She ran a cool tub and jumped in, rethought the extreme in a matter of seconds, and got out to heat some water, then looked at the clock and gave up. She cinched a thin white blouse over a charcoal lawn skirt. She piled up her hair and stabbed her scalp while trying to secure a new hat, simple bleached straw with a pretty mossy-colored ribbon. She lined the hamper with newspaper, pulled the last of the pasties out of the oven, and lugged everything to the gate.
Samuel looked breezy and cool and annoyed her all over again. Seersucker, a new hat—he’d picked one of her little apricot pansies and stuffed it in his buttonhole, and she didn’t bother telling him he’d chosen the wiltiest flower in the yard. He did not comment on the redolence of the pasties, and he was not apologetic when he said that she was his first stop. He did not pull up the buggy top for shade when he strolled into the Elite to roust Lewis from his den and Eugenia from her carpet-walled kingdom. Eugenia, who’d feigned enthusiasm, would inevitably not come, but she’d want Samuel to put up a struggle. Dulcy seethed in the buggy for ten minutes, then walked to Vanzant’s for a soda.
They gave her a vanilla ice, very different than the one she’d had in Africa. This one had egg and cream and no spice, but it cheered her up. She flirted with the soda jerk, and he put her in a better mood, too, as did the fact that Samuel was annoyed when she walked out to find him circling the block for a third time.
Lewis was in the back, pale and thin-faced. He asked for a taste of the ice, then reached out and wiped a smudge of cream from her lip.
“I gather you were out last night,” said Samuel.
“No. I had the fever again,” said Lewis.
“Truly?”
“Truly,” said Lewis. He didn’t smile. When the whites of his eyes were tinged with yellow, his irises looked hazel instead of gray.
“Does he smell of whiskey, Maria?”
She was tired, and she imagined burying her face against Lewis’s neck. She began to understand that he might disappear for good. “No, Samuel, let it go. Where’s Eugenia?”
“Not coming. I wasn’t in the mood to beg. She says her husband is planning to visit.”
“Do you believe it?” asked Lewis.
“No.” They passed two men putting up posters, jingoing up the town for the centenary of the Lewis and Clark, the rodeo and parade, the county fair, circus, traveling Shakespearean troupe. The city fathers were ready for the summer tourist trade. When Samuel pulled up at Margaret’s house, Dulcy and Lewis sat in silence. A gust sandblasted them—a hot, alien sirocco, nothing springlike—and she clutched her head.
“How many pins does it take to anchor that thing?” asked Lewis.
“I don’t want to remember,” said Dulcy.
“It mostly disguises the flour in your hair.”
She felt for remnants of dough. Margaret started out her door, then turned around for some forgotten object. Dulcy had never seen her make a clean break of it.
“And on your neck, too,” Lewis said, wiping gently at her nape. This was the second time he’d touched her that morning, but she let it happen. She twisted to reach into the hamper for a piece of one of the already-broken pasties. “Christ,” said Lewis. “That’s a dream.”
She gave him another sip of the ice.
***
There were twenty in Rex’s group, and he ran around the depot with red panic dots on his downy cheeks. He’d reserved a full car, and seated proper citizens toward the front, riffraff in the back. Dulcy, Margaret, Lewis, and Samuel were sorted into seats two-thirds of the way down the car, behind the Macalesters and an architect named Denison. Mrs. Woolley was a distant egret-feathered hat up front in a clutch of bankers and East Coast ranchers, while Durr, who had been hired to help Grover film the wonders of the park and the birth of Rex’s new business, had been wedged into the last seat. People muttered about the lack of a guide. The former scout who’d worked for W. A. Chadfield Touring, the company Rex had purchased in Gardiner, had just died of peritonitis, and now they all listened to Dr. Macalester describe the mistakes the doctor might have made: operating, not operating, not washing his hands, missing rot, nicking a blood vessel. “Another guide is waiting for us,” said Rex stiffly. “Please don’t fret.”
Macalester tilted his head back and shut his eyes. He was a transplanted New Yorker, a fly fisherman; the hatch was on, and he’d wanted to be on the Clark Fork this weekend, but Vinca wanted to see people.
They rolled into the widening valley, the river low despite the heat, mountains still white-topped with a stubble of hacked trees on the slopes. They’d been logged since Dulcy had been here in 1896, and she could have claimed a memory with Edgar Nash, but she was tired of volunteering lies, increasingly bent on keeping her problematic mouth shut. Rex was asking for business name ideas, both for the tour company and the resort he intended to build on the Boiling River: Wonderland Rides? Wonderland Nights? Soothing Springs?
“I hate to repeat my suggestion,” said Samuel, “but ‘Boil Away Boils’ seems admirably direct.”
“The waters are truly curative,” snapped Rex. “They have nothing to do with hemorrhoids.”
“Do you know that for a fact?” said Macalester, whose idea of a vacation included sleep, and whose eyes were pink with exhaustion and resentment. “The problem is terrifically common.”
“Please don’t ridicule me,” said Rex, passing around soda and beer, trying to find his mood. “Think of a mountain fastness, a Swiss sort of spa.”
“Fastnesses are what you want in a siege,” said Lewis. “Not in an initial sales situation.”
“Humans are fond of warm water,” said Rex. “Tell me if you disagree.”
Dulcy wondered if a subtler intelligence might hide beneath the dewy locks, the checked tie, the relentlessly self-absorbed wall of slang. She pulled out a novel but took in a fragment of the spiel: instead of staying at the hotel in Mammoth, they would camp in the luxurious tents Rex had purchased from the W. A. Chadfield: platform floors with Turkish carpets and soft cots and quilts, fine comestibles and a talented cook. They would pass the spa site tonight, picnic there tomorrow, then dine and swim at Eve’s Spring, an older resort that was another investment possibility, on the way back.
Dulcy wondered if the staff at Eve’s Spring had changed. Not that she was memorable.
Frances Woolley’s plumed hat turned slowly in her son’s direction, and Dulcy thought of the kind of bad cathedral tours she’d taken in Europe while Walton was in a clinic. Grover and Rex talked too much; everyone talked too much. Samuel began to lecture Lewis about the shoddy wisdom of visiting his family when he was so ill. Lewis planned to leave the following week, and what was the point in wearing himself down for people who didn’t care?
“They care,” said Lewis. “In their way.”