his was an old red shack with a store on the side that sold ceramics and crystals. Austin.
"What was it like growing up without your mother?" I asked.
Kelly lifted one eyebrow, then looked at me without turning her head. "What makes you ask that?"
"No reason. Just curious."
She stuck out her lower lip so she could blow away the strand of grapecoloured hair that was hanging in her face. "I don't think about it much, Tres. It's not like I spent my childhood thinking I was different or anything. Dad was always around? five or six uncles in the house. Things were just the way they were."
I swirled the last ounce of beer in my bottle. "You remember her at all?"
Kelly's fingers flattened on the keyboard. She stared at her doorway and, momentarily, looked older than she was. "You know the problem with that, Tres? Your relatives are always telling you things. They remind you of things you did, the way your mom was.
You mix that with the old photos and pretty soon you've convinced yourself you have these memories. Then if you want to stay sane you bury them."
"Why?"
" Because it's not enough. You grow up with men, you have to learn to deal with men.
The fact you don't have a mom—" She hesitated, her eyes still searching for some
thing in the doorway. "With a mom, I guess you get some intuition, some understanding and talking. With a bunch of guys in the house, little girl has to take a different tack. Learn sneaky ways to get them to do what you want. Good training for working in law firms, actually. Or working for you."
"Thanks a lot."
Kelly smiled. She looked through the other documents in my packet, found little that would help her, then resealed the manila envelope. She closed the laptop.
"I'll call you as soon as I get something," she told me. "You're heading back to S.A.?"
I nodded. "You want me to tell your uncle anything?"
Kelly stood up so quickly the porch swing started moving cockeyed. She opened the screen door. "Sure. Tell him I'm expecting a dinner out of you."
"You want to get me killed."
She smiled like I'd guessed the exact thing she had in mind, then shut the door behind her and left me alone on the porch, the swing still zigzagging around.
20
There are two staterun rest stops between Austin and San Antonio, leftovers from simpler times before developers plopped convenience stores and outlet malls at hundredyard intervals all the way down the highway.
I resisted the urge to pull into the first, even though Kelly Arguello's Shiner Bock was working its way through my system, but by the time I'd passed through New Braunfels my bladder was twisting itself into funny little balloon animals. I decided to exit at the second rest stop.
I made such haste parking the VW and shuffling up the steps toward the john that I didn't take much notice of the pickup and horse trailer I'd parked behind.
Nor did I take much notice of the guy next to me at the urinal. He smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and the checkered shirt and the profile of his face looked familiar, but there is no space quite so inviolable as the space between two men at the pee trough.
I didn't look at him until we'd both suited up and were washing our hands.
"Brent, right?"
He clamped his hands on the paper towel a few times, frowning at me. He hadn't changed clothes since yesterday, nor shaved. The bags under his eyes were puffy, like the extra tequila from last night's gig had drained into them.
"Tres Navarre," I said. "We met last night at the Cactus, sort of."
Brent threw away his towel. "Cam Compton's forehead." "Right."
"I remember."
Brent looked past me, out the entrance of the john. I was standing between him and the exit, which made it difficult for Brent to get around me. He obviously wanted to.
Two men having a conversation in the bathroom was only slightly less awkward than acknowledging each other at the urinal. Maybe I should compensate by offering him some Red Man. Mention the playoffs. Bubba etiquette.
"You with Miranda?" I asked.
He looked around, uncomfortably. "No. Just the equipment." "Ah."
He shuffled a little more. I took mercy and stepped aside so we could both walk out at the same time.
The rest stop was doing a pretty good business for a weekday. Down on one end of the grassy oval island the picnic benches were overflowing with a huge Latino family.