almost thirteen feet. And she has a nice disposition. It’s just that, well, the disposition doesn’t exactly matter with a snake that size. If you see what I mean. Because she weighs about sixty pounds, we follow a protocol when we clean the vivarium or feed her. There always have to be two of us, and preferably three on hand. Actually, we’re trying to find a zoo or reptile rescue place to accept her, because she’s really gotten too big for us to care for. That’s probably much more than you wanted to know about Lola.”
Lauren picked up Seuss and gazed at Rory as if she were a python who might suddenly decide to eat the puppy.
Seamus wondered just what Rory’s “roommate” was like. A boyfriend with a Harley and a love of gigantic pythons?
She wrested the frozen rabbits away from him and said, “I’ll just go to my house, and then I’ll be right back. After that, I’ll take you to the place where you’ll be staying—it’s right around the corner from where I live. Across the alley, so it’s on the next street, but…I’ll be back.”
Rory hurried away, stepping carefully over the ice on Solomon Street and imagining Seamus Lee and his two children watching her.
He was handsome. She supposed she should have expected he would be one of those Telluride types, probably a regular speaker at the film festival and probably with his own private jet tucked into a hangar at the airport. If he wasn’t rich, he looked like he should be. Those new hybrid SUVs weren’t cheap, in any case.
His hair was a bit long and so dark brown it was almost black; his features angular. He was six feet, definitely, and dressed in Gore-Tex and Carhartts. Very Telluride. Very Colorado. Very ski resort. His eyes were green, a true green and not remotely hazel. Probably around forty, she thought. Probably divorced, she also thought. Damn it, she hadn’t even had a chance to look at the packet her father had given her. She’d just had time to get the rabbits out of the school freezer, where Desert had left them in a rush the previous afternoon on her way to an appointment. Desert, the founder of Caldera, their dance troupe—was a massage therapist at the local hot springs; her current boyfriend worked at the mountain school. Lola belonged to Desert, and Rory could not believe that Desert had just casually left the rabbits in the freezer here. Is she trying to ruin my working relationship with my father before it even begins?
That wasn’t Desert’s style, though. Desert simply felt that, well, people should be able to cope with just about anything. She thought rabbits in the freezer were not a big deal, and they were no problem for Rory; but other people might not feel that way. Desert also thought it shouldn’t have been a problem for the State of Colorado, if Rory was less than polite when speaking to a U.S. senator.
Her roommates were home.
In fact, they were treating the frigid day as good weather, and spinning poi—firelit balls attached to cables—out in their backyard. Rory wished she could practice with them, as she’d planned to do, but Seamus Lee and his family had arrived sooner than expected. She hadn’t even had time to figure out their course work. Samantha, whose white-blond hair was pulled into a knot at the back of her head and covered with a tight-fitting ski hat, was the spotter, standing by with a fire blanket, just in case. Without taking her eyes from Desert, Samantha edged to the fence to greet Rory.
Desert, whose head was entirely shaven beneath her ski hat, ignored the approach of her roommate and continued spinning the burning balls. Total concentration was required, and still poi spinners got burned. Samantha asked, “Did you bring the rabbits?”
“Yes,” Rory said, with resignation, letting herself in the back gate. She and Samantha were of one mind about Lola—the python had to go. Samantha now refused to have anything to do with the snake beyond assisting—from a safe distance—at feeding time. She’d been bitten the previous summer and she was convinced the snake would have killed her—by constriction—if both Desert and Rory hadn’t been there to pull it off. As it was, she’d needed sixteen stitches to close the bite.
Rory agreed that the snake might have killed Samantha. In fact, Lola had frightened Rory more thoroughly than anything else ever had in her entire life. And Rory was not afraid of snakes.
She wanted to plead with Desert not to do anything that might jeopardize her job. But Desert wouldn’t welcome an interruption to her practice. And on second thought, Rory didn’t think she was up to coping with Desert at the moment.
Desert, christened Naomi Katz, had come to Colorado at the age of eighteen. She’d immediately rechristened herself and had begun living off a trust fund provided by her grandfather, a diamond broker, and also by her mother’s family. Rich and beautiful, she’d trained in Boulder as a massage therapist and as a fire dancer, had moved to Sultan and bought the two-storey Victorian where she, Rory and Samantha now lived. Its exterior was painted bordello pink.
Sometimes, Rory and Samantha asked themselves why they put up with Desert.
But they loved her. And pitied her. And wanted to help her somehow; help her to not make life hard for herself. Desert’s boyfriend was a recent acquisition—they’d been together nine weeks. Rory and Samantha were holding their breaths, dreading the ending. Dreading it for themselves as well as for Desert, who was sensitive and, well, troubled.
Rory said to Samantha, “Can you take these? I’ve got to go show some clients to the Empire Street house.”
“Sure.” Samantha took the rabbits, clutching the bundle against her with one arm. “Go.”
RORY GORENZI WAS ATTRACTIVE, but Seamus had come from Telluride, where beautiful was the norm. He didn’t want another girlfriend; he only wanted to sort through the things his ex-girlfriend had said. He wanted to attend to the flaws she’d pointed out. And they were flaws. He didn’t want to marry again—his experiences with other women reminded him not that Janine had been the perfect wife and mother, but that she hadn’t been. No, that wasn’t fair. She’d been the mother of their kids and, so, the perfect mother for them.
But she’d always needed to prove something. He’d known she was sensitive beneath her sometimes-abrasive exterior. One of his male employees had once said to Janine, “You have more testosterone than I do.”
She’d said, “Thank you!” and had clearly been pleased by the compliment.
She’d been an athlete, but that wasn’t the only thing that had made her challenging. It was the way she’d presented herself. Her certainty that her way was right. She’d been insecure and determined to hide the fact, and in their twelve years of marriage she’d never revealed the source of that insecurity or the reason for it.
She’d been smart—a legal-aid lawyer employed by the Women’s Resource Center, defending the battered and the terrified. And she’d never struck him as particularly maternal, although she’d nursed each child for at least nine months. She’d spoken of it so casually, saying once, “When I get this one off my tits…”
Janine had been difficult, and since her death Seamus had vacillated between the notion that no relationship could be as trying as his marriage had been and the idea that no woman would be as good for his children as Janine had been. And how good was that, really?
Better than you, Seamus.
But that hadn’t been so true, back when his wife was alive. He’d spent time with his kids, talked with them and listened to them.
Janine had listened, too—long enough to get the gist of situations. Then, she’d pronounced judgment. You’re not going to take that from anyone, she would order the seven-year-old
