In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

“Who knows?” she said.

“Want to take a walk down by the river? There’s a concert in the park tonight. Actually, my apartment is across the river from the park. Sometimes I listen to the music on my balcony,” he said.

“You saying you want to go to the concert or to your apartment?”

“Whatever,” he replied.

She rested her chin on her fist and looked directly into his face again. “You go to Vegas or Reno very much?” she said.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Because I go there, too. Know why?” she said.

“ ’Cause you never know what’s going to happen next. Twenty-four hours a day, you can have any kind of adventure you want,” he replied.

She kept her eyes on his and kissed the air with her lips.

A FEW MINUTES later, he and Greta were sitting on a grass embankment by the river and listening to a band pound out “The Eight-Thirty Blues.” The park was crowded with college kids, young couples with children, Frisbee throwers, skateboarders, hobos who slept in the willows along the riverbank, and punked-out street people who dealt drugs in the shadows by the public restrooms and looked as if they had been shot out of a cannon.

But Darrel had little interest in street dealers or the strips of maroon cloud on the mountains in the west or the yellow light that filled the sky or the breeze that blew off the water and smelled of fern and wet stone. Instead, his entire attentions were now focused on two people dancing on the clipped lawn in front of the bandstand—Amber Finley and Johnny American Horse.

Amber wore a knee-length black spaghetti-strap dress and Mexican cowboy boots, and danced with her fists held in the air, swinging her hips from side to side, kicking one booted foot when she made a turn, totally indifferent to the impression she made on anyone else. By contrast, Johnny American Horse looked like a post, his face shaded by a light-colored Stetson, his skin dark, his black jeans and tight-fitting silver shirt stretched to splitting on the leanness of his body.

Greta’s eyes followed Darrel’s line of vision.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“The country’s turning into a toilet,” he replied.

“It’s not that bad, is it?”

He picked a blade of glass off his shoe and flicked it into the breeze. “I guess not,” he said.

“You want to go?” she asked.

“I’ll go get us a couple of snow cones, then we’ll see,” he said.

He worked his way through the crowd to the concession stands that had been set up under a huge canvas awning. The band had stopped playing and he could see Amber and Johnny by the bandstand, talking to the musicians, Johnny’s arm draped across her shoulder. Darrel felt his jaw tighten, the fingernails of his right hand rake across the heel of his palm.

Then Amber left the lawn area and walked directly toward him, the black fringe on her dress swishing on her knees, the yellow light in the sky reflecting on her shoulders.

“Your snow cones, sir,” the kid at the concession stand said.

“What?” Darrel replied.

“Your snow cones? You want them?”

Darrel took one in each hand and found himself standing in Amber’s path, awkward, stupid-looking, like a giant clod just arrived from Nebraska, grains of colored ice sliding down his hands and wrists. Why was she bearing down on him? What had he done wrong this time? “Hi, Amber,” he said.

She turned, her blue eyes searching for the voice that had called her name. Then he realized she had been completely unaware of his presence in the crowd.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“Checking out the music,” he said, trying to smile.

“What is your problem? Are you following me again?”

“No.”