Golden Orange (14 page)

She was prompt. She pulled up in the alley behind Winnie's apartment at noon and tooted the horn. He practically jumped down the termite-eaten staircase. A weekend in the desert with Tess Binder!

The drive to Palm Springs usually took two hours when the getaway from the coast was early in the day. It was very hot during spring break, and there was the usual crush in downtown Palm Springs, with thousands of teens and young adults cruising Palm Canyon Drive. Drinking beer and smoking dope. Tearing the clothes off girls dumb enough to cruise in convertibles. Getting busted by the roving police patrols.

Tess knew enough to avoid it at this time of year. She passed the Palm Springs cutoff and stayed on Highway 10 all the way to Washington Drive and then turned south toward the Santa Rosa Mountains. All she'd say to Winnie's repeated questions about their destination was that she guaranteed he'd like it.

He figured she'd rented a condo at P.G.A. West, especially when the signs pointed toward that huge golf course development.

“Hope you don't wanna play golf this weekend,” Winnie said.

“Why?”

“I saw that monster course on TV. They got bunkers bigger'n Kuwait.”

“We're not playing golf, old son. We're going to swim and lie in the sun.”

“Yeah? That's okay with me.”

“And make love.”

“That's
definitely
okay with me.”

“And ride horses.”

“Horses? Wait a minute!”

“I'll teach you. I used to ride at the polo field out here. That's
another
thing my dad wanted in addition to a little sailor: a little rider. And what'd he end up with? A woman who wouldn't be caught dead in jodhpurs. When I think of boots I think of hours of dressage, with Daddy standing over the trainer saying, ‘Tessie isn't tired. Tessie
loves
it. Don't you, Tessie?'”

“Didn't have much of a relationship with your father, did you?”

Tess took her eyes off the road for a minute. She looked at Winnie with some surprise and said, “I adored my father. He was a
god
to me.”

Tess turned abruptly onto a dirt road in La Quinta, meandering toward the Santa Rosas. Around them were ranches and groves full of orange trees and date palms. “All this'll soon be gone,” she said. “What with all the land developers and earth movers.”

Finally he said, “Hey, lady, where the hell you taking me?”

“Here,” she said and turned the Mercedes onto another narrow road, this one paved with asphalt. She continued along the road for five hundred yards, turned right and stopped.

It was a man-made oasis: three acres of date palms and orange groves and eucalyptus, and a huge tile fountain in the center of a motor court. Beyond the motor court a hacienda: Spanish colonial revival, a two-story with red Roman tile roof and blindingly white stucco walls rounded off at the corners.

“It was built in the heyday of California architecture,” Tess explained. “Nineteen twenty-eight.”

The house had small single windows covered with iron grilles, and a green awning, held by wrought-iron pikes, sheltering the front door. Winnie smelled real jasmine like Tess's perfume, and saw a pergola with trellises covered with bougainvillea. There were stables to the right, just past the motor court, in keeping with the architecture of the house but obviously built in recent years. Winnie could see a white horse poking its face through the window of its stall.

“Who owns this place? Zorro?”

“It was my father's weekend home,” Tess said. “Which he called
El Refugio.
His refuge.”

“Who owns it now?”

“My father's friend, Warner Stillwell.”

“He buy it?”

“My father left it to him.”

“To a friend? Why didn't you get it?”

“I got some money,” she said. “Enough to survive on, Daddy thought. Come on, let's look at the stables. I want you to meet my pals.”

As Winnie and Tess crossed the motor court, the shaggy barrels of dried fronds beneath the green of three gigantic Mexican fan palms rustled in the wind. Winnie and Tess had to turn away from a gust that suddenly burst through the canyon, capriciously exploding into whirling dust devils in the open desert beyond. When the wind became still, lavender petals from the bougainvillea littered the grass beneath the pergola.

“Desert breezes,” she said. “Unpredictable. And these mountains? I never feel
safe
here. Flash floods, burning heat, sudden gusts of parched wind. The desert gives me a sense of … foreboding.”

