not, you know, the campiest flower on the bush, don"t get me
wrong. But obviously, here,
manliness
was going to be
important.
Frank smiled, a little too much as if he knew what I was
thinking. “Okay, kiddo. Let"s get your stuff inside.”
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Louise Blaydon
8
I snatched my valise out of the trunk before Frank could
get to it, grinning too hard to cover the strain of its weight.
“Sounds like a plan. Lead on, noble Francesco!”
Frank laughed, a short little sound in his throat, and
shook his head. “First on the left, if you"ve forgotten,” he
said, scooping up the rest of my things in his work-hardened
arms.
I threw him another grin and led the way indoors.
MY BED at Frank"s place, I remember, always seemed like a
prison-board when we went to the ranch before, but
evidently my dorm-room student life had hardened me. I fell
asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow, and
woke to the glow of an amber dawn inching through the gaps
in the curtains. I lay still for a moment or two, just watching
the light intensify, thinking about how it looked almost as if
the window frame were catching fire. But this was a ranch,
and ranches wake up early. There was a familiar commotion
going on outside, men shouting indistinctly in the distance,
and the constant mooing of cows protesting at their
treatment. I lay there another decadent minute, luxuriating
in the warmth of my cocoon. And then, with a monumental
effort, I threw back the covers and swung my legs over the
side of the bed.
Normally, I only dress quickly when a room is cold.
There"s something about the cool starkness of tile against
your bare feet that makes you want to curl your toes and
shudder them into your shoes as fast as you can manage. By
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Louise Blaydon
9
this logic, I guess my little bedroom at the ranch should have
had the opposite effect, because the tile there was still
pleasantly warm to the touch, the polished kiss of it oddly
soothing to my feet. But this was my first morning, and I was
still mindful of the promise I"d made to myself the night
before. I was gonna show Frank what I was made of, and
already I was the laziest son of a bitch on site. So I hauled on
my jeans without even stopping to think; skinned into my T-
shirt and fastened up my belt and my shoelaces like I was
being timed. Catching sight of myself in the mirror, I was
pretty content with what I saw. Maybe the earring could have
stood to go, but I was fond of it, and I had no desire for the
damn hole to close up "cause I"d taken it out for the summer.
It wasn"t particularly noticeable, anyway, except from time to
time when the sun flashed it up in passing. My hair, for
once, was something close to its natural black, and my skin
had already picked up some early summer color. In the
southwest, people tend to assume we"re Latino, and I don"t
usually correct them. I reason that Italian-Americans
should
be more qualified to be Latinos
than anyone else, even if
what most people mean by it is something altogether more
Spanish. In the glass there, I thought I looked pretty
unremarkable. There were plenty of slim young men on
Frank"s land, browning like nuts as the summer"s heat
increased. I could do my bit without attracting any attention.
The moment I stepped outside, I doubted my
convictions. It couldn"t have been much past six thirty, but
the place was already a hive of activity: guys in beat-up Levis
stalking past with hay bales on broad shoulders; and cattle
trooping in neat files down to the sheds for milking. I stood
on the edge of all of this organized, heavy-duty chaos,
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Louise Blaydon
10
looking on as my stomach sank into my totally and utterly
inappropriate boots.
“Shit,” I muttered, as I watched a guy chivvying some
renegade bull back into its pen. “Aw,
shit
.”
“
Problem?”
A soft voice, lightly accented, and rich with amusement.
I whipped round, withdrawing my hands from my pockets
instantaneously. Another habit I hadn"t yet managed to kick,
even though my jeans were far too tight for it to look
anything other than effete, at best.
There behind me, surveying me with the corners of his
wide mouth quirking, stood a guy. One of Frank"s rancher
guys, to be precise: a loose-limbed, dark-haired, caramel-
colored twenty-something in a well-worn hat and jeans. His
hands were casually in his pockets, too, but somehow the
cut of his pants, while rewardingly tight—a requisite for
riding, I reminded myself—prevented the stance from
appearing fey, the way my skinnies tended to make it.
Nothing about this guy, in fact, could be called skinny. The
muscles in his forearms showed as ripples under the bronze
of his skin.
“No problem,” I assured him hastily, when I could trust
myself to speak. “I"m just new around these parts—or new to
ranch work, anyway, if not to this ranch itself. I"m Alex.” I
held out my hand.
“Frank"s nephew,” the young man said, knowingly, the
corner of his mouth turning up a little more. It should have
been irritating, that he already seemed to know who I was,
but somehow, it seemed more charming than anything else.
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Louise Blaydon
11
Maybe the fact that I was distracted by his smile had
something to do with it.
“You got it,” I confirmed. “Alex Arzano.”
“Oro,” he reciprocated, taking my hand in his, just as I
was about to withdraw it in embarrassment. The
rrr
rolled
easy as thunder over his tongue. “Oro Torres. This is my
third summer here.”
“You from around here?” His grip was firm and warm. I
didn"t want to let go, which of course is why I did so as soon
as I was able. It wouldn"t do me any good at all to get
attached to a guy like this, all easy swagger and brawn. But
damn him, with his unexpected warmth, he wasn"t making it
easy.
