“You’ve never seen a play?”
“No, but it seems like there’d be … I don’t know, energy in the room. Musicals, especially.”
“How have you never seen a play? I was always having to go to some play. High school. College. Now, for that matter. Some girlfriend, dragging me along.”
She turned her head and looked at him. She was trying not to laugh, he could tell. “You’re going to ruin your sensitive image.”
“I don’t have a sensitive image.”
“You do with me. Well, you did.”
“Oh.” He digested that. “Ah. I get it. High school. Baby. Et cetera.”
“Bingo. Let’s just say that extracurricular activities did not loom large in my life. And that I didn’t go to football games.”
“You’re right,” he decided. “I’m not sensitive. I just now figured that out.” She laughed, so that was better. “And we’re here.”
“Wait, already?” She leaned forward to look out better. At what? At a plowed parking lot lined with berms of dirty snow and filled with cars and bundled-up figures in parkas. “It’s freezing out here,” she said. “Are they seriously going to stand around for an hour?”
“It’s North Dakota. It’s required.”
“Are you ready for this?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
She thought for a second about Harlan being nice to the driver, and whether he’d been making a point for her benefit, and then abandoned it. First, she’d swear he wasn’t that calculating, and second, she didn’t have mental space to contemplate more than the fact that they were here.
Harlan told the driver, “Keep going. Up to the front.” And he did. Slowly. Heads were turning, people moving towards them, then moving faster. They were making an entrance, then. She’d seen Blake part the crowd plenty of times. Some men just had that star quality.
She’d just never imagined herself making an entrance with one of them.
Harlan told her, “Be sure to zip up your coat, and put on your hat and gloves, OK? It’s going to be cold.”
“Did you call ahead?” she asked.
“Yeah. Called the mayor.”
The SUV stopped and Harlan opened the door. She asked him, fast, “Did you call your dad?”
“No. Hang on. I’ll come get your door.”
She stepped out into a wind that cut like a knife, thought, I’m the shield. I can do that, put a smile on her face, and told Dyma, who’d hopped out behind her, “Behave.”
“What, as opposed to telling everybody how boring football is?”
“Oh, no,” Harlan said. “Not another one.”
“You don’t think it’s boring,” Jennifer said. “You watch with Grandpa.”
“That’s right,” Dyma said. “So maybe I’m not the one who needs to behave.”
Owen smiled. Harlan laughed, then told Jennifer, “I’m going to hold your hand. That OK with you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Camouflage?”
“Nope,” he said, then told the heavyset guy who came hustling up in the kind of woolly hat with earflaps that you hadn’t thought actually existed in real life, “Hey, Mayor. How’ve you been? Jennifer, this is Frank Goodrich, who’s been mayor here about since I can remember. This is my friend Jennifer and her daughter Dyma, and our driver, Linc. You might recognize the fat boy back here, too. Owen Johnson. Well, you might recognize him. He just pointed out to me that people mainly recognize his butt.”
“Sure I do,” the man said, pumping Harlan’s hand, then Owen’s and, finally, Linc’s. “Glad to have both of you. All of you. Owen, our linemen are going to be tickled pink. Course, it’d be even better if we were watching you up on the screen today, but you can’t win ‘em all, I guess. Come on, now. We’ve got a load of people looking to say hi. Let me take you over here, first off. Billy Olsen from the Ford dealership is still our biggest sponsor, so be extra nice, OK? You know the drill for that. There’s some bratwurst I want to introduce to you, though, because Ivor Swenson’s outdone himself this year. You all want a beer?”
“No, thanks,” Harlan said. “Got to keep my wits about me.”
More introductions to ruddy-faced people in heavy coats, men and women and kids alike, and portable grills sizzling with just about every cut of meat you could imagine and some you wouldn’t have. Spicy chicken wings and steak and elk sausage, and a serious excess of bratwurst. Jennifer found herself accepting a bratwurst stuffed into a bun with homemade sauerkraut, because the meat was hot and you didn’t have to take off your gloves to eat it. Bratwurst and polar levels of cold seemed to be the main attractions of this event. Fifteen minutes of being introduced, of Harlan shaking hands and being charming, and then he got swept up by a group of boys who were surely the football team and she lost him in the crowd.
“How are you doing?” she asked Dyma, because Owen had been swept up right along with Harlan. She could see him over the heads of the others, and Harlan a little ways away, both of them shaking hands, laughing, and talking as if freezing to death in a North Dakota parking lot was the way they’d most wanted to spend this day.
“Are you asking exactly how cold I am,” Dyma said, “or whether I’m traumatized from that conversation?”
“Well, both, I guess,” Jennifer said.
“The jet was extremely cool,” Dyma said, “but I can’t feel my face, I’m wishing for some of those foot warmer packs, and I don’t think North Dakota has registered the concept of vegetarianism. Also, their version of celebrity is a little lame. I thought Wild Horse was bad. But it’s nice of Harlan to do it, I guess.”
“So that’s happening?” Jennifer asked. “The vegetarian thing?”
“Yeah. I’m doing it. I’m not listening to any arguments about protein or whatever, so don’t even try. All kinds of people live perfectly healthy lives on plant-based diets. How many Hindus are there in the world?”
“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “How many?”
“Lots, that’s how many. Plus, do you realize how many gallons of water it takes to produce a pound of beef? Eighteen hundred. Soybeans only take about two hundred gallons, and tofu tastes just as good as hamburger and is way less gross.”
Not to me, Jennifer thought, but aloud, she just said, “I have to say, you’re probably the only woman in the world who meets an obscenely rich, celebrity cattle rancher and instantly makes the decision to base her life around tofu.”
“That’s because I don’t compromise my principles for men. Even though, yeah, he’s seriously hot, and sorry, Mom, but I don’t think he thinks the idea of a romance between us is out of the question. I hate to tell you, but he kissed me. Well, I kissed him, but then he kissed me. It was great.”
“So you’re saying you don’t actually hate to tell me.”
“Nope,” Dyma said. “I’ve been wanting to tell somebody, and you’re the only one here.” Which made Jennifer laugh.