Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

that affect the hearings? Tampering? He was not tampering; he was a family member whose advice had been solicited on a delicate matter that had nothing to do with their legal dispute. He’d wondered at first if Robby might have had something to do with this meeting, but it was impossible. The girl was guileless.

His drink came. The cool tequila felt good in his veins. The mariachis were on to “La Norteña,” a happier piece. He lifted his glass. “Here’s to you and your baby, Dominique.”

She smiled gently, a ray of happiness in there somewhere.

Chapter 50

April 29, 1986. Lizzie stood alone in the center of the children’s room in the Los Angeles Central Library. For Barton Pitts, she’d given her reading in the library’s main room, beneath the rotunda, under the sweeping Cornwell murals depicting California’s history, a spectacular setting but she might as well have been in the Hollywood Bowl for all the intimacy. ForTransportation Conspiracy and Sister Angie, she’d chosen the children’s room, long and narrow, crammed with books and tables under exposed beams and leaded windows and a dozen tall reading lamps; large enough to seat two hundred yet intimate like a comfy den or the corner of an old bookstore. For her fourth book, she was back again.

“Why did you write this book, Ms. Mull?” asked a prim, middle-aged lady probably more comfortable with Austen or Trollope than with contemporary memoirs. “It is so personal, so—so intimate. Your son can’t be too happy. Didn’t you feel you should hold something back?”

Laughing would have been rude. She’d finished her reading, now the readers got their turn. “You tell what you know. I wanted a story about my city in my century. The Mull family tells that story, from the aqueduct to Playa Vista. It’s all in there, the good and the bad. Any memoir that holds back or embellishes is a lie. My son can write his own book.”

She’d aged well, some said better than her sister, but then she was a year younger and her life had been less turbulent—at least in the beginning. Her thick flaxen hair had turned gray and grown thinner, which she didn’t mind. In her seventieth year, her weight hadn’t changed more than a few pounds, nor had anything given out on her yet. Her eyesight wasn’t what it was, but she remained healthy and active and walked constantly around Brentwood, even more now that Joe was gone. It was a good neighborhood for walking. She greeted neighbors she’d known for years.

With Joe, they would write mornings and walk in the afternoon. She set up her desk in Robby’s old bedroom, leaving Joe alone to work in his study. After work, they’d take a light lunch, putter around in the garden, pick some oranges off the Sevilla for orangeade (sweetened, of course) and do a little more work before heading down San Vicente to Thirty-One Flavors for coffee and ice cream. Sometimes they walked up to Sunset. There was more traffic than there once was, but they’d scrapped the trolleys hadn’t they? The traffic was no better anywhere else, so they stayed put. They’d grown used to Brentwood.

When Joe died and they buried him next to Terry in Westwood—just down the path from Baby Snooks—she’d thought of moving into something smaller but as things turned out was glad she didn’t. Little Maggie moved into Robby’s old room when she arrived, and Lizzie moved her work into Joe’s study, redecorating to not drown in nostalgia. Before long, she was walking Maggie to school, the same walk Joe once made with Robby, and home again to make coffee and eat the bagel picked up at the bakery on San Vicente. She’d be showered and at her desk by ten and sometimes go straight through to mid-afternoon when school was out. Twice a week she spent the day in research at the central library. She was as busy as ever.

“What’s your sister think about you revealing all her secrets?” asked a neat little Miss Marple type in rimless spectacles and a gray chignon. She sat next to the Austen lady.

“Maggie’s sitting behind you. You can ask her at the signing. I didn’t reveal all her secrets because I don’t think I know them all—thank heaven.”

She laughed with the audience.

“Oh, I will ask her,” said the lady, turning around to look. “I want to know all about Howard Hughes.” More laughter.

Following the question period, the audience would queue up at the table next to the podium for the signing. One of the librarians was there to help. A young girl roamed the room with a microphone. Always happier asking than answering, writing than speaking, Lizzie had learned to endure these sessions. Readers generally were fans, though not always. She’d been threatened over the Pitts book and sued over the transportation conspiracy. She’d learned to scrutinize her audiences and decided this one was fine except for the blond boy who kept moving around in the back, in and out, never sitting, something on his mind.

“Are you worried about libel suits?” asked a knife-faced man in a baggy brown suit and wearing an ugly purple and gold tie. A reporter? “The Chandlers can’t be too happy.”

“Newspaper people don’t sue each other,” she answered. “We don’t want readers to get any ideas.”

It was a large, mostly friendly crowd. Library people, she’d discovered over the years, were different from bookstore people. She’d done readings at Campbell’s in Westwood and Vroman’s in Pasadena, pleasant enough places, but her favorite site was the central library. Something about a library, especially one as grand as the central, commanded a reverence you didn’t always find in bookstores. The silence? Or to be surrounded by the prophets of the ages staring down on you from the heaven of their high shelves. Be in awe. Be respectful. Check bad thoughts at the door. She looked out on an audience of maybe a hundred and fifty, smiled toward Maggie and Cal, still