The Desert Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

because for the life of her she couldn’t understand what it was with Denny and Pepper, after all she loved them both and yet they said such tearing things about one another, Denny said terrible things and Pepper just totally ignored him, treated him as if he wasn’t there.
    “I wish you wouldn’t cook eggs in that makeup, it’s grotesque, you know,” Pepper said, after another yawn. Pepper’s hair was coal black and cut very short, which she felt was the height of fashion just then, also it was handy, three strokes of a brush and she was ready for school or whatever. She stretched out a leg and flexed it a time or two. Her legs were so much like Harmony’s that every time Harmony noticed she thought well that stuff about genes has to be true, she’s even got my kneecaps. Only since Ross had been kind of a shrimp maybe Pepper wouldn’t get quite so tall, which would mean she had a chance to really go somewhere as a dancer, Madonna, her teacher, had already let everybody know that Pepper was the most talented young dancer in Las Vegas.
    “Well, the car konked out and Wendell was fixing a flat for somebody and didn’t know exactly what time he could make it with the tow truck,” Harmony said. “I wanted to hurry up breakfast in case you have to hitch.”
    “Forget it, I’m not hitching,” Pepper said, without changing expression. She had such a crisp voice, sometimesit startled Harmony, she just delivered her statements with such authority it seemed there could be no denying them.
    “Pepper, you can’t just not go to school because the car konked out,” Harmony said. “Life has to go on, even if we don’t have a car right now.”
    “Who said anything about life?” Pepper said, looking at her in that way she had which was so cool Harmony often felt a little unnerved, just at the thought that her own daughter could be that cool.
    “Well, school is part of life,” Harmony said, feeling it wasn’t entirely an adequate remark as she sat a nice plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of Pepper. She had already squeezed the oranges and was pleased to see there was nothing at all wrong with Pepper’s appetite. She killed the orange juice in about four swallows and started eating the scrambled eggs, despite the fact that Harmony had cooked them with her makeup on.
    “Make Denny pay for a taxi if you want me to go to school,” Pepper said between bites. “He did ruin a perfectly good car that wasn’t his in the first place.”
    “It wasn’t perfectly good,” Harmony said, wishing she had got to the point where she could stop taking up for Denny, he didn’t deserve it, the fact was he had probably totaled the car on purpose just because he was mad at her for refusing to call in sick the afternoon he wanted to go to the lake and do cocaine. Before he had come to Las Vegas he had done stunt driving in L.A. and had bragged any number of times that he could total a car and walk away without a scratch should the mood strike him, which it had and which was exactly what he did.
    “Look, it ran and I could have taken my driver’s test in it if your fucking idiot of a boyfriend hadn’t destroyed it,” Pepper said. “I could have taken it in Myrtle’s car only now you tell me you’ve ruined that one too.”
    “It’s not ruined, Wendell just needs to work on it alittle,” Harmony said, trying to be reasonable. Pepper had the advantage of being able to sound more reasonable than anybody else, even Gary got defensive once in a while when Pepper chose to really challenge one of his theories or something.
    “Anyway, it’s a station wagon and you know how hard they are to parallel park,” Harmony said.
    Pepper finished the eggs and sort of cleaned out her jaw with her tongue before she took on that comment.
    “You’re the one who’s paranoid about parallel parking,” she pointed out. “I can parallel park the Buick perfectly well.”
    It was true—the test would undoubtedly be a pushover for