The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (the false prince TXT) 📕

Fox smiled. “De nada.” He headed for the ladder to the roof as she stepped into the house.

It wasn’t Nigel on the phone. It was Nigel’s editor friend, Jennifer, calling from New York and eager to hear all about Cooper’s biography. Which Nigel had neglected to mention wasn’t even started yet.

In the end, Maggie found herself telling the woman all about the book as she envisioned it—as Nigel had clearly intended. As she did so, she heard Fox banging loudly on the roof over her head.

• • •

Fox turned up the radio as he drove down from the Rincons, singing along with Luka Bloom’s “Diamond Mountain,” slightly out of key. The truck bounced from dirt onto solid paved road, and he switched it out of four-wheel drive. He made the turn onto Wentworth, then followed Speedway into town, watching as the roadside changed from horse ranches and pecan groves into a depressing modern maze of new construction, builders’ signs, and bulldozed ground barren of life where his beloved desert used to be. Every six months another piece was gone, and he would never get it back again.

Halfway into town the developments turned into used car lots, fast food joints, and shopping plazas standing half empty. But closer to the city’s heart the street turned back into one he enjoyed, lined with old adobe houses, Mission style and Mexican; houses meant for the desert and built on a smaller, more human scale. Fox maneuvered his truck through the tangled traffic around the university; past the second-generation hippies lingering on the sidewalks of 4th Avenue; under the tunnel and up to Congress Street in the city’s small downtown core.

He parked in front of Cafe Magritte, and then walked up to Dora’s gallery. He could see her through the plate-glass window, leaning on the counter, looking lovely but tired.

“What are you doing here?” she said as Fox came through the gallery door.

“Have you eaten? I’ve come to take you out. I’m headed out west to my mother’s place and I thought I’d come and bother you first.”

“Let me check with Dick and Marie if they can spare me for a while.” Dora disappeared into the back while Fox lingered over the handmade book displays and illustrations on the wall. Dora returned a few minutes later, an embroidered velvet purse over her arm. She was dressed in typical Dora style, like some cowgirl Pre-Raphaelite, in a long, full skirt, an antique shirt, her steel-toed boots and a Zuni bolo tie. Fox had the urge to swoop her up and take her dancing just to see that long skirt swing.

He said, “Where do you want to go? Magritte? The Congress Hotel?”

She chose the latter, and they walked together up Congress past the other galleries and shops. The Congress Hotel had been built in the twenties and renovated in the last several years as part of the Downtown Arts District that sprawled across several city blocks. The hotel was a wild-looking old place, its walls painted mauve and turquoise and covered with bright southwestern designs; its lobby full of old Mission couches and the tables of a small cafe. The bar beyond was a smokey affair filled with students, painters, musicians, and old cowboys. A dance club operated out of the bottom floor, and anyone who stayed overnight in the hotel was treated to wall-shaking music until the wee hours of the morning.

They parked themselves at a table in the lobby, which was nearly empty this late in the afternoon. The waiter was propping up the counter, an Anglo boy with Indian braids, so studiously laid back he was nearly comatose. He finally deigned to notice them and sauntered over to take their order, as if he was doing the greatest of favors. His cowboy boots were a neon blue so bright they made Fox’s wisdom teeth ache, and they looked like they pinched besides.

“Check out the quesadillas,” Fox suggested. “They make them with Brie and mango and I know that sounds just too damn hip for words, but it’s pretty good.”

“Sounds great. Will you share some gazpacho with me?”

“You’re on.”

The waiter wrote the order down and sauntered slowly away again. It worried Fox that he was not sauntering in the direction of the kitchen.

“This is my treat, by the way,” said Fox.

“What did you do, rob a bank?”

He smiled. “I’ve got a gig tonight. It’s good for a few bucks.”

“Which band this time?”

“I’m sitting in with Diamondback Rattlers, down at the Cushing Street Bar.”

“What do they play?”

“A little bit of everything. Tex-Mex, worldbeat, chicken scratch. They’ve got a didj player sitting in too, so I reckon it could get interesting. You and Juan want to come?”

“I’m beat, Johnny. Next time you play, okay? Have you asked Maggie?”

Fox shook his head.

“Why not? The woman has barely been out of the mountains since she got to Tucson. I bet she’d love a night out on the town.”

“Well, as much of a town as we’ve got around here.” Fox hesitated, uncomfortable. “I don’t think it would be her scene… Look, she was married to Nigel Vanderlin. That man plays the viol like he was the one who invented it. I play the accordion, for crissake.” To his disgust he could feel his face going red. And Dora didn’t miss that either.

“Fox,” she said, “I’ve never seen you get shy around a woman before.”

“Yeah, well, don’t rub it in, okay? I’ll get over it. Maggie Black’s not going to be hanging ’round here all that long anyway.”

“Now what makes you say that?”

“I’m just repeating what she says. That this is only a stopover, while she sorts out Cooper’s papers. Then it’s back to L.A., or maybe it’s Europe. Or Timbuktu…”

“But what about the house?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’ll sell it,” Fox answered moodily. “You think that lad took our order or has he just gone to take a nap?”

Dora looked around for the waiter and she didn’t see him either. She