Free Beauty and the Brain by Alice Duncan Page A

hard
look. “These men will be taking rooms in the lodge, will they
not?”
    Martin, taken aback by her tone, jumped and
said, “Of course. Of course. Here, I’ll go with you.”
    Brenda turned to Colin and asked coldly,
“Will you come with us, Colin? Or is this not one of your
duties?”
    He glared at her for approximately three
seconds then barked, “What does that have to do with anything? Of
course I’ll come with you and help.” He proceeded to ignore Brenda
then. Turning to Martin, he said, “I have to talk to you about
this, Martin. And soon. This whole thing is getting out of
hand.”
    Brenda wanted to ask what whole thing but
didn’t believe the moment was opportune. If he was going to
complain about her, she’d have something to say about it,
though.
    Long ago she’d learned to stand up for
herself, and if this possible pansy intended to ask Martin to make
her butt out of his supposed business, he was going to have a fight
on his hands This was her business, too, darn it. It was her
livelihood. She had every right in the world to ask questions of
the man hired by Peerless Studio to assist with research. Heck, it
was his job to help her understand Indians. Or, if not exactly his
job, he should at least be expected to answer civil questions
civilly.
    Feeling unusually feisty, Brenda marched
alongside fifteen Navajo Indians and two employees of Peerless
Studio up the porch steps to the enormous and terribly elegant
front doors of the Cedar Crest Lodge. She noted with interest the
looks of fascination, not unmixed with disapproval, on the faces of
several Cedar Crest employees when they espied the Indians, but she
ignored them.
    If any employee of the lodge, within her
hearing, behaved rudely to any of these men, however, the lodge
management would hear from her. Fortunately, she had enough wealth,
status, and social clout to make a difference in the world. The
knowledge made her feel better.
    Life got complicated for a while at the
registration desk. Only one of the Navajos, Jerry Begay, could
write his name in English. Martin, Brenda, and Colin attended to
the others, Colin advising her and Martin about spellings and so
forth. Brenda was impressed by his knowledge, even though she still
resented him for being cold to her. Eventually, the registrations
were taken care of and a couple of scared-looking bellboys were
dispatched to lead the new cast members to their rooms. Brenda
watched them go with a sense of satisfaction that was out of
proportion to the amount of help she’d been, but she couldn’t help
it.
    She felt sorry for those men. Indeed, she
identified with them. Those Indians were in many ways akin to the
women of this world. They were discriminated against for no reason,
denied privileges any white man, even the basest and least
intelligent, was granted as his birthright, and were generally
considered of less intrinsic value than white men. It wasn’t fair,
and she knew it. A victim of this sort of abuse herself, she felt a
good deal of affiliation with this small tribe of Navajos.
    The baseball accouterments they’d carried
with them from Arizona interested her. Maybe they’d got a team
together among themselves. Something started fielding her brain,
and she grinned to herself.
    “What’s up?”
    She looked over to find Martin smiling at
her. “Oh, I was just thinking about ball games,” she said airily.
“Do you suppose those men like to play ball games? They have bats
and balls with them.”
    “Yes, they do like to play ball games.”
    Brenda, who had been speaking to Martin,
turned when Colin answered her question. She decided not to take
him to task for interrupting, since he’d told her what she wanted
to know. “Really? Hmmm I wonder if we can get up some games between
the crew and the Indians. That might be fun.”
    Martin’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t know. It
might breed unhealthy competition.”
    “Not with me managing the teams, it won’t,”
Brenda said with