pocket full of napkins Johnny had signed for his no doubt pudgy daughters back in Austin.
Randy slapped a hand on Johnny's shoulder. "Sorry about all this, Johnny. You know what they're like sometimes. They don't mean anything by it. He'll wake up with a hangover tomorrow and feel like a jerk. Look, I'm picking up the tab for this party—"
"I don't want your fucking charity," Johnny snapped, and dragged his wallet out of his back jeans pocket, fingered out a stack of hundred-dollar bills and tossed them on the table.
He needed air. Desperately.
Where the hell was Dolores?
Turning his back on Leah, Johnny made his way out of the restaurant and stood for a moment on the front porch, allowing the night air to chill the heat from his face.
A group of eight young Native American boys, barely into their teens, gathered in the parking lot beneath a vapor streetlight, dancing in a circle while another pounded on a drum and chanted. Their young faces were painted in stripes of colors. They wore cloaks of eagle feathers over their shoulders and down their arms, which did little to conceal their tee shirts, jeans, and Nikes.
Around them gathered smiling tourists, cameras popping with light and whirring videocams zooming in on the children's faces, which looked older than they should.
The dance ended. The boys bowed, heads down, eyes down, shoulders bent, and fists hidden beneath their feathers as the onlookers tossed coins at their feet. The boys fell to their knees, scrambling to grab the glittering nickels and dimes and quarters, causing the tourists to laugh louder.
"Hey, Mr. Whitehorse." The valet moved out of the shadows, his hands in his pockets. "If you're looking for Ms. Rainwater, she's out in her car."
Johnny moved down the steps, shoved his way through the tourists, and grabbed a boy by the scruff of the neck, jerking him to his feet so hard the coins in the boy's hands sprayed across the asphalt.
"What the fu—"
"Shut up and listen to me." Johnny shook the boy and looked around at the others, all frozen in the process of stuffing their pockets with change. "Don't ever go on your knees for a nickel or a dime or a quarter. Don't ever go on your knees for nothing or no one. Remember who you are and what you stand for."
The boy twisted away and stumbled back, his look of anger exaggerated by the paint on his cheeks and brow. "Look who's talking. Johnny Whitehorse. Big man who lives in big houses away from his people. You're nothing but an apple. Red man on the outside, white man on the inside. What do you stand for? What are you? No Apache, that's for sure. You walk in the white man's world now. Tu no vale nada—you are good for nothing." He spat on the ground, then motioned to the others. Silently, they turned their backs on Johnny and walked off into the dark.
The tourists filed into the restaurant, leaving Johnny standing alone beneath the buzzing vapor light, coins shimmering around his feet.
NINE
« ^ »
Dolores sat in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, the car door open as Johnny moved across the parking lot, focusing more on the sick feeling of disgust in his stomach than the fact that a man was swiftly walking away from the car, dissolving into the shadows beyond the deserted highway.
Music from the band drifted along the parked cars, the bass drum like a heartbeat tapping at the night as Johnny moved up to the SL where Dolores was hunkered over, so intent on what she was doing she did not hear him.
A mirror compact lay open on her lap, several threads of white powder lined up side by side on the glass. With a clear glass straw she snorted the cocaine up one nostril, then the other, her groan of pleasure like a sigh of sexual gratification.
Johnny closed his eyes. No, no, he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions here. He was not seeing Dolores Rainwater snorting powder into her brain—
"What the hell are you doing?" he heard himself ask.
Her head flew around and she stared up at him, her nose dusted with powder and her eyes like glass reflecting the distant streetlight. "Oh. This … this isn't what it looks like—"
"You idiot. You stupid—" He grabbed the straw from her hand and knocked the compact from her lap. It landed on the asphalt, scattering the remainder of powder over the mirror. He ground his boot