The stable was cool and shaded. A horse whinnied, then another. They walked past several empty stalls before Winnie saw the white Arabian horse. She poked her dish-face at him and batted her brown eyes. He patted her nose gingerly. When she tried to nibble his fingers, Winnie jerked his hands away and Tess laughed.

“She won't bite,” Tess said. “Sally's a love. She doesn't see many people anymore. Just needs to be ridden.”

They passed two more stalls and a loud snort startled him. Tess walked to the stall door and said, “Hello, handsome.”

He was a huge horse, seventeen hands high. Silver with a black mane and a white star on his forehead.

Tess reached for his head and whispered to him, “How's my big boy? How're they treating you?”

“You wouldn't have any silly thoughts going round in that busy brain a yours, would you, Tess?” Winnie said. “About
me
riding that brute?”

“You'll be riding Sally. I'm riding Dollar.” Then she turned to the silver horse and said, “You still love me, don't you, handsome?”

“Last horse I rode was on the merry-go-round at the Balboa Fun Zone. I was drunk and fell off. Didn't know horses got this big 'less they were pulling beer wagons on TV. He's some stallion.”

“Gelding,” she said. “Used to be a stallion, but he was unmanageable. Once he kicked the door off his stall and ran all the way down to the fire station. Took my father five hours to get him home. And still Daddy refused to geld him.”

“What changed his mind?”

“Dollar kicked Warner and broke his femur. Then he bit me on the hand. Had to have sutures.”

“That did it?”

Tess took Winnie's arm and began walking back to the motor court. “No, that didn't do it. My father was a great romantic. He'd
never
have gelded that animal. I did it when Daddy was on a winter cruise with Warner. I tamed Dollar. Daddy was furious of course, but then, I never could please him.”

When they got to the cactus garden in front of the house, an old Mexican in a cowboy hat turned the corner, pushing a load of manure in a wheelbarrow.

“Miss Tess!” he said.

“Jaime, this is Mister Farlowe,” she said.

Winnie smiled, put out his hand and said, “Winnie's my name.”

The old man wiped his hand on his jeans, pumped Winnie's hand and said, “Hello, sir. Happy to meet you.”

Tess continued walking Winnie toward the house, saying, “Jaime, we're going to have lunch and a swim, and late this afternoon I'd like you to put the tack on Sally and Dollar.”

“Yes, Miss Tess,” the old man said. “Will you need me on the ride?”

“No, we won't need a
vaquero
behind Mister Farlowe,” Tess grinned. “He'll show Sally who's boss.”

“Oh, my!” Winnie said, following Tess into the house. “Does Sally need a
boss?
Oh, my!”

Three steps led down into the large living room, which looked even larger because of the adzed open-beamed ceiling. The boards between the beams were stenciled with decorative Moorish patterns. There was a huge fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the large red Mexican tiles on the floor. The house was full of Southwestern art, Indian artifacts and potted palm and cactus.

There was a partner's desk by a window with leather executive chairs on each side of it. Beside the fireplace were two well-worn comfortable leather easy chairs, side by side: matching chairs with ottomans.

They walked back to the foyer, where the ceiling was low enough for Winnie to see the hand-adzing on the beams.

“I'm speechless,” he said.

“Daddy had taste,” Tess said. “The architect who built this was famous for many houses in Beverly Hills and Pasadena. He built this one for my grandfather actually, but Daddy redecorated it, oh, about thirty-five years ago. Very little's been changed since then.”

“I'd
never
leave here,” Winnie said, “if it was mine.”

“Oh yes you would,” she said. “You haven't experienced a desert summer. Come on, I'll show you the rest.”

Tess's shoes clicked on the red tiles that covered the entire ground floor of the rambling great house, which was mostly in shadows now that the afternoon sun was passing the Santa Rosas. There was a long heavy wooden table in the center of the dining room, with padded leather side chairs. There was a small table off in the corner of the dining room with barrel chairs and cushions covered by a woven Indian design. This corner could be lit by the wrought-iron floor lamp and used as an intimate nook for dining away from the main table.

Tess noticed Winnie looking at the little table for two, and she said, “
That
little table wasn't here when I was a girl. When my mother was alive.”

