Chapter One Preview

Prescott's Bradshaw Mountains

DEPENDING ON YOUR VIEW
A Snoopaholic's Quandary

CHAPTER ONE

Maria Montagna looked out the living room window and spotted a roadrunner scampering across their front yard. The bird paused on a boulder, providing her with a perfect photo opportunity.

She scooped up her digital camera, a recent yard-sale-find, and hit the power button. A close-up of the bird would require use of the camera’s zoom feature. But she didn’t know how to activate it.

The roadrunner took off just as she figured it out.

“Oh well,” she murmured, “it’ll be back.”

She aimed the camera at the broader landscape and checked the display panel. The Bendons’ rooftop rose in the forefront, its chimney clearly outlined. But the plant life on the Bradshaw Mountains beyond it didn’t stand out. The pine trees and scrub oak clearly visible through her bird-watching binoculars blurred into a lumpy carpet of green.

You get what you pay for, she thought as she tossed the camera onto the seat of a nearby armchair.

She pushed up her bifocals and followed the rise and fall of the mountaintops. The longer she squinted at the mounds, the more she was reminded of rolling waves. Il mare, the sea.

She closed her eyes and pictured the Atlantic Ocean. She recalled the taste of salt on her lips…the feel of sand between her toes…the scent of fresh fish on the grill…the sound of family and friends at seaside reunions.

She reopened her eyes and, sneering at the high-desert mountains, muttered, “A sea without water, humph.” She turned toward her husband and, throwing up her hands, questioned what good this waterless sea did for her, “Che bene mi fa?”

“Huh?” Jack lowered the TV’s volume. “What’d you say?”

“Che bene mi fa?” she repeated, knowing full well he was incapable of giving her a satisfactory answer. He’d never understand how staring at the Bradshaw Mountains made her miss the Atlantic Ocean and the people who shared her love of it, even if she explained it to him in English.

“There you go with the Italian again,” he croaked in a New Jersey accent thicker than hers. “Who you trying to impress?”

“Just practicing,” she retorted. “What you don’t use, you lose.”

“I think you oughta lose it.”

“Hey, if I wanna throw out some Italian now and again, you can’t stop me.”

“Mexican’s more useful ’round here,” he declared.

“You go right ahead and learn it. I’m sticking to Italian.”

“Suit yourself.”

She turned back to the window in time to catch a covey of quail flitting from one juniper to another. As the smallest bird disappeared under its branches, she heard the feathered sultan and his harem squawking. She wondered what was going on in the privacy of their tent. But her imagination failed her. It came up empty.

She again faced Jack and whined, “I’m so bored. Nothing ever happens around here.”

“What’d you expect to happen?”

“Something more exciting than quails playing hide and seek.”

“Thought you liked watching the goo-goo birds.”

“I do. But I’d like to see people once in a while.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “I miss our old neighborhood.”

She stopped short of admitting how much she missed overhearing business negotiations, heated arguments and lovers’ spats between their Italian American paesani, all from the convenience of her New Jersey front stoop. She wished their Prescott neighbors left their windows wide open or sat on their porches. But, even if they did, their houses were too far apart for effective eavesdropping, and their personalities too dull to be entertaining.

“There was always something going on in the hood,” she lamented.

“Like what, gang fights and muggings?”

“Mamma mia! You know that’s not what I meant.”

He switched off the television. “How ’bout we go to the Courthouse Square tomorrow?”

“Nice try, Jack,” replied Maria. “But no thanks.”

“Why not? You was dying to go this morning.”

She folded her arms under her bosom. “I told you today was the last day for the craft fair.”

“Better yet. Less tourists tomorrow.”

“For sure,” griped Maria. “Nobody hangs at the square on a weekday except stoned drifters and old geezers dragging their precious mutts around by the collar. Better watch where you step.”

“We don’t need to walk around. We can relax on a bench,” suggested Jack.

“Sounds exciting. But I think I’ll pass. I’d feel out of place in heaven’s waiting room.”

“What’re you talking ’bout? If you didn’t dye your hair brown, you’d fit right in.”

She lifted a lock of her pageboy. “For your information, Mister, this shade’s chestnut, not brown. And, while we’re on the subject of hair, let’s talk about what’s left of yours. Not much as far as I can tell.”

“So?” Jack ran his fingers over his thinning patch. “Maybe I’ll shave it off.”

“You a skinhead?” she laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me you want a motorcycle.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Pfft!” She waved off the absurdity of it.

“Plenty Joes my age ride ’round here.”

“Yeah, old farts with gray ponytails pretending to be Hell’s Angels. If you ask me, Prescott doesn’t have enough young people.”

“What? This town’s got three colleges and a whole herd of Mexicans spitting out babies left and right.” He flipped a thick-knuckled hand toward the front window. “We even got us a young family living right ’cross the street.”

“Who, the Bendons? I hardly ever see the hermit crabs,” complained Maria. “You’d think they were hiding from the law or something.”

“Maybe they are.”

Her eyes opened wider. “Pensi? You really think so?”

“God, you’re such an easy mark.” He stood up and sucking in his gut, hiked up his Bermuda shorts. “If I told you they was under witness protection, would you believe that too?”

She twisted back toward the window and consider the possibility, but then shrugged it off.

Jack approached her. “Come on, Pumpkin.” He placed an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her closer. “Let’s go sit outside and watch the sun set.”

She patted his hand. “Sure, why not?” Maybe I can catch a glimpse of the Bendons through their window blinds.
    As Jack nudged her toward the door, she reached for her binoculars. But they weren’t in their usual place on the sill.

Arts & Craft Festival at Prescott's Courthouse Square