Valley Fever by Katherine Taylor Page B

had enough, he kicked the dog (a cocker spaniel called Tutu, the paper said), wounding its hind leg. The two neighbors then engaged in a fistfight, and Emory, ten years younger, got the better of Bill. Minutes later, Bill returned to Emory’s house with a handgun to put eight bullets into his neighbor’s knees, chest, and head. Bill then drove to the Chevy’s at the Riverbend Shops and shot himself in his car. What astonished me the most was that while Bill was firing, Emory never turned his back. And why did Emory open his front door in the first place? Reading The Fresno Bee could give you a pretty good idea of what people were like.

 
    8.
    â€œYou know what Charlie and I talk about most of the time?” Anne said. “Other couples.”
    â€œWhat about other couples?”
    â€œYou know, we judge them. Assess how miserable they are.”
    â€œAre they miserable?”
    â€œThey’re just bored, most of them. Bored bored bored.”
    â€œAre you bored?”
    â€œI don’t think bored is the word,” she said.
    I waited for the word. “What’s the word?” I said, finally.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “ Lonely ?”
    She had driven up for the weekend. Charlie didn’t come. I tried not to wonder too much about Anne’s relationship with Charlie.
    â€œI’ll ask you something,” she said that night.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDoesn’t lots of casual sex make you lonesome?” We were sitting in the kitchen, in the dark, waiting for the night to cool the house down.
    â€œWho’s having casual sex?”
    â€œSex between friends. It makes you feel loved for a second, but it really just puts an exclamation point on your loneliness.”
    â€œI’m not having sex with any friends.”
    â€œNot everything is about you, Ingrid.”
    I went away to school to get away from Anne. Not just to avoid her popularity or her success or her criticisms, not just to avoid being compared with her, but to avoid hearing her voice or seeing her face. There are times when that feeling seems juvenile and distant, and times when that feeling is immediate. Visceral. It’s no coincidence that I came back from Massachusetts just as Anne left for college.
    â€œI don’t see any sex as casual.”
    â€œBut when you’re with someone for a long time, like me and Charlie, the sex feels very casual then, too.”
    â€œPlease, Annie, I don’t want to talk about your sex life.”
    â€œDon’t be such a puritan. Let’s have drinks.”
    She arrived around eight in the evening, having missed the mean heat of the day. She’d come directly from voice-over. (Anne never called the show “the show”; she only ever called it “voice-over.”) “Why don’t they have the air-conditioning on in here?” she said.
    â€œIt’s only me. I don’t want to run the air when it’s only me here in the kitchen.”
    â€œWell, now it’s you and me. Jesus, Ingrid, run the air.”
    â€œWilson didn’t tell me not to worry, you know.”
    â€œWilson, God. Felix is loving this, I’ll bet.”
    â€œHe’s been kind,” I said. “Sometimes I think you say things just to be ornery.”
    â€œI’m telling you, Felix only cares about Felix. He’s probably encouraging the bank to take the land back so he can gobble it up.”
    â€œHe’s doing what he can. He’s buying the juice.”
    â€œHe gets a great price, Inky, and it’s the best juice in the valley. He’s lucky he gets that juice.”
    â€œWell, you know everything.”
    â€œI’m just telling you. You never trust my instincts, and my instincts are always right. What’s all this Ararat brandy?” she said, checking in Dad’s liquor cabinet, seeing the twelve bottles Mom had had delivered to the house. Emilio at Fiesta Market on Avenue 7 let Mom buy