“I stuck with the Ferris wheel and the cotton candy and the ring toss, thank you very much.”
“Ring toss? Pretty rigged game.”
“It is.”
“Now why would you suspect me of such tawdriness and manipulation? Do I look like a fraud?” Patton’s skin was leather, and the lines around his lips grew deep when he grinned.
“You knew those elephants were coming. They use that trail often, don’t they?” she replied. She knew she had busted him. He knew it, too.
“I hoped we might see some elephants. But I didn’t know it. Big difference.” He chuckled and then waved at the elephants with the back of his hand as they meandered across the savanna. “I’m no carnie. If I’m a showman, I’m…”
“Go on.”
In a tone that balanced both sheepishness and pride, he said, “I’m Walt Disney.”
“And this is Disneyland?”
He looked down at his boots. “No. I shouldn’t have been so glib just now. This is most assuredly not Disneyland. This is a place where human beings, if they’re not careful, are going to die.”
“Then what did you mean? The scale of this world?”
He nodded. “Scale, yes. That’s a good word for it. Maybe even the best word. There’s nothing about this land that’s as small as a carnival or as predictable as a carnival.”
“Except those elephants. They were as predictable for you as clockwork.”
“Not really. I have hunches where we’ll see animals. I have experience. My team”—and he motioned at Juma, who was about ten yards away, pointing at the great pachyderms and explaining something to Carmen and Felix—“teases me about my sixth sense. Maybe I have one. But if I do, it’s only because I’ve been out here so many days and nights over so many years that I know what might happen. But I’m still just hoping to keep a lid on the chaos.”
“Was it easier? In the old days? I imagine the groups were smaller when you were hunting.”
“No. It was harder. I or someone in my care—a guest or a gun bearer—was more likely to wind up gored or maimed. Devoured. This is easier.”
“But not as much fun for you? True? Not as manly?” She regretted the last question the moment the three words had escaped her lips. She had meant it to be flirtatious and light: she was teasing him. But it was a mistake, and for a split second she felt it was the sort of horrific and demeaning thing her mother might say. God, was she channeling Glenda Stepanov?
“Hanging around with Katie Barstow and Terrance Dutton and Carmen Tedesco? How could that not be fun?” he responded, and she thought she had dodged his wrath. She hadn’t pressed a bruise, after all. Or he was just being gracious.
“You’re a diplomat, Charlie,” she said.
“Some mornings, I suppose, it isn’t easy for any of us to look in the mirror. Imagine running a fancy-pants gallery in Beverly Hills when your old man fought the Nazis.”
So, she had insulted him. There it was. Quickly she backtracked, a courtesy. “Seriously, we can’t be easy to manage. I didn’t mean anything by that remark. It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
But Patton was a hunter, a creature who viewed himself as the very top of the food chain, even if his perch there depended upon a double-barreled .84-caliber rifle. He wasn’t easily mollified. And now she had shown him her belly. “Nothing to apologize for,” he said. “How is that gallery doing?”
“Thriving,” she lied.
Without looking at her, his eyes lost to the shadow of the brim of his hat, he said, “You’ll get an Oscar someday. You delivered those two syllables with utter conviction.”
“You—”
“I just know you’re footing the bill for this dance. That’s all I know. And I, Miss Barstow”—and she understood that he had chosen the title because he wanted to denigrate her husband—“overstepped my bounds. Please forgive me.” He doffed his safari hat to her and then called over to Benjamin to start rounding up the team. He （and once more Katie thought the words had been chosen for her benefit） wanted to “get this show on the road,” a reference to carnivals and traveling road shows.
She felt bad about what she had said, but she was also miffed that Charlie would respond by demeaning David. And she felt something else, the sort of inchoate unease that often precedes a thunderstorm and one attributes merely to the idea that the air is charged. How much did Charlie Patton really know about the finances of David’s gallery? And why? It wasn’t as if the Los Angeles Times or Curator or Galleria had written about the place’s struggles. Art galleries opened and failed all the time. David’s hadn’t been in the news. Had David been discussing his business travails here with Billy, his oldest friend, and Charlie had overheard something?