The Tortilla Curtain

the group of three--two sisters and the husband of the chunkier of the two (or was it the slimmer?)--who kept urging her to refill her wineglass, though one was her limit, and with whom she discussed tennis, Nahuatlan figurines, property values and the North American Free Trade Agreement. There wasn't a _capo,__ or _consigliere__ in sight.
    She'd refilled her glass with Evian and was huddled over the canapes with Erna and Selda Cherrystone, her own little party beginning to splinter off, though her mother was still across the room monopolizing their host, and she was feeling good, really good, for the first time in a long while. Real estate was off her mind for the day at least--though the rest of the weekend would be full-bore, the last really big weekend of the season, people trying to get in on a thirty-day escrow before Christmas--and the Da Ros place was locked and shuttered and secured for the holiday. She hadn't told anybody yet--Delaney or Jordan, that is--but now that the wall was up and their troubles behind them, she was thinking--just thinking--of another dog, a sheltie maybe, for Jordan's birthday. That would bring things full circle. That would start the healing.
    She looked out the window and the sun was a golden, beneficent thing, the rich green shining leaves of the camellias steeped in it, and she saw in a moment of clarity that it was a thing to reverence and enjoy, the realtor's greatest ally, and she forgot the winds, the late heat, the mad parched thirsty air rushing through the canyon for the sea, forgot all about it, until someone got up on a table and shouted “Fire!” and the day fell to pieces around her.
    Delaney was no alarmist, but with the first blast of the sirens, he couldn't help but think of Jordan, alone, back at the house. He found himself out on the lawn at Dominick Flood's with all the rest of the par tygoers, staring into the twisting column of black smoke that rose ominously from the canyon below. There was no need for panic. Not yet. Brushfires broke out routinely up here and half the time the fire department had them squelched in a matter of hours, and yet the brush was ready to explode and everyone knew it--no one better than Delaney. He looked round him at the anxious faces of his neighbors, their necks craning, mouths drawn tight, a cold vestigial glint of fear frozen in the depths of their eyes. They'd survived last year's firestorms and the quake too--and the mudslides, for that matter--and no one wanted to get hysterical, no one wanted to risk looking foolish, not yet. Not yet.
    Still, Delaney found himself edging back through the crowd--“Sorry, excuse me please, sorry”--until he found Kyra and took hold of her arm. “Honey, we better go--I mean, just in case,” he said, and already you could smell the smoke, metallic and bitter, and her eyes widened and she breathed a single word: “Jordan.”
    They'd just got in the car when the wind shifted and the muscular black column of smoke stood up straight in the sky and closed a fist over the sun. Kit was in the backseat, miffed, dismayed and thoroughly ruffled, the Menaker groove etched deeply into the flesh between her eyebrows. Delaney had actually had to pry her hand away from the crook of Dominick Flood's arm. “I can't really see what all the fuss is about,” she said petulantly. “We have brushfires all the time in the Bay Area and they just come in with those planes and snuff them right out.” As if on cue, the first of the bombers roared overhead and dropped its pink cloud of flame retardant into the cauldron below. Delaney said nothing. They'd almost been evacuated last fall, were right on the verge of it, but the main arm of the firestorm had passed two or three miles behind them, on the far side of the ridge, and the secondary fire had burned its way up the canyon on a collision course with Arroyo Blanco until the winds shifted and it fell back into the wasteland it had just created. Eighteen thousand acres had burned and three hundred and fifty homes were lost. Three people died.
    By the time Delaney reached the driveway, the sun was gone. He backed the car in and left it there, ready for a quick escape if it came to that. The turkey smell hit him as he entered the house, but all the nostalgia it had dredged up earlier was gone now, and he told himself to stay calm, it was probably nothing, as Jordan came wheeling down the hall hollering, “Mommy, Delaney, there's a fire!” and Orbalina appeared