“Well, I’ll make sure to let Mary know you said that,” I say.
“You do and I’ll show you the proper way to shoot a rifle,” he retorts. “Speaking of which, leave your guns here. You know how Mary is about weapons in the house. You can pick them up on your way out. Nobody else is here and the dogs are out.” What he means is his seven mutts will tear the throats out of anybody who approaches the range. The guns are safe.
I follow him to a little golf cart parked just outside the firing lanes. It’s the same as any golf cart you would find at a golf course or city park anywhere in the world, except this golf cart has thick knobby tires on it like it was designed to trek through swamps and not ferry lazy people across a few hundred yards of compact dirt.
The cart takes us about a quarter mile up the hill to an old wooden ranch house that was probably built right around the time California became a state. This house has been in Jacob’s family since back when revolvers came with ramrods and Jacob maintains it as lovingly as though it were family, which, I suppose it is, at least as far as he’s concerned.
Mary greets me with a smile and a warm hug, and, as she always does when she sees me, clucks her tongue and says, “You never eat, Grant. Come, sit down. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Thank you, Mary,” I say with a smile, “And may I say that pregnancy has treated you very well.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile on her face as she heads to the kitchen to serve dinner. Mary grew up with me and Jacob, but ever since she and Jacob marry, she’s stepped into the role of surrogate mother and most of our conversations now are repeated assurances that I’m eating and sleeping well and spending enough time outside.
I don’t mind it. It’s nice that people feel concern for me, even if it’s a little more than is warranted.
Mary returns with two plates piled high with angel hair pasta and shrimp in a savory garlic butter sauce. I take a bite and my eyes widen in appreciation. “Damn, Mary,” I say, “This is delicious. I hook a thumb at Jacob and say, “Hey, if you ever get tired of this asshole, I have a nice view of downtown from my apartment.”
She laughs and says, “Well, thank you, but as much as this one’s stoicism gets on my nerves, I’d rather put up with that than your constant moodiness.”
“Hear, hear,” Jacob says. He looks closely at me, and I catch an unreadable expression cross his face, but he doesn’t say anything.
Dinner allows me the break from my thoughts that shooting doesn’t. I enjoy two helpings of the scampi—which really is delicious—and make small talk with the two of them. After dinner, I offer to help clean up, but Mary declines, by which I mean she physically pushes me out of the kitchen and warns me not to come back unless I want a frying pan-shaped dent in my skull.
I elect to avoid head trauma and instead follow Jacob to his front porch. He packs tobacco into a corncob pipe that—like everything else here—is old enough to be on a first-name basis with Abraham Lincoln.
“That stuff will kill you someday,” I say.
He flicks his lighter and takes two puffs out of the pipe, holding the smoke in for a second before breathing it out with a satisfied sigh. “It’ll have to get in line,” he says. “There’s at least one mountain lion and several hundred idiot shooters who are more likely to do the deed before the smoke does.”
He takes another puff, then says, “So who’s the girl?”
“What girl?” I say.
He looks at me with an expression that is very appropriate for such a stupid question and doesn’t say anything.
I sigh and say, “There’s no girl, man.”
“Bullshit,” he says, “I’ve known you for thirty years and this is the first time I’ve seen you miss from fifty yards with that carbine of yours.”
I sigh and say, “There’s a girl, but there can’t be a girl.”
“What does that mean?” he asks. “She either exists or she doesn’t.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “I know.”
Thankfully, he doesn’t press the issue. We stand there for a while and I finally say, “That’s enough tobacco sidestream for me. I’m heading back to the range.”
He nods and says, “Take the cart. You can just leave it there when you’re done.”
A couple hundred rounds later, I still know. She either exists or she doesn’t.
The problem is McKenzie most definitely exists and I’m having a hell of a time pretending she doesn’t.
Chapter 4
Grant
I’m not thinking clearly.