The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(64)

Through the office window, Kelly and Erainya were standing by my desk now, talking. Jem was making sure all his toys were still there in the bucket.

"I want to keep things legal, Ralphas."

Ralph stared at me.

"I want DeLeon in on what we're doing," I explained. "I don't want to blow her case."

For once, Ralph seemed at a loss for words.

"Ana, huh?" He flicked some ashes toward the pavement.

"You know her," I said.

"Did you ask Ana about that?"

"She said about as much as you are. You object to her coming with us?"

He shrugged. "You want Ana to come along, vato — good luck. You know the rules of association. How you figure she's going to want to spend time around me?"

I tried to read his tone of voice, failed. "You've got no criminal record."

"On the books — no. You figure that matters?"

"I'll tell her we're going to ask around. She wants any control over the process, she'd better come along."

"Should be fun."

"You and DeLeon used to date, or what?"

Ralph took one last hit from his joint, then pinched the end out with his fingers. "How you getting around town these days, vato?"

I pointed to George's red Barracuda.

Ralph put on his glasses, then nodded approval. "Step up. George would appreciate you keeping her company."

"George would shit."

Ralph chuckled. "We meet at the Boots, say four o'clock?"

"I've got classes. Let's make it five-thirty. And you didn't answer my question."

"Tell Kelly good-bye from me, vato. And you understand, you get to hold her hand today only. After that, I got to kill you."

I looked into those Coke-bottle lenses for a few uncomfortable decades before Ralph said, "Kidding, vato. I'm kidding."

The tone of his voice did not comfort me at all.

He went out to his maroon Cadillac, whistling something that sounded oddly like a funeral dirge.

THIRTY-ONE

I was two-for-two at walking into class without lesson plans. I hoped that passing back the essays would make up for it, especially since I'd asked my grad seminar to be ready to discuss three Marie de France lais that I hadn't read in ten years.

Passing back the papers took all of five minutes. Everybody got a B and nobody had any questions. Then I was stuck in front of my eight favorite people with absolutely no clue what to do next.

They'd all come back for more — Sergeant Irwin; Gregory the mail boy; Brian the businessman; Edie and Marfa; the Morticia Addams drag queen; the grunge twins Simon and Blake. None of them had dropped the class. They'd even brought their Marie de France books with them. Shit.

And of course, my department head Professor David Mitchell had come to observe the class. Double shit.

I resorted to that ploy of the desperate — small group work. I broke the class into pairs and had them talk to each other about the lais — to compare Guigemar and Lanval to Bisclavret and look at attitudes toward women in the three stories. Hardly original, but hey.

I circulated from group to group, listening, occasionally asking a question. I hoped that the tightness in my face would be mistaken for keen academic interest rather than weariness and anger and the intense desire to throw up.

Every once in a while I'd sneak a look at Dr. Mitchell in the back of the room. His face was alert, his dress clothes ironed, silver hair neatly combed. Each time he caught my eye he smiled encouragingly, then looked down, frowned, and scribbled something in his notepad.

After milking the group discussion trick for about twenty minutes I got the class back together and acted as scribe for their ideas on the blackboard. I drew bubbles and lines and tried desperately to remember the spelling for misogyny. I am, unfortunately, only a mediocre speller, to the complete glee of everyone who knows I hold a Berkeley Ph.D. in English. I long for a blackboard with a spell checker.

"She's a schemer," Gregory told me. "Woman is a schemer."

I tried to spell schemer. "Why?"

"Jeez — the way the women trick their men. I mean even in Lanval and Guigemar, it's the woman who manipulates. Especially in Bisclavret." Morticia Addams rolled his/her eyes. "Not that damn werewolf story again. You think that chick was wrong? Like, what would you do if you found out your husband ran off into the woods and turned into a wolf every night?"

I was secretly thinking Morticia might find it cool, but I didn't say anything. I waved my chalk invitingly. "Any response to that?"

The businessman's cell phone rang. He muted it and smiled at me apologetically.

Sergeant Irwin sat forward. "I think we've talked about Bisclavret enough. A woman finds out her man's secret, uses that power to destroy him. End of story."

I widened my eyes. "It is?"

Edie looked up from her knitting needles. Her yarn today was powder-blue. "I felt sorry for the wolf."

She looked at Marfa, who nodded sympathetically. "Poor wolf has his clothes stolen, has to stay out in the woods, the faithless wife goes and marries someone else."

I turned and wrote faithless on the board. "Can you relate to her desire for a more... human husband?"

Marfa frowned at her knitting. "I suppose."