The radio phone between the car’s seats rang, his attorney calling with news. “Jameson’s kid agreed to sell the painting.”
Victor didn’t move. “How much?”
“Half a million.”
“Cut the deal,” Victor told him in a voice more even than he actually felt. To finally win was almost a physical thing, live and sweeping through him like some kind of drug. “Any word on the other pieces?”
“That Seattle gallery claims they’ve lost track of the client.”
“Then we need to find the client.”
“No one will release the name, Victor. It’s been thirteen goddamn years and I can’t even buy that name out of those people.”
“Raise the offer another quarter of a million,” he added. “And the commission another ten percent. That ought to prod somebody to locate who bought those paintings.”
After making arrangements for delivery, he hung up and rested his head against the back of the seat while Harlan turned the car into the Loyola parking lot. In an instant so real he would never be able to explain it, Victor caught a whiff of Arpège and sat forward sharply. On the seat across from him were the images of his son and daughter-in-law, an echo of another time and clearer than any memory should be; they held hands. Rachel was pregnant and Rudy didn’t look like a failure.
“The game’s already started.” Harlan opened the back door.
The images across from Victor evaporated in the overhead glare of parking lot lights, but what they represented stayed with him and made him pensive and touchy. Once inside the gym, they took seats in the middle of the crowded bleachers. By 9 P.M., Loyola was losing, so Victor sent Harlan to get the car and stood hidden in the shadows of the bleachers.
He watched Cale trot down the basketball court, weaving in and out of the other players with long-legged agility and a sure-footedness that helped him score three points. With that single basket, the energy in the gymnasium changed. The crowd noise grew louder; they were on their feet. The university band began to play with the crowd clapping and singing, “Down on the corner … Out in the street.”
Rudy had played basketball, too, but was never good enough and spent his games mostly on the bench. Victor could have missed every game and it wouldn’t have mattered.
But this game changed in under five minutes. Dorsey cut quickly, stole the ball, dashed past his opponent, his grin as big as the sections on the basketball. Then he became all business and shot the ball in the opposite direction, right to Cale, who let the ball fly. It arced through the air, then hit the rim with a deep thud, bounced, and went straight up in the air.
Nothing moved in that gymnasium but the ball. It came down on the rim, swirled around and around. On the edge of defeat or victory, players jumped up, arms reaching for the ball. The ball fell into the net and the white numbers on the scoreboard flipped: 89–87 Loyola.
Pom-poms flew into the air and the university cheerleaders tumbled across the wooden floor. The crowd cheered and stomped their feet so loudly you could barely hear the time buzzer. Players and coaches swarmed all over one another, and a teammate ripped Cale’s jersey in two and ran around him, holding the torn piece with his number, twenty-three, high in the air. They shouted, “Banning! Banning! Banning!”
Victor didn’t know he was smiling. He felt something he couldn’t ever remember feeling for Rudy. Maybe a hundred feet stood between Cale and him. They hadn’t spoken since Christmas. He placed one foot in front of the other, closing the distance.
“Cale!” An attractive young blond girl raced down from the bleachers and across the court, her ponytail flying, her long tanned legs running straight toward the knot of Loyola players. She wore a Mount Saint Mary’s sweater and flip skirt, and flung her arms around Cale, who caught her and spun her around, laughing as she kissed his cheeks.
Victor stopped, unable to move forward. Another girl he can throw his future away on. Cale hadn’t learned a thing from last year, from any years. Victor turned away in disgust and walked out of the gym without looking back. He wasn’t there when Cale set his roommate’s girlfriend down and tugged affectionately on her ponytail. And when Cale slung a towel around his sweaty neck and looked around the gym for the one person in his life to whom winning was everything, Victor was already on his way home.
The Island Theater was housed inside the old casino and always busy on the weekends, so Laurel studied the coming attractions on posters lit with small strings of Hollywood lights. A group of girls her age joined the back of the line, chattering. Shannon worked part-time at her mother’s shop, so Laurel stepped out of line and moved toward them, then waited for a pause in their conversation. She tapped Shannon on the shoulder. “Hi.”
“Laurel. Hi. I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
“I’m home for spring break.”
Shannon introduced her, then said, “The town’s going to be really crazy. Spring break always is. The beach gets packed. The bars. Guys and girls all over the place. Parties in the hotels. It’s pretty wild. You haven’t been here for Easter yet, have you?”
Laurel shook her head. “I’m not here much anyway, because of school. Just some weekends and holidays.”
“Laurel already graduated.” Shannon explained to the other girls. “She goes to cooking school in LA. What’s that place called again?”
“Pacific Culinary Institute.” The school was one of only three in the country that offered Cordon Bleu courses and certificates. The classes were small, tuition steep, and they accepted only one out of every few hundred applicants. The administrators and internationally famous instructors there would have cringed at the phrase “cooking school.” One of them could easily have waved a boning knife under poor Shannon’s nose and said, “Culinary institute. Cooking school is for the people who work at Denny’s.”
“You want to be a cook?” one of the girls asked, as if Laurel were nuts.
“I want to be a professional chef.”
“Like the Galloping Gourmet?” One of them giggled.
Shannon gave the girl a pointed look, but Laurel laughed. “Graham Kerr is a good chef.”
“Why would you want to be a chef? You’ll have to work in a hot kitchen, just to cook food for other people? Why not just be a housewife?”
“Ouch!” someone said. “That wasn’t nice, Karen.”
“Well, I mean, isn’t that like being some kind of glorified slave?”
Shannon punched Karen in the arm. “I wouldn’t talk. You said you wanted to be a nurse. I’d rather cut vegetables and take out the garbage than change sheets, give sponge baths, and clean bedpans.”
“You don’t meet cute doctors in a restaurant kitchen.” Clearly Karen had a plan.
At the box office, Laurel paid her admission and stepped aside, waiting for them. They bought their tickets, then the girls