The kitchen was surprisingly small, given the scale of the house. But Tess explained that the architects of California's Golden Age didn't worry about kitchens, in that the lady of the house wouldn't be doing much work in there anyway. Meal preparation was for servants.

“We're all alone in the house,” Tess said. “Lauro and Alicia won't be back till Sunday. They've taken care of this place since nineteen forty-nine. They're even older than Jaime. The whole place is old. Sometimes it makes
me
feel old.”

“It makes me feel like I'm in an old black-and-white movie!” Winnie said. “I'm crazy about it! So where's the guy that owns the place?”

“Warner's not in good health. He goes to the hospital from time to time. I phoned and got his permission to use the ranch for a few days. He's good about that. Any time I want the place, I just have to phone. He has a cottage in Laguna Beach where he goes, and leaves this place to me.”

“How often do you come?”

“Last time was two years ago,” she said. “Or was it three? I had a sudden urge to ride with my father. But Daddy said he was getting too old to ride. That trip wasn't a pleasant one.”

“Think they might have a beer in the fridge?” Winnie looked at his watch, making sure it was late enough to drink. Late enough had come to mean after 11:30
A.M
., which was close enough to lunchtime, the hour that Golden Orange high-rollers guzzled booze at power lunches. Or so Winnie supposed.

“Now for the most dangerous part of this holiday,” Tess said, opening the double doors of the refrigerator. “And I don't mean horseback riding. I mean eating
my
cooking. Grab a beer. No, grab two, and get yourself out to the pool for twenty minutes while I create.”

The 2,500-square-foot patio was guarded on three sides by the walls of the house, with lemon and grapefruit trees partially enclosing the fourth side. A swimming pool was in the center, a classic oval design, bordered with multicolored ceramic tiles. The pool was spotlessly clean and had an ancient diving board set into the deck with polished brass fittings. Winnie was sure of one thing. Someone had
loved
this house and still did.

He couldn't decide between a chaise or a hammock. Finally he decided on the hammock by an overhanging balcony with a dark wooden balustrade. The terrace on that balcony appeared to belong to an upstairs bedroom and was overgrown with jasmine. The smell was more intoxicating than booze.

The last time Winnie had tried a hammock was in Nam, and he'd been a
lot
thinner then. He tested the lines that secured the thing to a pair of Indian laurels seventy feet tall, their tangle of limbs entwined as one. It was a custom hammock made of white braided cotton with a blue-striped head pillow. Winnie got into it gingerly, and put one bottle of beer on his chest and the other beside him on the red tile. Potted pink and white hibiscus was flourishing at the base of the Indian laurel trees. The beer was Mexican, appropriate to a house like this.

Winnie Farlowe decided that no matter what happened, no matter how soon all this with Tess Binder might end, this romantic day in this romantic place was going to be the happiest day of his life. He'd finished the second beer and was dozing, the sway of the hammock putting him to sleep, when he heard Tess open the French doors in the dining room.

“Come on in!” she yelled. “Let's see how brave you are!”

When he got inside he found that she'd set two places, one on each end of the dining room table. There was patterned silverware and linen napkins and a chafing dish in the center.

“I cheated,” she said. “When I phoned, I told Alicia to prepare something I could finish up when we got here. So if this is any good, Alicia gets at least half the credit.”

It was. Tess served him chorizo and eggs, and a dish of guacamole on the side with corn tortillas and homemade salsa that he knew a
gringa
couldn't have made.

“
Love
it!” Winnie murmured three times during the lunch. He glanced at the intimate dining area in the corner, perfect for two, and wondered why they'd eaten at the big table. Tess hardly touched a bite.

“I'll do the dishes,” Winnie said when he'd finished.

“Of
course
you'll do the dishes, you lazy lout,” she said, “while I put our things away in the guest bedroom, the one directly overlooking the pool. After your chores you can go up there and get out of your clothes and I'll meet you on the diving board.”

“Shoulda brought my Speedos,” he said. “The swimsuit I brought is the kind that comes off if you dive.”