brice, really. A futon and a weight bench? You’re too much.”

  “I’m planning on getting furniture, duh.”

  “Glad to hear it. I could help you with that, if you want.”

  “Great.” He felt a sudden surge of hopefulness.

  “There’s an interior designer I know, she does great work. I’ll have her call you.”

  “Sure. Fine.” He followed her out to the hall and down the grand staircase. “You’re staying, right? The champagne’s chilling. We can celebrate.”

  “Can’t,” she said over her shoulder. “Gotta work.”

  “Now?”

  “Got a bunch of comps I need to run. Next week starts tomorrow, bright and early.”

  He tried not to feel desperate. “Then come back when you’re done. I’ll fix dinner.”

  They’d reached the front door. She turned to him and smiled as it swung open, then leaned close and handed him her empty Coke can. “Another time,” she said sweetly, and gave him a quick, dry kiss.

  He stood in the doorway and watched her go. As she drove off he became aware of the house at his back, its silence, the vast bulk of it breathing out, like a live thing waiting to see what he would do.

  IN THE AIR

  BY DANIEL J. HALE

  Deep Ellum

  Diego Smith woke up in an empty bed with a head full of hurt. Muted carnival sounds and flat daylight seeped through the tall windows. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee wafted about the open second floor of the converted firehouse to mingle with whiffs of French perfume. Diego sniffed his skin. He smelled nothing but faint traces of Ivory soap. If he’d been with anyone last night, he’d showered after she left. He reached for his cell phone. The nightstand cradle stood empty. Diego pulled on the jeans he found atop one of the moving boxes lining the wall, and, cold concrete beneath his feet, he stumbled into the kitchen.

  He found a shot glass, a half-bottle of Don Julio, and the carcass of a lime strewn across the granite countertop. Diego’s hankotsu was missing from the magnetic knife holder on the wall. It wasn’t in the sink or in the dish drainer. Besides, a hankotsu wasn’t the proper tool for cutting citrus. The handmade Japanese boning knife had cost a fortune. Diego realized he’d once again brought home a little thief. He thought, I’m too old to be living this way. By the time his father was twenty-seven, he was already married with a baby on the way. Diego knew his mom had been right—it was time to settle down.

  He poured a mug from the automatic coffee maker and looked out the window. Fair Park’s giant blue-spoke Ferris wheel spun slowly against the overcast sky. People crowded the entrance to the fairgrounds across the street. Diego figured his brother was already inside working the throngs of humanity. Alex’s campaign manager had asked Diego to steer clear today. The Smith boys had barely spoken in nine years, and they were polar opposites politically, but Diego didn’t want to be an anchor around the neck of Alex’s campaign. Besides, the movers were due to arrive in a couple of hours. They’d probably been trying to call.

  Diego’s cell was nowhere to be found in the kitchen. He wondered if the little thief had stolen it too, but the phone sometimes slipped out of his pocket when he watched TV. Diego topped off the mug and, with metered steps, made his way toward the cluster of leather furniture surrounding the flat-panel bolted to the far wall of the loftlike space. The scent of perfume he’d noticed when he woke up intensified as he approached the couch. He found a long-legged brunette lying there, her midsection covered with a black cashmere throw.

  “Carole?”

  Her emerald eyes crept open, and she spoke in a throaty voice. “Mornin’, cutie.”

  Diego stepped back, sloshing hot coffee onto the hard glazed floor.

  Carole Bennett sat up on the edge of the couch wearing panties and a bare-midriff T-shirt, no bra. She smiled and said, “You look more like María-Consuelo every time I see you. She’d be so proud.”

  “Mom hated you.” Diego placed the mug on the poured-concrete coffee table and folded his arms across his bare chest. “What are you doing here?”

  “I found you drunk as a skunk at the Monkey Bar last night. I took your keys and drove you home.” She leaned back and draped her arms over the top of the low-back couch, leaving her taut belly exposed. “You’re welcome.”

  Hoping to God he hadn’t slept with her again, Diego glanced toward the stairs leading down to the garage and the street. He said, “All right, then.”

  Carole gave a laugh. “What? You want me to vacate the premises?”

  Diego found his eyes drawn to the small, hennalike tattoo encircling her navel. He felt a stirring that angered him.

  “I didn’t just happen to run into you last night. I hunted you down.” Carole’s smile had faded. “Your father’s pulling the plug on the Latino youth center.”

  “He can’t do that.” Diego sat on the edge of the coffee table. “I gave up half of my inheritance to fund it.”

  She leaned forward. “Reginald changed his mind.”

