Blue Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

though it was his old, lightweight brown one. He had removed his tie on board, folded it neatly, and put it in his pocket. The other passengers, mostly young families and retirees, seemed to pay no attention to him, but in a deliberate way. He was very aware of
them
, and it took him a while to realizewhy.
He was the only person on the plane who wasn’t Anglo.
This phenomenon was new to him, and he couldn’t decide what he thought about it. A big part of his success in his career had always been that he didn’t stand out. This allowed him to study the people around him and the situations they were in without being observed himself. The last thing he could be called was exotic or flashy, not where he came from. This wholly white world might be a little tough to blend into.
    He raised his arm and shot his cuff to look at his new gold watch. He was grateful he didn’t need to reset the time, since Spokane was Pacific time as well. He didn’t yet know how his watch worked. There were several knobs and buttons, and he assumed he would need to work a combination of them to reset the time, date, alarm, and other functions if he needed to. The dial would light up at night, someone pointed out to him. Unfortunately, he had left the instructions for the watch in the packaging it came in, after he’d opened it and slipped it on to the apparent delight of his former coworkers, who clapped while he did so. They had all contributed to buy the retirement gift, and Celeste, his longtime partner, had taken it to a jeweler to have the back inscribed:

FOR 30 YEARS OF SERVICE

    WHILE WAITING for his two bags to arrive on one of three carousels in the airport, Villatoro continued to study the people around him. Families had rejoined, and there was excited chatter. A soldier in desert fatigues had returned from Iraq, greeted by balloons, hand-drawn posters, and his extended family. Villatoro nodded at him, said, “Thank you for your service.” The marine nodded back.
    If Villatoro were to characterize the residents in a general way, he would say they were plainspoken and blunt. Flinty, maybe. He noted how many of the men wore cowboy hats and big buckles and pointed boots, and how it looked like clothing on them and not a costume. Women and children wore bright colors and opened their mouths wide when they talked, as if it didn’t matter to them if anyone heard their conversations. As the bags began to spit out onto the carousel, he saw the flashing of their clear blue eyes.
    At the rental car counter, a boy with moussed hair and a starched white shirt and tie told him the company could upgrade his reservation from a compact to a midsize for only five dollars more a day.
    “No thank you.”
    “But it looks like you’ll be in the area for a week,” the boy said, looking at the reservation on his computer monitor. “You might be more comfortable in a larger car. I’m sure your company would understand.”
    “No,” Villatoro said. “There is no company. I’m retired, as of two days ago. The compact, please.”
    The boy looked hurt. Villatoro could see a blackboard in the office behind the counter that listed all of the employees by name with check marks to indicate how many upgrades they’d sold. He looked at the boy’s name tag, saw his name was Jason, and saw that Jason was leading the pack.
    “Arcadia, California,” Jason said as he keyed Villatoro’s license number and address into the computer. “Never heard of it.”
    “It’s a small town,” Villatoro said. “About fifty thousand people.”
    “Is it near L.A.?”
    Villatoro smiled bitterly. “It was swallowed by L.A. like a snack.”
    The boy didn’t know how to answer that, and Villatoro wished he hadn’t said it. Too much information.
    Jason said, “You wouldn’t believe how many folks from L.A. we rent to.”
    “Really?” Villatoro said.
    “A ton of them have moved up here,” Jason said, pushing the button to print out the contract. “Have you ever been