Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) Read Online Free PDF Page A

after all —”
    “Tut,” she said. “They had their chance to stone me to death when I came and lived here with Nathan. Actually, we’d have to do a hell of a lot more than drive sedately into town for a cup of coffee together to get noticed around here. You forget, if you ever knew it, that this is one of the nation’s major centers for old hippies, and they do their best to uphold the reputation of the breed.”
    “Didn’t think they had those,” he observed. “It’s an oxymoron, isn’t it, an old hippie?”
    “No, it tends to be a pseudo-or-even-really-intellectual drunk, at least around these parts. With beads and feathers and as much hair as they can manage to hang onto.” She made a face. “Sorry, the inn always brings out the worst in me. Something about the place. Did you order our coffees?”
    “Couldn’t. Nobody’s come.”
    She leaned back perilously in her chair and shouted, “Marian! Can’t you send somebody with a couple of cups of coffee for us?”
    There came a hail in return, and Dorothea thumped down the front legs of her chair again.
    “The service in town tends to be amateur and terrible,” she confided. “They hire these kids, very cheap, who’ve come wandering out here for a taste of the high, free life, or the skiing, or whatever. You just have to try to get their attention as best you can.”
    “You know,” he said, “I didn’t come for the place. I came for you. I might as well tell you. I could easily have lived and died without seeing Taos and its old hippies and its young ones, but I had a compulsion to come and see you while I still could.”
    She said quietly, “I’m glad you did.”
    “You were smiling, and I made you stop.”
    “The hell you did,” she sighed, looking past him at the doorway. “George did, and, damn it, here he comes to do it some more.”
    Ricky turned to see a tall fellow in a three-piece brown corduroy suit and cowboy boots, wild brown hair frizzing electrically in the air, come loping down on them with a wave and a grin. Dorothea put on a soberly pleasant face but did not smile. Ricky thought of all the women he’d known to smile automatically when a man, any man, approached. It seemed suddenly not charm or courtesy in them but weakness and manipulation.
    “George, this is Ricky Maulders, an old friend,” Dorothea said. “Ricky, George Willis.”
    Ricky shook hands and sat back, already not liking George.
    George snagged a spare chair from the neighboring table and swung it round so that he sat spraddle-legged facing them, his arms folded across the top of the chair-back.
    “Have you heard?” he said. “They’ve thrown Rankovitch in jail. Well, dumped him in a psychiatric hospital with a ‘breakdown,’ which is the same thing.” George rushed on, full of outrage, pausing only when a blond boy with a sleepy look ambled over to take their order, at last.
    Ricky took advantage of the gap. “Excuse me, but are you speaking of Yuri Rankovitch, the pianist? Hasn’t he scheduled a tour of Canada and the United States next winter?”
    “Exactly!” cried George, giving the table a thump. “And we’d arranged for him to come out here as a special engagement and play at our New Western Music Festival afterwards.” And so on — much enthusiastic verbiage about the festival, the benefits Rankovitch would have contributed and gained in return, the loss his absence represented. But George had an idea. George wanted to dedicate the festival to Rankovitch and to oppressed artists everywhere.
    Clever George. What a puffed up ass, Ricky thought. How does Dorothea stand him? But of course it was obvious: this was probably one of Nathan’s acquisitions, just the sort of hanger-on that he used to attract, and now Dorothea was too polite to tell him to buzz off and leave her alone.
    But not too polite to deal with him, Ricky was pleased to note. “You want something from me, George,” she said. “What is it?”
    George grinned engagingly.