Destiny’s parents had given her a 1980 orange International Scout Harvester to take to school. She wondered as she drove to Grand Junction—with the windows rolled down all the way—whether the truck’s pungence of cow manure was her parent’s last subtle way of reminding her where she came from. She also wondered what clothes the other girls would be wearing and if she would stand out as a hick. And she wondered if her mother’s Thessalonian home schooling would hold her in good stead for the grueling nights of cramming and writing papers about the esoteric French poets of the eighteenth century and other topics she could only guess; and she wondered what her roommate in the dorm would be like—the usual college stuff. Unlike most kids her age, she did not go on a national college tour with her parents. Her mother had made all the arrangements herself—Destiny’s bout of premarital sex had nullified any right to input.
The Rocky Mountain School of the Professional Arts was located in a two story building in the Bookcliff Mall next to Big O Tires. She was enrolled, not in any liberal arts program like she thought, but in a three-week real estate licensing school. And she would not be housed in a dormitory filled with giggling young girls her age, but in the home of a fellow Thessalonian her mother had stayed in touch with—who also appreciated a good fight with the Devil.
“Mother, why did you do this to me?!”
Destiny was calling from the pay phone outside of the GNC Live Well vitamin store.
“Stop this preoccupation with yourself, young lady. I’m giving you a chance to redeem yourself in the eyes of God and your family.”
“Why does God care if I get a real estate license?”
“The recent sale of the Puster ranch has made your father and I consider divesting of some of our Vanadian property. Paying a broker 12% is not in the family’s best interest. Therefore, once you attain the license, you will do the transactions and that money will stay with the Believers.” Destiny just let the phone dangle and walked across the street where she drank seven shots and seven beers—each time toasting. After the third or fourth round, she had all the other people in the bar saying her toast as well.
“To your fucking mother!”
Most daughters get over their hatred of their mothers by the time they are nineteen. By that time, even they get bored of the sulking, door slamming, screaming, and crying. Unfortunately, Destiny never had the typical opportunities to vent these emotions—aberrant behavior at home was regarded as Devil’s work and treated with powerful tonic enemas if she so much as looked cross-eyed at her mother. Destiny realized that going home without a diploma would be physically taxing in the laxative sense of the word. So, she stayed in Grand Junction and created her own abbreviated college experience by getting high with the college kids at Mesa State and in three weeks, returned home to Vanadium, Colorado—Real Estate License in hand. However, she had no intention of ever living at home again.
“Can I help you?” said Cord Travesty, of Lame Horse Realty. He had heard the doorbell tinkle when he was in the bathroom, but neglected to give himself one last looking over in the mirror before coming out. Two telltale dabs of cocaine remained on either side of his nostrils. Cord Travesty was one of the many real estate agents who were now circling Vanadium. Five years earlier he’d worked for the Telluride Ski and Golf Company. That’s where he got his nickname, Cord—for the corduroy he groomed onto the slopes every night in a giant SnowCat. One night, during a storm, as he stared cross-eyed at the snow clinging to his windshield wipers on lower Bushwacker, he received a vision as to how he was going to break out of his working class rut. The answer was right in front of him. Cocaine. In the next six months, he acquired a pilot’s license and flew a twenty-year-old Aero Commander under the radar and down the Pacific Coast to Mexico. There, he loaded up at unmarked airstrips and then flew back to Telluride with his precious cargo. His main clients were the hippies in Telluride who pushed the miners out of town, then the TV and movie people who started buying property there, and then the Trustafarians—the kids of wealthy parents who hung out and struck a Rasta pose. The town was crawling with DEA men back in those days, but Cord had slipped through several big busts. However, after fifty trips to Mexico, he started feeling superstitious and sold his plane. With the cash that he kept hidden in the kitchen of his house behind a wall of wine corks, he bought two hundred acres of sheep grazing land that would eventually adjoin the airport. From that deal, he made enough to be a partner in the Staircase to Heaven development—twenty-five ranchettes that sold for a minimum of seven hundred thousand—and the Fool on the Hill Ranch. He now had his grubstake to play with the big boys. If he were smart, he’d parlay it into dirt where he’d have fuck-you money for life. Vanadium, the last big expanse of undeveloped ranch land, in Lame Horse County, was just that place.
“Is the manager here?”
“Yeah. I’m the owner.”
Cord didn’t look like a manager or an owner. He was dressed in a vintage cowboy shirt, jeans, and old boots that he had bought at a chic resale shop in Telluride. This was his new “look” to make greenhorns passing through think that he was a good old boy from Vanadium who knew what he was talking about.
Cord looked Destiny over as he sat down on one of three moth-eaten couches that surrounded a beat-up table. Not having desks in the office was another one of his ideas. Cord took a sip of his coffee from an Amerfarm Pesticide cup—another phony touch. To Cord, Destiny looked like she could be sixteen, seventeen—eighteen at the most. She was trying to act sophisticated, but he could tell she was wearing her black pants and white blouse from church choir. She, like most of the town kids that came in, was probably here to hit him up for money for the Vanadium school trip or money for the 4H.
“Um, I’m interested in working in your firm…?” Destiny was probably the last girl in the country to have picked up the annoying affectation of ending a sentence on the tonal upswing as if she were asking a question. “Is there any possibility of a position opening up here soon?”
“My firm.” That’s a good one, Cord thought. “Where did you work before?”
“Nowhere.”
“Do you have a real estate license?”
“Yes.”
Cord smiled.
“So far so good. Where did you go to school?”
“I recently completed the Thessalonians Home Study Course of Oxford, Mississippi.”
Cord tried not to laugh as he got up painfully from the couch. He was still having trouble with his ACL. He took Destiny by the arm and started to show her out.
“You’re the first person I’m going to call if anything opens up, Miss…?”
“Stumplehorst. Destiny Stumplehorst.”
“The Stumplehorsts who live up on the Mesa?”
“The cattle ranch, yes.”
Cord gestured for her to wait right there while he ran back in the office for a card. It would be real estate suicide to turn away the daughter of the largest landholder on Lame Horse Mesa.
“Here’s my card. Cord Travesty. Do you have a minute for a cup of coffee?”
“Uh, actually, no I don’t. I’m late for my meeting with ReMax,” she said disingenuously.
“Don’t bother with them. They’re assholes.” He closed the door. “Look. You do understand that we don’t just send agents out into the field. They have to work in the office for awhile to learn the business.”
“Well, sure. I’d be willing to do that,” Destiny said, not appreciating the full implication of that.
“Okay, then. It’s settled. You can start on Monday.”
She took a Spartan room at the Vanadium hotel, which had not been changed since 1946, but her newfound independence made it seem luxurious. She personalized it by putting a picture of her horse on the dresser next to the diaphragm that she had fitted by a gynecologist in Grand Junction when she wanted to strangle her mother.
She sat on the single bed looking down on Main Street and thought about Cord Travesty. He was handsome, and sure knew about 1031 Exchanges and Conservation Easements. Where was Buster, anyway? It wasn’t like he was there beating down the door to lay claim to her.