Round Rock Read Online Free

the San Francisco planning board and lobbied for historical preservation at any and all costs. A slim, muscular woman with prematurely white hair and a crisp, patrician manner, she had been a promising ballet dancer until family pressure and a foot injury sent her back to college. Thereafter, her histrionics were staged in zoning battles and a few instances of civil disobedience. She’d grown up in the architectural wonderland of Pacific Heights, and as an adult, she fought to restore it to a glory that neither she nor possibly the district itself had ever known. Red had seen her weep with rage at the sight of a bulldozer near the Presidio. Yvette was articulate, militant, and convincing, and her cause was fallen elegance. She was, in short, a rich girl who loved a shambles. Providing, that is, that she could set to and clean it up.
    Red Ray made the down payment on the old Sally Morrot ranch with the fat contingency he’d received from helping a quadriplegic become a multimillionaire quadriplegic. He didn’t breathe a word of his plans to Yvette, just lured her to a spa in Ojai for the weekend and, on Sunday, took her for a drive through the nearby countryside. He drove up the Victorian’s palm-lined driveway and, parking by the sweeping front steps, handed Yvette a key at the exact moment that her mouth started working in silent outrage at yet another crime against architecture. The oxidized, slightly bent brass skeleton key had no function, of course, as there was no glass in any of the windows and any child or dog could’ve pushed open all the downstairs doors. The key, obviously, was purely symbolic, and it inspired Red to an even greater act of symbolism. He reached in front of a shockedYvette, opened the glove compartment, pulled out a bottle of Dewars, and emptied it out on the ground. Joe, their three-year-old son, was asleep in the backseat; Red woke him to extract a pint of Johnnie Walker Black from the accordion file he’d been using as a pillow. Red poured out this scotch as well. Then, he took the keys from the ignition, went to open the Mercedes’s trunk, and did likewise with another bottle of Dewars and a liter of clear mirabelle brandy.
    Yvette was impressed—stunned, really—by the house, though skeptical about what had already become something of a ritual disposal of booze. She agreed to make the move, take on the restoration, but refused to quit her job, taking a year’s leave of absence instead. She also made Red put their Filbert Street townhouse in her name. “I just need a place to run,” she said, “if you ever start drinking again.”
    Red had no official program, no medically supervised detoxification. He simply hoped that in the shuffle of moving his addiction would get lost, like a misrouted box of books or a disoriented house cat.
    Yvette decided to serve as her own contractor and hired a crew of carpenters. She subcontracted the plumbing and electrical work. In a gleeful fever, she tore up rotten floorboards, sanded and polished mahogany baseboards and cocobolo mantels. She hired five craftsmen to replace the stained-glass work alone, and drove clear to San Diego to talk to a ceramicist who could copy the destroyed Italian kitchen tile.
    Red rented a storefront in the sleepy hamlet of Rito and opened a law office. No more boilermakers for his lunch. He bought homemade tamales and tart pineapple
paletas
at the Ibañez Grocería and washed them down at his desk with Diet Pepsi and selections from a tattered copy of
Shakespeare: The Complete Works
, a book he’d always wanted to read. He’d exchanged big-time for simple—simple personal injuries, simple divorces, simple tax work and wills, and just enough of each to keep him busy five or six hours a day. He came in at nine or ten and left his office at three. Sober as God. Yvette met him in the front hall of the house and, after a few weeks, even stopped sniffing at his breath before giving him a quick kiss. That kiss was never