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Show 115 The Schoefields and the Piersons came at 3:00 to the door. They came together. "Well, hello!" Hunt said. He raised his palm and slid his tongue into one cheek, a mock of plug tobacco. "Howdy, Neighbors!" But the humor sank. "Come in!" He tried recovering but felt, inside, a confused adrenalin. "I'm Hunt. This is Leah." He was dressed like a golfer. "I'm Leah. This is Hunt," Leah said, her eyebrows arched. "Andi"/ "Lane"/ "Paula"/"Rex." All the names were exchanged. Hunt had made sangria, "the rocket's red glare," he called it, and everyone took a glass -- except Leah, who had asked for gin fizz and Lane Pierson who said, "I stopped drinking punches in college," and had Cutty Sark on the rocks. The neighbors, Hunt and Leah, sat outside by the pool. There was no need to "tour." They all knew the house; they'd been in it. Still, Andi Pierson and Paula Schoefield did, both of them, say, "I love your rugs!" Outside was dry; the sun, chalky, almost, in the air; the suburban afternoon quiet -- except for a dog, and some random firecrackers and, somewhere, a neighbor's dim alarm system, triggered, Hunt and Leah were told, by the desert wind. Rounds of what-do-you-do's began: "What do you do?" / "What do you do?" / "What do you do?" What Rex Schoefiled did - and he seemed almost apologetic to Hunt - was medical supplies: calipers, scalpels, scissors, scopes, scanners. His wife, Paula, was -- Hunt saw her, her skin's whiteness - "just a housewife." Andi Pierson had "a number of organizations." And her husband, Lane, did marketing. |