Page 72 of The Happy Month

He caught my drift and said, “Quickly. I still want to get things done.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

July 31, 1996

Late Wednesday afternoon

Ahundred and twenty-degree heat made me think summer in Palm Springs was a lot like winter in Chicago: You stayed indoors, did your best not to go outside, and when you did it was just to run to and from your car. Scalding heat and frigid wind chill were distinctly different experiences, but the results were the same.

When we got into the Legend, I turned the car on and the air conditioning came right on, full blast. I touched the steering wheel and immediately pulled my hands back. It was scorching.

“I’m not going to be able to drive for a few minutes.”

“Hold on,” Ronnie said and jumped out of the car. I watched him go back into the hotel wondering what exactly he was doing.

While he was gone, I flipped through the radio channels until I got one that sounded local, giving a news report. Yes,it was a hundred and twenty-degrees, which was something of a record.

Then Ronnie was back, coming out of the hotel with a large plastic bag of ice. He got into the car and instead of handing it to me, placed it on top of the steering wheel.

“How are we going to find this place?” I asked while we waited. “Tramview Road.”

“I could go back in and ask Bart?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s in north Palm Springs. It’s not a big place. We should be able to find it.”

“Okay. I’m up for sightseeing.”

Once the steering wheel had cooled off a bit, we drove north on Palm Canyon until we reached the city limits. We turned east onto Gateway Drive and started zig zagging around. Fifteen minutes later, we hadn’t found it. I would have rolled down the window and asked someone for directions, but there was no one around. Apparently, it wasn’t a good idea to walk your dog when the pavement was melting.

“Should we find a gas station and ask?”

“Go a little further north,” Ronnie suggested. “The tram is up that way.” He pointed at one of the mountains above us.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Of course, I’ve been here before. You didn’t think I was a virgin, did you?”

That gave me a very good idea what he’d done on his last trip. I would need to make sure I didn’t disappoint in that department.

And then we found it. It was the very last street before the desert began again. Parts of Tramview Road had recently planted trees that were meant to cut the windcoming in off the desert, and they probably would sometime in the next century.

When we found Philburn’s house there weren’t any fledgling trees across the road just a pile of rocks. The brown house was flat-roofed with a metal box sitting on top like a cupola. It wasn’t a cupola; I was fairly certain it was a swamp cooler. Something people bought when they couldn’t afford central air-conditioning.

The yard was nearly dust, and the driveway was cracked and crumbling. A fence circled the property as though there was something to protect. We walked up the driveway to the front door. I knocked.

Sophia Hadley answered the door. She was about fifteen years older than I was, making her in her early sixties. She’d been the fantasy of a lot of the teenaged boys I’d grown up with. She’d spent much of the early sixties making movies that required her to wear a bikini. I’m not sure I ever saw her on screen fully dressed.

Ironically, or coincidentally, or something like that, she was wearing a bikini top, and a light shawl wrapped around her waist. Out of character for an actress her age, she looked exactly as old as she was. Which made me wonder if plastic surgery wasn’t allowed outside of Los Angeles County.

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Wallace Philburn.”

“Are you from the bank?”

“No, I’m not. I want to talk to him about his book,Canyon Girl.”

“A fan? Jesus. He’ll come in his pants.”