The Tortilla Curtain

to nature,” she spat back at him. “Look what good it did us. And for your information, we bought in here because it was a deal. Do you have any idea how much this house has appreciated since we bought it--even in this market?”
    “All I'm saying is what's the sense of living up here if you can't see fifty feet beyond the windows--we might as well be living in a condo or something. I need to be able to just walk out the door and be in the hills, in the wild--I don't know if you noticed, but it's what I do, it's how I make my living. Christ, the damn fence is bad enough--and that fucking gate on Arroyo Blanco, you know I hate that, you know it.”
    He set the bread down on his plate, untouched. “This isn't about coyotes, don't kid yourself. It's about Mexicans, it's about blacks. It's about exclusion, division, hate. You think Jack gives a damn about coyotes?”
    She couldn't help herself. She was leaning forward now, belligerent, angry, channeling it all into this feckless naive unrealistic impossible man sitting across the table from her--he was the one, he was guilty, he was the big protector of the coyotes and the snakes and weasels and tarantulas and whatever in christ's name else was out there, and now he was trying to hide behind politics. “I don't ever,” she shouted, “want one of those things on my property again. I'd move first, that's what I'd do. Bulldoze the hills. Pave it over. The hell with nature. And politics too.”
    “You're crazy,” he said, and his face was ugly.
    “Me? That's a laugh. What do you think this is--some kind of nature preserve? This is a community, for your information, a place to raise kids and grow old--in an exclusive private highly desirable location. And what do you think's going to happen to property values if your filthy coyotes start attacking children--that's next, isn't it? Well, isn't it?”
    He put on his exasperated look. “Kyra, honey, you know that's not going to happen--that incident in Monte Nido, that was an aberration, a one-in-a-million chance, and it was only because the people were _feeding__ the animals--”
    “Tell that to the parents. Tell it to Osbert. And Sacheverell, don't forget Sacheverell.”
    Dinner didn't go well. Nor the rest of the evening either. Delaney forbade her to work on the wall committee. She defied him. Then she took over the living room, put on her relaxation tapes and buried herself in her work. That night she slept in Jordan's room, and the next night too.
    All that was on her mind as she punched in the code, waited for the gate to swing back, and turned into the long, familiar Da Ros drive. The gate closed automatically behind her and she felt the flutter in her stomach, but it wasn't as bad as usual--she was in too much of a hurry to dwell on it and she was preoccupied with Delaney and the wall and too many other things to count. She did take what had now become the standard precaution of dialing Darlene, the receptionist at the office, to tell her she'd just entered the Da Ros property. They'd agreed on a fifteen-minute time limit--no lingering anymore, no daydreaming, no letting the house cast its spell. If Kyra didn't get back to Darlene at the end of those fifteen minutes to say she was leaving, Darlene would dial 911. Still, as Kyra cruised slowly up the drive, she was intensely aware of everything around her--it had been almost three weeks now, but she couldn't shake the feeling that had come over her that night when she understood just how vulnerable she was out here in the middle of nowhere. And in a way, she didn't want to shake it. Get complacent, and you become a statistic.
    The house emerged through the trees, the front windows struck with light. She softened when she saw it. The place was something, after all, one of a kind, the fairy-tale castle you see on the underside of your eyelids when you close your eyes and dream. And it was hers in a way no other had ever been, white elephant or not. She'd seen it happen a thousand times with her buyers, that look in their eyes, that click of recognition. Well, this was her click of recognition, the place she would have bought if she was in the market. And yes, Delaney, she thought, I'd wall it in with seven feet of cinder block and stucco, that's the first thing I'd do.
    Kyra swung round in the driveway, the car facing the way she'd just come, and before she switched off the engine she took a good long penetrating look out across the lawns and into the trees at