  “He can’t just change his mind. The documents were executed months ago.” Diego stood and started to walk away. He paused, then turned to face the green-eyed brunette on the couch once more. “How do you know this?”

  “My BFF’s a paralegal at Wadley, Adams & Snow. Her boss said your father decided sending Alex to Washington would do more for the Latino population than the youth center ever could.”

  Diego’s whole body felt numb. It took a few moments for the words to come. “My brother and I may be half-Mexican, but Alex is the whitest guy I know. He barely speaks Spanish. All he’ll do in Washington is help rich old WASPs like my dad hang on to their money and their concealed-weapon permits.”

  “Well, you need to talk to Reginald.” She paused before saying, “Right away. The lawyers are taking the papers to him this afternoon.”

  Diego glanced at her and asked, “Did you see what I did with my phone?”

  “You were looking for it on the way back here last night. You probably left it at the Monkey Bar.”

  “May I borrow yours?”

  “It’s in my car, and we came here in your convertible.” She bit her lower lip. “Besides, we both know your father would never answer a call from my number. You better go talk to him.”

  Diego dressed in a chambray shirt and a pair of boots he pulled from one of the moving boxes against the wall near his bed. He hurried into the bathroom to brush his teeth and run a comb through his inky black hair.

  Carole appeared in the doorway dressed in a chocolate suede jacket, tight jeans, and a pair of high-heeled shoes that made her taller than him. “Before you have your little heart-to-heart with Daddy Dearest, I need you to drop me at Highland Park Village.”

  Diego frowned and said, “I’ll flag you down a—”

  “No.” She put her hands on her hips. “I am not taking a taxi.”

  * * *

  The silver Aston Martin convertible’s engine roared to life as the enormous firehouse garage door rolled open. Carole tossed her chartreuse-colored purse onto the passenger floorboard and slipped into the red leather interior. Diego breathed in her scent. She had added a layer of perfume. Hermès. 24, Faubourg. Floral. Subtle. Expensive. Carole had worn it nine years ago, back when she was engaged to Alex, before she took advantage of a drunken eighteen-year-old virgin and ruined five people’s lives.

  Diego drove out into the warm, cloudy October day. As they passed the entrance to the fairgrounds, he glanced over to see his brother standing in shirtsleeves, smiling and shaking hands with the crowd. Diego was compact and dark-haired, like their mom. Alex had turned out as tall and blond as their father. Campaign staffers in T-shirts swarmed through the crowd of fair-goers passing out flyers extolling the reasons Alex Smith would be the best voi
ce for Texans and their right to bear arms.

  Even if Alex had stabbed his younger brother in the back yet again, Diego didn’t want him to see Carole in the car. He didn’t want Alex to have the wrong idea. Diego made a quick turn and accelerated down Exposition.

  Carole said, “Why’d you sell the firehouse?”

  “I needed the money—my investors forced me out of the restaurant.”

  “But that was your concept.” She looked at him and arched her dark eyebrows. “I heard the place was doing really well.”

  “It was, but the backers wanted to squeeze more money out of the operation, and I apparently cared too much about my employees.” Diego brought the Aston Martin to a quick stop at a red light.

  Carole swept back her chestnut hair with a stroke of her hand and gave him a sidelong glance. Her eyes were an intense green. Scary eyes.

  Diego had always found it disconcerting to look directly into them. He focused on the traffic signal and said, “The investors let a lot of my staff go when they ousted me. The firehouse and . . .” Diego tapped the steering wheel, “this ridiculous car will finance my new restaurant and help my employees stay afloat until we can open.”

  “God, it’s hot.” Carole pulled off her suede jacket, the short T-shirt again exposing the firm flesh of her belly.

  From the side, Diego could see that her once-flat stomach was now a bit distended. She looked great for her age, but she was thirty-five after all. He wondered how he’d look when he was her age.

  After a space of silence, Carole asked, “Why didn’t you just ask Reginald to back you on the new restaurant?”

  “Are you kidding?” Diego glanced at her. “My dad thinks I’m the world’s biggest bleeding heart.” He shook his head. “Maybe he’s right. But at least I can sleep at night.”

  “The alcohol probably helps.”

  Diego shrugged.

  The light turned green, and they made their way past the vacant lots, derelict buildings, and dive bars of Deep Ellum. Diego realized he had no idea what he’d say to his father. The aroma of ribs grilling on mesquite wafted into the convertible. He wondered what he’d done with his boning knife. Even with the ADHD and his drinking, he never misplaced things, not since Alex went to college and Reginald Smith sent his younger son to survival defense training.