Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things(v1.0)(html) Read Online Free PDF Page A

beads. There was this store in Laguna Beach that sold
beads—fantastic hand-painted ones, all colors and sizes and shapes.
We'd drive all the way up there from San Diego to buy them." I still
had some of the prettier ones, unstrung how, in my jewelry box.
    "You were a regular little hippie
child, weren't you?" Hank said. "I never would have guessed. When I met
you at Berkeley, you struck me as such a ... well, cheerleader."
    "I was. Captain of the
high-school squad my senior year. The hippie stuff was strictly
masquerade; it made us feel with-it and wicked. I hardly ever smoked
dope until I got to Cal, and I only attended one feeble peace march.
Then, when I was in college, the energy had kind of gone out of the
Movement, and besides, I was too busy studying and working to have the
time." I'd put myself through the university, working nights and
weekends as a security guard, poring over my textbooks during the long,
fallow hours.
    Hank nodded, his gaze far away, seeing—what? The young man and woman
we'd been? The idealists with all of life ahead of us? And was he
comparing those people to the ones we'd become: in his case, the
disillusioned but ever-hopeful dreamer; in mine, the realist whose
cynicism was thus far untainted by bitterness?
    I said, "Can I keep the gun and this . . . whatever it is?"
    He roused himself from his reverie. "Sure. I doubt the Salvation Army
would want the whatsis, and we'd better hang on to the gun for a while,
until . . ."He let his words trail off, unsure what that eventuality
might be.
    "I'll put it in the strongbox where I keep my own gun.
It'll be safe there. By the way,
before they
pick up the furniture and boxes, you ought to look
through the ones I've set aside in the dining room. There's a lot of
personal stuff, plus a fairly valuable baseball-card collection. It
would be nice if Hilderly's kids had the cards, plus other things to
remember their father by."
    "You're right. I'll see that they
get them."
    I helped Hank clear the remaining
cupboards, then offered to drop the keys at the landlady's, since he'd
mentioned she lived in my neighborhood. He said he'd take care of it,
then added, "I meant to tell you, I'm cooking chili at my flat Monday
night, in honor of Anne-Marie's birthday. Jack and Ted'll be there, and
Rae and Willie. I'd like you to come, too."
    "Rae and Willie—that's getting to
be a pretty steady thing, isn't it?"
    "Appears that way. Do you
disapprove?"
    Since she'd started seeing Willie
Whelan some months before, I'd harbored certain reservations about my
assistant's new relationship, mainly because I know Willie's myriad
faults altogether too well. He is a friend of Hank's from his Vietnam
days, and a former fence who—as he puts it—has "gone legit." What
started as a small discount jewelry store on Market Street had turned
into a gold mine for him, with branches all over the Bay Area, and he
takes great pride in the fact that he—like his arch-competitor at the
well-known Diamond Center—performs his own television commercials. On
late-night TV you can usually see him luring the young and gullible to
acquire gems that they don't need, to establish credit histories that
will set the stage for future judgments against them, and—if by some
miracle they don't default—to surrender a good portion of their
lifetime earnings to Willie Whelan.
    Willie is, in many respects, a
great guy—provided you don't buy anything from him or take him too
seriously. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my bright,
young, recently divorced assistant was seeing him.
 
    I said to Hank, "It's not my
place to approve or disapprove. I just hope she doesn't get hurt."
    "Would be a shame, so soon after
she got rid of Doug-the-asshole, as she's so fond of calling her ex.
But what about it—will you come for dinner?"
    I checked my mental calendar. I'd
planned to suggest to Anne-Marie Altman, Hank's wife, that I take her
to lunch to celebrate her birthday, but with this new