This time Mike and Kane did exchange looks, but it was a look of pride on Mike’s part, as though he’d told his brother that Sam was the bravest person in the world and here was proof.
As they started talking, right away Samantha could see things that needed to be done, such as who was going to play Doc and what did Doc look like as a young man, and where were the headquarters for the many meetings that were going to be needed, and where were his parents staying, not, she hoped, in a hotel.
Kane sat back and drank a cup of coffee while he watched Sam and Mike argue over having his relatives move into Mike’s town house for the duration. “They are perfectly happy in their various hotels. They have room service, maid service—and I have peace and quiet and privacy.”
“All of New York is room service!” Samantha snapped at him. “And where is your brother staying? Your twin brother and his darling children?”
“Those brats are anything but darling!” Mike half shouted at her. “They’ve already eaten half my roses this morning and one of them dug a hole in my garden you could drop a car into. If I let them in my house, they’ll destroy this place.”
“Oh, is that it?” she asked, her mouth in a tight line. “It’s your house, your relatives. Not any of it is mine, I guess, not even the upstairs. I should have understood that from the beginning, after all, I’m just your tenant and nothing else. I have no rights.”
At that Mike took her in his arms. “Ah, baby, that’s not what I meant. Of course you have rights. If you want all of them, cousins, whatever, here, then you can have them.”
Looking over Mike’s shoulder, Samantha winked at Kane. She may have played dirty in the fight, but she’d won, and wasn’t that what counted? Kane raised his cup to her in silent salute.
31
After Samantha got over her initial qualms about the feasibility of trying to recreate a moment of the past, she went to work with a vengeance. The first thing she did was invite everyone who was to be involved in key roles to the house for dinner and a planning meeting.
“And I will cook,” she said, to which Mike began to guffaw, saying that to her cooking probably meant punching the telephone buttons until her fingers were sore. Ignoring him, Sam gave Mike and Kane a very long grocery list that included such things as fresh cilantro, green chilies—“not those awful canned kind”—cumin, piñon nuts, and posole.
By the evening, when Mike’s relatives arrived, the house was redolent with smells of chili, corn, and beef. Mike, Kane, and the twins had spent the day being ordered about by Sam as though they were in the army, as she gave them onions to chop, chilies to roast and peel, and, for the boys, bread to tear into pieces for bread pudding.
Everyone arrived hungry. While Mike poured margaritas they began to organize the recreation of the long-ago evening.
Jubilee with his mean-looking gray-haired granddaughter in tow came, but Jubilee sent her home after the first five minutes, leaving Ornette to stay with his great-grandfather.
It was as everyone was eating plates full of enchiladas, relleños, posole, and pinto beans, exclaiming with every bite about how hot the food was and saying they couldn’t eat it even as they reached for more, that Samantha began to believe that it was really going to work, because people were already talking of revealing secrets. Jubilee said that whoever was going to be directing Scalpini’s men had better talk to him first. And H.H. (only the older children had been allowed to come and they were fascinated with H.H.’s tattooed hand) said he’d need to talk to Samantha/Maxie.
Halfway through the meal, when it was so noisy they could hardly hear each other, the front door opened and in came Blair, and she had Maxie on her bed, tubes connecting her to the machine rolling beside her.
“I tried to talk her out of it,” Blair said, wearing her doctor face. “But she begged me. Well, is there any food left?”
For a moment, everyone gave Jubilee and Maxie some time alone as they held hands and looked into each other’s eyes, sharing secrets that the others could only guess at. To the surprise of Mike and Sam, H.H. seemed to know Maxie very well. What’s more, his respect for her seemed to be something that was usually reserved for overlords or, at the very least, great wizards.
“Who’s going to play Doc?” Sam asked loudly, her hand on her grandmother’s shoulder, wanting to break the somber mood the evening had taken, for Maxie looked weaker every day. “Of course it would help if we knew what Doc looked like in those days.”
With those words Maxie became involved. All the way over in the ambulance that held Maxie’s bed and machines, Blair had told her about what they planned, so Maxie knew what was needed.
Blair reported to Mike that the bloodstain on Maxie’s dress was A positive, the most common type of blood. It could have been the blood of any number of people who were shot that night. It was not Michael Ransome’s blood, which was O positive.
After Maxie arrived, Daphne entered with six of her friends. The sight of Daphne brought a hush over the crowd, for she was dressed as gaudily as a Texas tourist in Santa Fe, dripping sparkling fringe, with black and white feathers sprouting from her shoulders. After Samantha introduced her to Mike’s family, Mike told them that Daphne and her friends were going to be the chorus and backup singers for Samantha. One of Mike’s teenage cousins gaped at Daphne. When he recovered his powers of speech, he asked Vicky if they could measure Daphne and her friends for their costumes. Vicky rolled her eyes skyward, but one of Daphne’s girls, looking at the clean-cut young men, said they’d not mind at all if the boys measured them—it would make them feel like schoolteachers.
When Samantha showed Maxie’s clothes to everyone, Raine said, “Nice shoes,” and they all laughed. Asking about the joke, Sam was told that Raine’s mother loved shoes so much that she had a room full of them. Straight-faced, Sam asked, “What size?” which caused more laughter.
They ate bread pudding and bowls full of flan as they assigned roles and figured out how everyone was to rehearse. Some of them were to help the principals, such as Vicky, to make clothing, then later they were to be in the audience. Jilly was to be the resident historian, giving answers on any and all questions about what to wear, how to act, and what slang was to be used. Slang study was considered necessary after one of Mike’s young cousins said he was sure the word groovy came from the twenties.
Only once did Samantha think of calling the whole thing off, and that was when Mike’s dad, Ian, talked of arranging for machine gun practice. He saw Sam’s face and told her the guns wouldn’t be any more real than they were in the movies, but she remembered the death not too long ago of an actor who was playing with a pistol loaded with blanks.
It was late when everyone left, and there was lavish praise of Samantha’s cooking.
“I haven’t been in Santa Fe for years,” Ian said as he stood at the front door, “but I remember it as being a rather sophisticated little town.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s exactly unsophisticated,” Samantha answered without a hint of smile, “but the brides there do register their china and silver at Wal-mart.”
Ian chuckled all the way down the stoop while Pat and Samantha arranged for her and Ian to move into Mike’s house the next day. When she left, she kissed Sam’s cheek.
When everyone had left, Maxie with Blair back to t