“It’s just a cookout.”
Clyde looked in the rearview mirror. The view in that direction was nearly filled by a navy-blue Lincoln Town Car, navigated and piloted by Bob Jenkins of Bob Jenkins Lincoln Mercury, who came to a stop behind them. He recognized the Murder Car and turned to his wife animatedly. His wife had got a new hairdo; Clyde could tell because she moved stiffly, as if a mad bomber had wired tubes of nitroglycerin into her permanent wave.
“They had these a lot in California,” Desiree said. “It’s valet parking. All we have to do is get out and they’ll park it.”
“I know what it is,” Clyde said darkly.
“Then why are you holding up the Jenkinses? You don’t want Rick Morgan to drive the wagon?”
“Nah.”
“You forgot something at home?”
Rick Morgan, straightening his bow tie, made eye contact with him; he was trapped now.
“Howdy, Clyde. So you’re the one that bought the Murder Car!”
“I guess so,” Clyde said, clambering out. Desiree was already at work in the backseat, disengaging the baby pod from its docking unit.
“Well, we’ll take real good care of it,” Rick Morgan said, sliding into the driver’s seat as if he owned the vehicle.
“It takes off pretty good in first because that big old four-sixty has good low-end torque, so it’ll surge when you give it the gas,” Clyde said, “then level off pretty quick.”
“Okay, Clyde,” Rick Morgan said. He seemed startled and dismayed.
Clyde shut the door on Rick Morgan. “You’ll notice that I didn’t slam the door,” Clyde said. “That’s for a reason. It is because the door is so heavy that it has a tremendous momentum of its own.”
“I read you loud and clear, Clyde,” Rick Morgan said, and gunned the engine too hard. The wagon reared up and bolted. Clyde imagined he could hear the transmission fluid flashing into live steam and bursting valves. But it was too late now. Desiree was standing there holding the baby on one hip, waiting (as Clyde eventually realized) for him to offer his arm. He did so and led Desiree up to the door.
“Vote Banks,” Clyde muttered to another bow-tie wearer as he went inside, putting one hand on the door himself even though it was being held for him. The notion of able-bodied men requiring servants to open doors for them was not one that Clyde would ever come to grips with.
The country club had been built during a phase of architectural history that Clyde vaguely remembered as the Flagstone Period. As he walked across the clubhouse floor, the theme music from The Flintstones came into his head and he had to consciously force himself not to start humming it.
This area was all low tables and sofas. A few people were there, mostly older folks and women with conspicuous hairdos, or possibly wigs, that could not be taken into the windy conditions outside. The back wall of the room was all picture windows and led to a very large flagstone patio with a pool to one side and a view over the golf course. A cylindrical pig roaster was smoking away, tended by a youth brought in on loan from the Hickory Pit restaurant, and a few dozen Republicans were milling around drinking what Clyde assumed to be cocktails and trying to dodge the long, ropy plume of smoke that shot out of the roaster and veered this way and that as the wind shifted—like escaping prisoners trying to stay out of the beam of the prison searchlight. A wall of beautiful thunderheads rose many miles to the west, violet below, their tops incandescent peach and magenta. The sun was going to sink behind those clouds soon, bringing a premature end to the day.
Clyde saw the next hour of his life plotted out as if on the whiteboard in the roll-call room down at the sheriff’s department. He would go out and mingle uncomfortably. Everyone would stare at Desiree and the baby. The baby would begin to get hungry in approximately forty-five minutes. Desiree would take her inside, plop herself down on a couch directly across from an old Republican lady in a blue wig, and, just like that, whip out a tit and start feeding the kid. The old Republican lady wouldn’t say a word, but the repercussions would come anyway, and pretty soon Clyde would be called in for a friendly man-to-man with Terry Stonefield and be informed that so-and-so was waiting for an apology. Desiree would refuse to apologize, and so Clyde would do it on her behalf and then so-and-so would not be satisfied—she would still be angry, but now she would be angry at Clyde—and Desiree would be angry at him for having apologized, and Terry Stonefield would be angry with Clyde, also, for not having handled it better.