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Clete signaled me with his eyes. “Yes, sir, I’d love to meet Ms. Balangie,” I said.
“Call her ‘Mrs.’ She’s a little traditional. That stuff about my stepdaughter? I don’t want to hear about it. Not on any level. Are we understood?”
I should have known better than to come to his house. Involvement in the arcane culture of the Shondell and Balangie families was like walking through cobwebs. You never got it off your skin.
“We came here out of goodwill,” I said. “I think we need to have an understanding about that.”
He paused again, his eyes searching my face, as though I were an object of idle curiosity. “All the courtesies of my home will be extended to you, but after you leave, I ask that you not interfere in my family’s affairs again.”
I didn’t answer. He opened the French doors onto a patio and looked back at me. “I asked you if we’re clear on that.”
“No, we’re not clear on anything,” I said. “Not at all.”
He stepped out on the flagstones. The patio was canopied by a grape trellis thick with vines. Adonis’s face was patched with sunshine and shadow. “My wife insisted that she meet both of you. After I introduce her to you, our visit will be over.”
I stepped toward him. “I’ll take one more run at it, Adonis. If somebody tried to do to my daughter what someone is doing to your stepdaughter, I’d blow him out of his socks. That means I can’t wait to get out of here. That also means I will not be rude to your wife. Would you like me to write that out in longhand? Or would you like to walk off in a more private place where we can raise the ante, got my drift?”
“Wait here,” he said. He turned his back on me and walked down a gravel path and entered through another set of French doors.
“Why don’t you spit in the punch bowl, Streak?” Clete said.
“I can’t take that bastard,” I said.
“Gee, you could have fooled me.”
The wind shifted and a cloud moved across the sun, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. I smelled the salt spray from the lake and heard a sail flapping. A boat with two black sails was in trouble, the captain trying to gather up one that had torn from the mast.
“Think that guy is all right?” Clete asked.
“The lake isn’t that deep there,” I replied.
“You ever see a boat with black sails?”
“Not that I remember,” I said.
I was bothered by the black sails, although I didn’t know why. Have you ever seen van Gogh’s last painting, the one in which the crows invade the perfection of the wheat field, the one that he was painting when he either shot himself or was shot accidentally by boys playing with a pistol? The boat with the black sails tipping in the wind gave me the same sense of desolation. “You okay, Dave?” Clete said.
“Yeah,” I said. I heard footsteps behind me.
“This is Penelope, gentlemen,” Adonis said.
When I turned around, I saw the woman I’d heard about but never seen. She was less than medium height and kept her chin tilted up the way short people do. Her eyes were warm and attentive; a strand of auburn hair lay on her cheek. She wore a white mantilla on her head and gripped a rosary with scarlet glass beads in her pale hand. Her mouth made me think of a small purple rose, with a black mole next to it.
I tried to remember what I had read about her. Her maiden name was Di Betto. She was from Sicily or Corsica; her family owned farmland and canneries and fishing fleets, things associated with the earth and sea. She was one of those women a photographer aches to get inside his lens, because no matter when or where he clicks the shutter, he knows he’s captured an artwork.
She extended her hand when Adonis introduced us. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said. “Adonis says you’re among his oldest friends.”
That was a stretch.
“Yeah, we go back,” Clete said. “I mean to the old days.”
“I know what it means, Mr. Purcel,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “I meant… I don’t know what I meant.”
“Adonis says you’re a kind man.”
“Me?” Clete said.