“I grew up down near Santa Fe,” he said, shaking his
head slightly in response to my question and laughing
shortly. “Closer to home than you expected, right? Folks up
here always assume I must be Mexican because of my
accent.”
“I hadn"t noticed,” I lied.
He smiled, and countered, “You had. But you weren"t
listening properly, were you?” He laughed again, not at me,
but with me, and I felt myself soar a little, despite myself.
“My parents are Spanish. Real old Spanish, from Spain. It"s
my first language.” He shrugged. “Mexican Spanish is
completely different.”
“I know that,” I told him, earnestly, and then laughed
back. “You guys lisp.”
“That"s right!” He grinned at me, and shifted his weight
in the dirt. “Important distinction, man. We lisp because
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Louise Blaydon
12
we"re aristocrats. Don"t forget it.”
“Oh, I won"t.” I was leaning back a little, angling my
body toward him. It was an unconscious movement, the kind
of stance I took up in San Diego bars, entirely unsuited to
the bright dawn sun of a New Mexico cattle ranch, but I
wasn"t thinking. He was easy to talk to, this guy, this
Oro.
I
could see now that there might be something in this summer
for me, so long as I kept a hold on myself, didn"t let myself
get out of hand. If I could be content just to ride the ragged
edge of flirtation, enough that there"d always be a margin of
plausible deniability, maybe Oro and I could be friends, kind
of. Maybe we could have some fun.
“You an aristocrat too, hrrm?” He gestured at my hands,
which l had unconsciously stuffed back into my pockets in a
way that now felt abruptly and distressingly awkward. I
grinned at him nervously, and withdrew them again.
“I wanna do what common people do,” I quoted glibly,
the back of my throat tensing up the moment the words were
out of my mouth at the realization that this guy, unlike
everyone at UC San Diego, would almost certainly not have
Pulp"s back catalog memorized and on hand to quip with.
Probably he"d just think I was being an ass. But he went on
smiling, although he shook his head a little in a way that
told me he thought there was some reference in there
somewhere, but that he was missing it.
“Well,” he said, tipping his head toward the long shed
that ran along the outskirts of the great dirt-field where the
majority of the work seemed to be going on, “I"m sure I can
fix that for you, if you want some help getting started.” The
gesture was an obvious invitation, and, combined with the
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Louise Blaydon
13
half-step he took in the direction of the shed, I deduced that
he wanted me to follow him. My hands, forced out of their
usual hiding place, felt over-large and superfluous. I found
that I had no idea what to do with them, and quickly tucked
them behind my back.
“Thanks,” I said, my gratitude so heartfelt that I was
sure it had to be fully audible in my voice. “Simple things
first, I think.”
“Oh, I can find you simple,” Oro said, his voice thick
with amusement as he led the way in long, certain strides,
the pointed toes of his boots leaving triangles of purpose in
the dust. “Things don"t get simpler than mucking out.”
I should have known that was coming. I snorted, and
kicked up a little cloud of dust as I tripped after him. “They
don"t,” I conceded, humbly. “I"m sure that"s the best place to
start.”
“It is,” Oro informed me brightly, shoving open the half-
gate of the long building, which I now determined was most
definitely a stable, divided up into a number of neat little
stalls. When I had followed him inside, he bolted the gate
behind us, and cast about the room with his eyes, evidently
in search of something. The something turned out to be a
spade, which he located quickly, and pressed into my hands.
“Which ones need doing?” I asked him, my heart sinking
a little as the weight of the spade registered. It was only a
spade
, for crying out loud. Man up, Arzano.
“You"ll know.” He tipped his head again in the direction
of the stalls. “I"ll be back in...” he looked at his watch, a glint
of leather and silver against the brown of his arm “say an
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Louise Blaydon
14
hour and a half? I expect progress, aristocrat.” He winked,
and tilted the brim of his hat in my direction, a quick switch
of his hand knocking it back into place in the moment
immediately following. Deft hands, and not a born laborer"s
hands, either. I forced myself to divert my energies away
from that particular train of thought, and nodded my assent.
“There"ll be progress,” I promised. He grinned, and
walked out,
snicking
the bolt neatly back into place behind
him.
I soon discovered that he hadn"t been kidding when he
said I"d know which stalls were in need of attention. The
horses—of which there weren"t too many, really, given that
this was a cattle ranch where the horses" main function was
to help with herding—were all out for the day, hard at work.
Looking at the stalls, though, my heart didn"t exactly grow
fonder of them in their absence.
Put simply, they stank. The horses may have been
absent, but they had left their mark behind. As I wandered
from one end of the row of stalls to the other, it became
evident that not just one or two but all of them were severely
in need of a thorough cleaning out. Oro had been right, of
course, in that this was hardly a task requiring any great or
specialized skill, but my heart still sank at the mere idea of
embarking upon it unaided. Spade in hand, I wandered in
some desperation back to the main door of the stable and
peered out. Oro was nowhere to be seen. The brown dust
yard outside the door was quite empty, all the laborers
having long since departed for enterprises rather further
from the main hub of operations. It seemed that I was quite
on my own.