Lost Echoes

36

A week passed.

It went by like a bullet, because he was seeing Talia, a lot. And all over, and in all kinds of positions. Next to a nonstop flight to heaven with free peanuts, things couldn’t have been better.

“You should meet Daddy,” Talia said.

“Daddy?” Harry said, not knowing what to think of this. Was it that they were so serious he should meet Daddy? Or was it that Daddy thought anyone dating his little girl should be met?

What was up?

As for himself, was he serious? He certainly thought so. Felt high all the time, way he felt when he drank, but without the hangover.

She had surprised him this morning, when he’d been sleeping in, and he answered the door in his boxer shorts.

“When?”

“Today.”

“Today?”

“Now.”

“Now.”

“Harry. Are you a parrot?”

“Parrot?”

“Now stop. He’s out at the shooting range.”

He looked at her, sitting on the edge of the couch so only a pinpoint of her fine ass was actually making contact with it. She never seemed comfortable there, but it was what he had. And he wasn’t nuts about going to her parents’ house. He didn’t know what it was like, but he knew she had money, and he knew he did not.

“I should clean up then.”

“No. You look fine. I like you like you are.”

From past experience, he knew his hair was sticking up like a rooster comb, ’cause it always was when he woke up, and he had a couple days of whiskers going, breath that would melt a wax block, and this was brought all the more home because she looked like a million bucks and change. It was a good bracer to meet a girl in a black miniskirt first thing in the morning, a halter top so tight you could tell her religious affiliation, but it also brought home the fact that he looked like a cardboard-box wino.

“I thought you should meet him, and now’s the time. He’s out at the gun range.”

“Gun range?”

“There’s that damn parrot again.”

“I don’t know, meeting a girl’s father at a gun range—it tends to make a man nervous. Especially since we’ve been doing more than swapping stories.”

“He’s very cosmopolitan.”

“Yeah, but I’m not. Guess I get to comb my hair and put on some clean undershorts.”

“If you hurry. Don’t bother to shave.”

Harry brushed his teeth, changed underwear and combed his hair, and put on the best pair of jeans he had. They were only moderately faded, and the cuffs were ragged where he had been stepping on them with his boots. As he pulled on his socks and tied his tennis shoes, he wondered what in hell Talia saw in him. What made him so lucky?

He took one more trip to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, said, “Sure I don’t have time to shave?”

“He’ll only be there awhile, then he’s so hard to find. He has all kinds of meetings and the like, and he doesn’t always answer his cell phone.”

“This shooting place. They haven’t killed…anything out there, have they?”

“What?”

“Killed anything. Been any accidents?”

“Harry, sometimes you can be so strange.”

She drove them over in a very new and very nice and very red sports car. That was good. New cars were good. They hadn’t had a lot of chances to get wrecked, not as much time to conceal bad memories.

The shooting place was a field, really, not far out in the country. There was a gate you went through, and to get through it you had to push code buttons.

Talia did just that, and they cruised in.

They parked near a long, low building, and walked out back. There were three men out there with shotguns, and three younger men pulling the skeet launchers.

They walked back that way, and Harry stole glances at Talia, way she walked, way the short dress sheathed her thighs, and how she stood tall with her breasts jutted out like high beams.

As they neared, Harry saw the young men at the skeet launchers turn to look at her. Two of the older men looked as well. One was a slightly heavy guy with a jet-black caterpillar mustache, hair gone slightly south, wearing clothes that could be called sporting clothes if you could keep them ironed while in the woods. He looked about fifty, but as he got closer, Harry realized he was much older. Sixty-five, maybe even right at seventy. Well preserved. Money could do that. The man gave them a brief glance.

Without asking, Harry knew he was her father.

Talia leaned to Harry, said, “He dyes his mustache, you know.”

The others were almost in a trance, watching Talia come toward them.

When they were close, Mr. McGuire said, “And who’s this?”

“Harry,” Talia said.

“Harry, huh?” the father said.

“Hello, Mr. McGuire.” Harry stuck out his hand and Mr. McGuire rested his shotgun on his shoulder and held the stock with his left and shook with his right.

“Nice to meet you. You out of razors?”

“Well, I—”

“I just love him like he is,” Talia said. “And he’s not like us, Daddy. He doesn’t worry about money. Or appearances.”

“I don’t know I’d say—” Harry started.

“He and I are quite fond of one another,” Talia said.

“Say you are?” Mr. McGuire said.

“Very fond.”

“That’s very nice, dear.” McGuire turned his attention to Harry, studied him, said, “You will drop by and visit with us sometime, won’t you?”

Before Harry could respond, Talia said, “He works at a bookstore.”

“That right?” Mr. McGuire said.

“He may come to our party, Daddy.”

“Really,” Mr. McGuire said, shifting his shotgun, looking off at a ridgeline of trees as if he might have seen a flying saucer pass over them.

“What party?” Harry asked.

Neither Talia nor Mr. McGuire bothered to explain. They were looking at each other now the way gunfighters would, waiting for someone to make the next move.

“Well, nice meeting you, Henry,” Mr. McGuire said.

“Harry,” Harry said.

“Of course.” Mr. McGuire turned his head, said, “Pull.”

The man near him, on the ground, looking up at Talia as if she were a work of art, took a moment to understand. McGuire repeated himself, and the young man pulled.

The skeet sailed, and Mr. McGuire effortlessly exploded it.

As they walked back across the field, past the building, Harry looked back. Everyone but Daddy was eyeballing Talia’s ass.

Harry said, “That was odd.”

“Think so?”

“Well, yeah.”

“It wasn’t really. He takes his shooting seriously. He’s killed animals all over the world. A few endangered species even. He likes to preserve them himself.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really. He’s not very strict, you know. I think he liked you.”

“Liked me?”

“Sure.”

She drove away from there quickly and dropped him off out front of his place.

“You going to come in?” Harry asked.

“No. I have some errands. Be a dear and call me later.”

“Sure.”

Harry got out and closed the door.

For a long time he stood on the curb looking in the direction in which Talia and her fine red sports car had departed, trying to figure out exactly how he felt about things. Had he just been a dirty pawn in a dirty chess game, or were Talia and her father just odd, like the rich could be?

And if he was a pawn, what exactly was his role in the game?

There was an answer in there, and he thought maybe it bounced up against his head once, but he didn’t catch it, and whatever might have been there didn’t bounce back in his direction again.

He did ask himself a question, however, and he asked it aloud:

“What party?”