“I saw some beautiful animals a couple of miles back,” Clete said.
“We take pride in our animals,” Frade said. “I am sure that your uncle James taught you to ride?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Perhaps we will have time to ride tomorrow.”
“I’d like that,” Clete said.
“I don’t know about riding clothe
s…” Frade said, almost in alarm.
“I’m wearing all I need,” Clete said, hoisting his trousers to reveal his boots. “Anyway, Uncle Jim always said that a man who couldn’t ride bareback really couldn’t ride.”
“Yes, I recall, James was a fine horseman. And your mother rode extremely well for a woman. So it is in your blood from both sides.”
Enrico appeared. There was no look of recognition on his face.
“¿Mi Coronel?”
“Enrico, this is my son, Señor Cletus, former Teniente of the U.S. Marine Corps. Cletus, Enrico is former Suboficial Mayor”—Sergeant Major—“of the Husares de Pueyrredón. We were together there for many years, weren’t we, Enrico?”
My father doesn’t know how he got home from the Guest House the night he passed out. Or he knows, and we are pretending we don’t.
“Sí, mi Coronel. A sus órdenes, mi Teniente.”
Enrico smiled at him warmly as Clete shook his hand.
Whaddayasay, Gunny? How they hanging? Still one below the other?
“Be so good, Enrico, to prepare Señor Cletus’s automobile. Have it washed and waxed, and you—personally—check all the mechanicals.”
“Sí, mi Coronel.”
The drink prepared by the maid was at least a triple. Clete sipped a small swallow, put it down, and then stood up.
“I need the gentlemen’s,” he said.
“Emilia, show Señor Cletus to his apartment,” Frade ordered the maid who was passing the hors d’oeuvres and mixing the drinks.
He was distracted by other things before he reached the apartment. When he entered the house, he found himself in an enormous foyer. Off of this opened three corridors. The maid led him down one of those, and then Señora Pellano intercepted them.
“I wish to show you something, Señor Cletus,” she said, and opened the door of one of the rooms.
Whatever I’m about to be shown, the maid doesn’t like it a goddamned bit, to judge by that horrified look on her face.
Señora Pellano entered the room ahead of Clete, snapped on the lights, then stood to one side.
It was something like a small library. There was a leather armchair, with a footstool and a chair side table on which sat a cigar humidor and a large ashtray. There was a library table, on which rested a stack of leather-bound albums. And hanging over the fireplace there was a large oil portrait of Elizabeth-Ann Howell de Frade with her infant son Cletus in her arms.
Cletus Marcus Howell smiled rather artificially in a photograph taken before the altar of the Cathedral of St. Louis on Jackson Square in New Orleans. The Old Man was in morning clothes, standing beside His Eminence, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Uncle Jim, and the bridal couple.
There was a wall covered with framed photographs: Clete Frade, aged nine, taking first place in the Midland FFA Sub-Junior Rodeo Calf-Roping Contest; Cadet Corporal Cletus Frade in the boots and breeches of the Corps of Cadets of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical Institute; Clete Frade, looking as if he had already been at the post-tournament refreshments, with the rest of the Tulane Tennis Team…
“Marianna! How dare you bring him in here!” el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade said, almost shouted, from the door.
Señora Pellano was unrepentant.