The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“You may not have that choice,” he said.

“I asked Valerie to run away. I suspect we’ll get married one day. Nobody is going to run me off, Mr. Epstein.”

“I’m not trying to run you off. Valerie’s choice is Valerie’s choice. I’m telling you to be careful. You’re not a listener.”

“No, sir, you’re threatening me.”

He opened a penknife and began cleaning his nails. “Drink your orange.”

“Drink it yourself,” I said.

I got up from the booth and walked outside into the wind. Across the street, men and women and teenagers whacked golf balls high into a sky marbled with crimson-tinted thunderheads, the balls dropping and bouncing like hailstones on a green carpet that once was a feeder lot. I heard the screen door of Mr. Epstein’s club swing back into place behind me.

As a young person on the edge of discovering the world and shaking away the scales of your youth, did you ever have a day when you knew that for the rest of your life, you would be grateful that your father was your father and your mother was your mother, no matter how flawed they might be?

THAT EVENING SABER picked me up in his heap and we headed out to Bill Williams’s drive-in across from Rice University. Saber also wanted to go to the roller rink.

“Valerie’s old man was buds with Krauser?” he said.

“Maybe they were just fellow commandos or intelligence guys, something like that,” I said.

“Lose the doodah, Aaron. You’re talking about the guy who might become your father-in-law.”

“Okay, it’s a depressing prospect. What’s that tinkling sound?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

I looked at the backseat, then down at the floor. “What’s in those bottles?”

“Security,” he said. They were dark green, tapered at the neck, plugged with corks, rags tightly wrapped and taped around the bottom.

“Are they Molotov cocktails?”

“For backup, that’s all.”

“Your heap is a potential firebomb.”

“That’s the breaks. There’s worse things than going out in a blaze of glory.”

The summer-evening regulars were dragging South Main—low-riders, hoods, convertibles full of girls, bikers hunting on the game reserve, football jocks, scrubbed kids who went to church on Wednesday night, somebody lobbing a water bomb, music trailing from radios, Hollywood mufflers throbbing on the asphalt.

Saber pulled up to the drive-in and ordered fried chicken for both of us. Jo Stafford was singing “You Belong to Me” through the loudspeakers.

“This song haunts me,” I said.

“What for?” Saber asked.

“Because it’s the way things should be. Except they’re not.”

“You’d better stay out of your own head.”

“I think we got sucked in, Sabe.”

“Are you kidding? You’re a rodeo hero, and I’m back in action and at the top of my game. We’re unstoppable.”

I watched a car full of hoods go down the aisle, the radio blaring. “How’d you know Grady was shacked up in that motel?”

“Manny saw him and followed him there. Then he ran it by me.”