Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(116)

Dallie knew, but he wasn't saying. “Now you listen to me, Skeet Cooper. Everybody understands that watching golf on television is about as interesting as watching somebody sleep. Those network honchos are getting ready to pay me some semi-spectacular money to liven up their broadcasts, and I don't see any need to throw their generosity back in their faces.”

“Those network honchos wear fancy cologne,” Skeet grumbled, as if that said it all. “And since when did you get so all-fired concerned about money?”

“Since I looked at the calendar and saw that I was thirty-seven years old, that's when.” Dallie leaned forward and abruptly rapped on the glass separating him from the driver. “Hey, you! Let me out at the next corner.”

“Just where do you think you're going?”

“I'm going to see Holly Grace, that's where. And I'm going by myself.”

“It won't do you any good. She'll just say the same thing I been sayin'.”

Dallie pushed open the door anyway and jumped out in front of Cartier. The cab pulled away, and he stepped directly into a pile of dog shit. It served him right, he thought, for eating a lunch that cost more than the yearly budget of most Third World nations.

Oblivious to the attention he was attracting from several female passersby, he began scraping the sole of his shoe on the curb. It was then that the Bear came up behind him, right there in the middle of Midtown. You'd better sign while they still want you, the Bear said. How much longer are you going to kid yourself?

I'm not kidding myself. Dallie started back up Fifth Avenue, heading toward Holly Grace's apartment.

The Bear stayed right with him, shaking his big blond head in disgust. You thought giving up booze was going to guarantee you'd make those eagle putts, didn't you, boy? You thought it was going to be that simple. Why don't you tell old Skeet what's really holding you back? Why don't you just come right out and tell him you don't have the guts to be a champion?

Dallie quickened his pace, doing his best to lose the Bear in the crowd. But the Bear was tenacious. He'd stuck around for a long time, and he wasn't going anyplace now.

Holly Grace lived in the Museum Tower, the luxury condominiums built above the Museum of Modern Art, which made her fond of announcing that she slept on top of some of the greatest painters in the world. The doorman recognized Dallie and let him into Holly Grace's apartment to wait for her. Dallie hadn't seen Holly Grace for several months, but they talked on the telephone frequently and not much happened in either life that didn't get discussed between them.

The apartment wasn't Dallie's style at all—too much white furniture, with free-form chairs that didn't fit his lanky body, and some abstract art that reminded him of pond scum. He shucked off his coat and tie, then stuck a tape of Born in the U.S.A. into a cassette player he found in a cabinet that looked as if it was designed to hold dental equipment. He fast-forwarded the tape to “Darlington County,” which, in his opinion, was one of the ten greatest American songs ever written. While the Boss sang about his adventures with Wayne, Dallie wandered about the spacious living room, finally coming to a stop in front of Holly Grace's piano. Since he'd last been in the apartment, she'd added a group of photographs in silver frames to the collection of glass paperweights that had always occupied the top of the piano. He noted several pictures of Holly Grace and her mother, a couple of photos of himself, some snapshots of the two of them together, and a photograph of Danny they'd had taken at Sears in 1969.

Dallie's fingers tightened around the edge of the frame as he picked it up. Danny's round face looked back at him, wide-eyed and laughing, a tiny bubble of drool frozen forever on the inside of his bottom lip. If Danny had lived, he would have been eighteen years old now. Dallie couldn't imagine it. He couldn't picture Danny at eighteen, as tall as himself, blond and lithe, as good-looking as his mother. In his mind, Danny would always be a toddler running toward his twenty-year-old father with a loaded diaper sagging down around his knees and his chubby arms extended in perfect trust.

Dallie replaced the photograph and looked away. After all these years, the ache was still there—not as acute, maybe, but still there. He distracted himself by studying a photograph of Francesca wearing bright red shorts and laughing mischievously into the camera. She was perched on a big rock, pushing her hair away from her face with one hand and propping a chubby baby between her legs with the other. He smiled. She looked happy in the picture. That time with Francesca had been a good time in his life, sort of like living inside a private joke. Still, maybe the laugh was on him now.

Who would have ever thought Miss Fancy Pants would turn out to be such a success? She'd done it on her own, too—he knew that from Holly Grace. She'd raised a baby without anyone to help her and made a career for herself. Of course, there'd been something special about her even ten years before—a feistiness, a way she had of charging at life straight on and going after what she wanted without any thought of the consequences. For a fraction of a moment it flashed through his mind that Francesca had taken life on at a full run while he was still hanging out at the fringes.

The idea didn't please him, and he rewound the Springsteen tape to distract himself. He then went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, bypassing Holly Grace's Miller Lite for a Dr Pepper. He'd always appreciated the fact that Francesca had been honest with Holly Grace about that baby of hers. It had been natural for him to wonder if the baby might not be his, and Francesca could certainly have pinned old Nicky's kid on him without too much trouble. But she hadn't done it, and he admired her for it.