The Cadence of Grass Read Free Page A

laugh.
    Paul wasn’t having it. “Is that who you work for?” he said with a hard, level gaze.
    “Sorry, Paul, my powers are more limited. I just work for the State of Montana.” At length, Geraldine continued, her eyes on an empty portion of her desk. “I enjoyed our evening together, Paul.”
    He was still smarting over the flippant reference to his lost years, and his previous resolutions were dust. Let her get away with this piece of nauseating sentiment and she’d be asking, “But what about
us
?”
    He waited for her to look up, then said, “You know something, Geraldine? You look great on your back. It’s your best side.”
    She began to write on forms from the file folder in front of her. “I have only myself to blame.”
    “Oh? Well, when they locked me away, I didn’t know who to blame.”
    “I’m sure you didn’t.”
    Geraldine looked contrite, even a little shaken. Paul saw that she actually cared for him and wondered where he could go with this, only he wasn’t interested. Instead, he resolved never to see her again, or not to see her in that way, even though she was pretty good at it and put plenty into her work; but if she couldn’t behave like a real professional, there was no point in acting lively and objective when you got within ten feet of a desk. He was going to be keeping these appointments for a while and had to make a binding resolution with the State of Montana Parole Board; he didn’t need her half-goofy on the far side of his file folder.
    “I don’t think there’s anything new for you,” he said, indicating the forms. “My work situation, as discussed, is much improved. I’m still in my apartment, but I’m looking at houses. I’m looking at a new car. When the conditions of my parole so allow, I plan to travel the Pacific Rim which, as far as I’m concerned, is where it’s at, but not until I am so allowed. I would like to go to New York for some threads—” he smiled “—but only with your permission.”
    “And your domestic situation?” She abruptly flipped several pages over.
    Paul smiled at this little diversion. “Under the terms of my father-in-law’s will, there is considerable motivation for me to reconcile with my wife.” He declined to add that as sex-sherpa to the Whitelaw sisters he would no longer have time for her.
    “You know, I’ve never actually—”
    “But I don’t see that as a real possibility.”
    “—seen her, though I know she lives right around here.”
    “Beautiful.”
    “What?”
    “She’s beautiful. Inside and out. Yeah, she lives around here. Her deal is cows, et cetera, her horse.”
    “Well, it’s so nice that . . . she’s beautiful,” said Geraldine. “I like horses myself.”
    “You know, Geraldine, beauty is only skin deep, but
ugly
goes to the bone.” Paul considered this and enjoyed watching her squirm. People are so hard nowadays that you can’t buy a good squirm if you try. But he decided to let her off the hook.
    “Evelyn always smells like the animals. That’s sort of a turnoff. She really smells when they’ve been worming cattle, with this gross stuff they dump on their backs. Maybe there’s some things I do miss but that doesn’t include having a fridge full of cattle vaccine.” Paul thought you could cut the air in here with a knife. Geraldine didn’t seem to know what to do with her face, and her imitations of casual interest in this information were repellent. This would be a good time to get her off the hot seat by pouring his heart out.
    “Look, unless Evelyn and I get back together, I can’t sell that bottle plant, okay? Unless we get back together, the plant can’t be houses in other countries, okay? Or the beach. I’m not so twisted I
don’t
want to live on the beach. I was down in San Diego once with a friend. We drove along the houses and I mean upscale
all
the way and he like kept his thumb on the garage door opener until he found the one that was his home. How cool is that? I