Page 7 of Snow in Texas

Withheld dinner.

Now, he was a bathroom expert.

At ten after one, Colin wheeled the mop bucket into the utility closet, shut the door with a determined thump, and reached to knuckle the stiffness from his lower back. Jinx had awakened him at six-thirty that morning, and told him to cleaneverything. It didn’t matter that the clubhouse was more or less spotless; he’d swept, mopped, polished, buffed, washed, and dusted all that he could. He’d saved the bathrooms for last, and here it was, middle of the day, and he was done. It spoke positively of keeping a clean house. Less maintenance work.

He turned around, thinking about lunch…

And nearly collided with the twins. Both stood beside him in the hall, silent and stone-faced,The Shiningstyle.

“Jesus!” he swore, his voice coming out super-Cajun in his sudden fright.

“Hey,” one of them said. Who knew whether it was Catcher or Cletus; they were damn identical.

“Candy wants you to go pick up lunch,” the other one said.

“Yeah?” He massaged his chest where his heartbeat needed some coaxing to return to normal. When neither of them responded, he said, “Uh, yeah. I don’t have a car. And I have no idea where anything is.”

One of them held out a set of keys. “Green truck out front. Go to Gabe’s.”

“Okay.” He had no idea where that was. Did he go left or right out of the drive? What the fuck? “Okay,” he said again, and got nothing in return.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, palming the keys and moving down the hall.

It was staggering to step outside into the sunshine. Only once he was squinting did he realized he’d spent all day so far indoors, and that wasn’t at all normal for him.

Pre-Lean Dogs, that was.

A handful of guys were standing in the front lawn, groupies, hanging off their arms.

He spotted Jinx and shaded his eyes against the sun. “Hey, where’s Gabe’s?”

The bearded, severely tatted member flicked his cig butt into the dirt and regarded him a moment, that same assessing glance everyone gave him. “Go about a mile and a half north, and it’ll be on your right, can’t miss it. Tell Jen we want the usual.”

Colin ducked his head respectfully. On the inside, it killed him. But he knew he had to go through those motions or risk expulsion. And given that he had no plans for the future, he had no alternative but to patch in and become a Dog.

The green truck turned out to be a fifteen-year-old Dodge that took two tries to start, and smelled of smoke and BO. But it was a set of wheels, which was more than he had.

Even if he hadn’t been given directions, he could have found Gabe’s. Endless stretches of desert gave way to a big roadside sign announcingGabe’s Just Aheadand then there was the place itself, the parking lot welcoming him with another sign. He turned in, pulling up to a small building framed in rough cut timbers, cars jammed up at the curb. A narrow porch ran along the front of the restaurant, decorated with rocking chairs. A steer skull was mounted above the door.

The interior was everything Amarillo crammed into a four-hundred square foot space. Texas license plates, steer skulls and mounted heads. Lassos, old dusty boots, saddles, spurs, bright woven blankets hung up like tapestries. He even spotted a jackalope or two as he wedged past a few patrons and approached the front counter.

It appeared to be one of those places where you put your order in at the long wooden front counter, the staff passed the ticket back through the window to the kitchen, and you waited. “For here or to go?” the girl at the register asked the guy two people ahead of him.

Colin stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and settled in to wait, eyes roving over the small restaurant. Most of the patrons were day-laborers in coveralls, jeans, dirty boots and ball caps. He spotted a few guys in road crew orange. A handful of retiree couples who no doubt came to this place every day, sat at the same table, and ordered the same thing. He knew that he was the only tourist in the place; everyone else may as well have had LOCAL stamped across their foreheads.

“Sir?” The line had cleared out and it was his turn; the girl at the register was talking to him now. He turned toward her. “Hi, welcome to…

It was the blonde from the clubhouse the night before. Andgirlwasn’t the right word anymore, because she was all woman.

“…Gabe’s,” she finished, blue eyes widening as she recognized him. Her professional, friendly expression arrested and grew brittle. “It’s you,” she said, voice flat.

“Colin,” he reminded, flashing her a grin. “Didn’t catch your name last night.”

“Hi, Colin.” It always amazed him the way a woman could say perfectly normal civil words and make them sound like vicious insults. “I’m still not interested.”

She was wearing a western denim shirt embroidered withGabe’sabove one breast pocket, and above the other, her name.Jenny.

“You sure?” he asked. “’Cause your shirt says you’re Jenny.”

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