THREE
The door opened, and the No-Longer-Virgin Princess came in. She was now wearing a tweed skirt and a powder-blue sweater.
She looks like the Tulane homecoming queen. Nicer. The time I dated the homecoming queen, she turned out to be a bitch.
My God, she's beautiful!
"You didn't call me," she accused.
"I... uh..."
"What have you been doing?" Dorotea demanded, and then, noticing the beer bottles and the wine cooler full of iced beer, answered her own question. "You've been swilling beer!"
"Guilty," he said.
"I have been waiting by the telephone for hours!"
"I... uh... didn't think I should call," he said. "Your father-"
"Didn't what I told you mean anything to you?" Dorotea asked, now closer to tears than an expression of shocked indignation.
"Jesus Christ, Princess," Clete said. It came out a moan.
She looked into his eyes for a long moment and then laughed.
"If you're afraid to just call me because of Daddy, what are you going to do about telling him?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "How did you get away?"
"Mother helped," she said. "I started to cry when Daddy called your Uncle Hu
mberto and said we wouldn't be going out to Estancia Santo Catalina after all for the mass for your father."
"You were going to Santo Catalina?"
With Ramirez, Rawson, and most of the G.O. U. there? What the hell is that all about? How many people did Claudia say are going to be there, forty? Maybe some of them have nothing to do with the G.O.U.; they'll be there to make it look like all that's going on are people visiting Claudia out of sympathy.
"Were going. Henry couldn't wait to tell Daddy he'd seen you kissing my fingers."
"Jesus!"
"I'm supposed to be at the movies. There's a new Bing Crosby and Bob Hope flick-Road to Morocco-at the Belgrano. It's supposed to cheer me up."
"Oh."
"What are we going to do, Cletus?"
"What are we going to do about what?"
"What do you think?" Dorotea asked, exasperated.
"What are my options?"
"You bastard!"
"Would you like me to get down on my knees?"
"That would be nice," she said.