While Drowning in the Desert by Don Winslow Page A

won’t.”
    So I guess I told him.
    “So Hannigan picks up his eye and goes into the washroom. I go with him. He starts to wash the eye under the tap when he loses his grip and the eye goes down the drain. We call the owner, Jack Donahue …”
    “Heinz is coming,” Sami said.
    “Yippee.”
    “… who was married to the former Dorothy DeLillo, whose sister was Marjorie DeLillo. Together they used to be the former DeLillo Sisters.…”
    So Heinz was coming. At least we’d get to meet the whole brain trust. Heinz was coming, and I didn’t expect Sami to try anything horrible until the boss got here. In the meantime there was a lot to do. It wouldn’t hurt to get a fire going, because desert nights can get very cold, especially for an old man.
    So I gathered up some slats from the old shack, borrowed Nathan’s lighter, and got the fire going. Then I sat back on an old log, watched the fire, and the bright stars, which in the desert night looked like they were about ten feet away, and thought about old men and babies.
    And lost chances.

Chapter 16
    Maybe it was hormones.
    But it just bugs me that whenever a woman gets truly emotional about something, men ascribe it to hormones. Like they’re something we made up.
    Hormones are real.
    So is wanting a baby and wanting it now. I mean, I was no Suzy Creamcheese sorority chick when I met Neal. My biological clock was already ticking and if Neal wanted to wait two more years I just didn’t think I could stand it. My biological clock was becoming a time bomb.
    So if it was hormones, so what?
    These hips were made for babies.
    And the dumbshit would make a great father if he’d just get over his own screwed-up childhood, and he knows it. But I guess I was a little rough on him. Anyway, after I talked to him on the phone I went upstairs and checked the calendar, did the temperature thing, and discovered that the old ovaries were in overdrive.
    We’re talking prime time.
    And I thought, hell, if I can get my butt down to Palm Desert maybe I could surprise Neal and we could do it before he had a chance to start whining about how screwed-up he is.
    So I phoned up Peggy Milkovsky and she phoned up one of the crop-spraying outfits and sure enough there was a pilot heading down to Indio, which isn’t too far from Palm Desert, and he said he’d be happy for the company.
    I put a few things in a bag, met the pilot at the airstrip and got to Indio just as the sun was going down. I found Nathan Silverstein’s address in the Greater Coachella Valley phone book, got myself a cab over there and rang the bell.
    To tell the truth, I felt kind of pathetic standing there on the front step, with my bag, my bubbling ovaries, and my round heels. Talk about easy.
    Chalk it up to temporary insanity, please.
    A woman answered the door. I think she was expecting somebody else because she was wearing a white see-through full-length negligee, high heels, and red lipstick.
    “You must be Hope White,” I said.
    “That’s right, honey,” she said. She gave me a woman’s once-over and added, “And Nathan must be doing better than I thought.”
    “Is Neal Carey here, by any chance?”
    “No, he’s not.”
    Then I did the weirdest thing.
    I started to cry. I don’t mean sniffle, either. I started to bawl.
    I’m no wussy. I’m a rootin’, tootin’ cowgirl mountain woman. I’ve birthed calves, gelded horses, and stitched up drunken cowboys. I’ve comforted abused kids, stuck shotgun barrels into the crotches of their no-good daddies, even listened to Neal Carey try to sing and never cried. I don’t cry easily.
    But there I was, standing in front of a nearly naked woman bawling my eyes out and I don’t know why.
    It’s just that at that moment I really needed to see him and he wasn’t there.
    So I was weeping and Hope White pulled me inside and sat me on on the couch and actually said, “There, there, dear…”
    I was just blubbering.
    “You’re looking for Neal?” she said