“Well, how about it?” Troy growled, his look suggesting Kate was welcome to make his coffee.
Kate ignored him. For two days, her opinion of Troy Mason had concentrated solely on his departure. When he charmed his way home with her from a bar in Española, he needed a place for one night. So far, he’d hung on for four weeks.
He growled again.
“I don’t think so,” Kate replied, her eye glancing at his naked body that now bored her to contempt.
He stretched and scratched himself like a happy pet. He guessed he’d have to get his own coffee.
“Did you try the pick-up?” he asked, trying to fake an interest in Kate’s pain-in-the-ass daughter.
“I didn’t get that far down the road.”
“She’s probably there with August.”
“Probably,” Kate said.
“What you got going today?” he asked, ever familiar and easygoing. He seemed to have all the time in the world.
“Besides kicking your ass out?” she winked.
“I still got the rings to finish.” His own wink slow and suggestive as if everything about a car suggested a woman’s body.
Kate had to admit mechanics were the centerpiece of her sporadic romantic life. In the mountains, they vied with underground chemists as the most important of the practical arts.
“There’s a mess in here to clean up.” Kate’s gaze swept the room past the hanging bed, wood stove, sink. Everything needed dusting. Always. The rugs needed beating. A load of wash waited to be run and line-dried before the rain. Another pile, board stiff from sun, needed folding. Her work table, a solid door on two sawhorses, was in disarray.
Kate’s work wasn’t dependable or lucrative. The best you could say about growing medicinal plants was the satisfaction it brought her. Although the mainstay of her scanty livelihood, gas to Santa Fe and Albuquerque and a bite of lunch too often devoured any profits. If the car broke down, it put her in debt for months. In the fall, she would have to reconsider other options.
“I got stuff to run to Old Town,” she said.
Troy was amused. In general, women amused him, especially those with modest schemes for success.
“What stuff?” he indulged her. He found women quaint.
“Sage, borage, mint, black cohosh, broom, it’s the car holding things up.”
“It’ll be finished this morning. You want things done right?”
“Shit,” she sighed.
“You know what’s holding me up, baby? It’s something bigger than an engine.” Troy’s cloying complaint. “With what I’m waiting on, you can buy twenty cars.”
Kate’s lips twisted. Having to listen to Troy’s bullshit was part of the penance of having listened to it in the first place on a starry night at Shorty Stack’s Bar and Grill, aided and abetted by a few margaritas. She’d believed him. It was the same bright-eyed hopefulness that endeared her to the farmers of Zamora. She believed.
The drifters who appeared from time to time in Kate’s life wanted to fix her car, chop her cords of wood, build a shelf or shed, work in the garden. It was barter economy. Her end was shelter, food, sex. For a brief while, it was a pleasure to have reminders of adult male company. Occasionally, the man confessed to love her, hoping for an indispensable place in her domestic life. Within weeks, Kate had tired of the arrangement. “Intrusion,” she called it. “Invasion” if it got bad.
Without qualms, Kate asked them to leave. Sometimes, there was a feeble protest but rarely trouble. After all looming in her backyard were the vestiges of Coronado’s royal loyal army. If it was a question of logistics, she gave them a ride out of Zamora to Santa Fe and loan of a few dollars. Loan was a misnomer. None of them ever paid her back.