Having said so much, he uttered an explosive cry and fell face forward, still clutching Walker’s arm.
“What do you call that?” Axelrod asked.
Walker detached his arm from the old man’s grip.
“The riddle of the Sands,” he said.
The plaza of Bahía Honda town was not much to look at but it took on a little ragged charm at night. There was a raised pavement of whitewashed brick in the center, set around a single pink tile on which glitter-covered seashells had been pasted to form the numeral 1969. Under a row of naked bulbs at the edge of the sere football field, a few vendors were selling tortillas, ices, plastic sandals. The town’s few fishing boats were in port and there was laughter and music from one of the square’s two cafes. The other, opposite, stood empty, gloomy and ill lit. Before the town’s cinema, people of all ages and conditions stood in line for the evening showing of Dr. Zhivago. At the eastern end of the square, the town’s single church, an unimposing box of white masonry surmounted with a little bell tower, stood open for the Friday-night service of benediction.
As Bill Bly, with Lu Anne on his arm, walked past the queue, people fell silent to look after them. One or two of the free spirits in the crowd felt emboldened to whistle; it was Bly who provoked them. He was a man something less than six feet tall, he wore white slacks, a black tee shirt and a white baseball cap with the word SHAKESPEARE over the visor. His hair, spilling out from under his hat brim, was curly and seemed more golden blond than any number of tropical locations’ suns could bleach it. But Bly drew catcalls only from behind his back and only from innocents. The street-wise, the hustler or the desperado had only to check out the way in which he carried himself to know caution. He moved with the balance of a wire walker, as thoughtlessly well centered as an animal. The artisan class of the film industry cherished its Bill Bly stories: the amok knifer in the Philippines spun three hundred and sixty degrees on his own wrist; the bar louts laid out unconscious before they had stopped smiling. Bly worked as a bodyguard quite as often as he did as a stuntman and sometimes informally undertook both jobs at once. In his middle thirties now, he looked younger. He had been a stuntman since the age of fifteen.
Lu Anne walked, as it were, in the lee of him. She wore as her church clothes a beige skirt and blouse and a Spanish mantilla. As they walked up the church steps she clutched his elbow. At the door she smiled up at him. When she went in he lingered outside on the top step, watching the faithful as they passed, playing with a straw finger trap he had picked up in the market.
Benediction had not begun and there were only a few people inside the little church. Lu Anne walked across the stone floor to a crucifix that stood beyond two rows of votive candles to the right of the main altar. The crucifix was as old as anything in that empty quarter of the country, recovered from a fire on the mainland. Its crossbars were burned black, the seared Christus figure was tortured into a shape that made it look stylized and somehow modern. Its charred condition served to enhance the sense of martyrdom and elevated suffering it conveyed. Half a dozen worshippers stood or knelt rapt before it. Lu Anne took her place among them.
My God, she prayed, be there for me. So there is something there for me. So I am not just out in this shit lonely, deluded and lost.
The day’s work, the walk through the town among strangers had made her anxious, and the drink made her head ache. Strange sounds, echoes, toneless music rang in her inward ear. There was an incessant low chatter of inaudible, half-recognized voices. The voices bore some secret inference that made her afraid.
For a moment she thought she might be alarming the people around her. When she saw that they took no notice of her, she bowed her head.
Help me, Lu Anne prayed, You who are more real than I am. My only One, my Reality.
When she looked up at the crucifix she saw that the hanged Christ nailed to the beams had become a cat. It was burned black as the figure had been, its fur turned to ash, its face burned away to show the grinning fanged teeth. She looked away and with her face averted walked to the doorway of the church where Bly was waiting for her. When she was outside she leaned against the building wall, taking deep breaths, avoiding the gazes of the people who were coming in.
“Ain’t you gonna stay for the service?” Bly asked her.
She shook her head. As he stood watching her, she took hold of his arm about the biceps and with the nail of her right hand drew an invisible line around it. Bly stood by in confusion and embarrassment.
In the worst of times, Lu Anne thought, there’s meat.
On the terrace, Jack Best was coming to himself again. His eyes were filled with tears.
“The Sands,” he sputtered, “it doesn’t …”
Axelrod helpfully interrupted him. “It doesn’t have a line, am I right, Jack?” He turned to Lowndes. “I’m hoping this isn’t where you find your story.”
Lowndes stared at him for a moment without answering, then smiled.
“Certainly not,” he said.
In the garden outside, Walker suddenly saw the figure of a woman leaning against the terrace wall. The sight brought him to his feet. As he started toward her she moved away. He went faster, trying to get to her side before she was lost in the shadows. It was as though she were running away from him.
She was wearing her hair as she had worn it fifteen years before, he thought. He knew her silhouette, her moves, her aura.
“Lu Anne,” he called.
“I’m not her,” said a small antipodean voice.
Walker halted in confusion. When he came nearer he saw that it was Joy McIntyre, a stand-in and body double who had once spent time with Quinn. Her husband was a stills photographer, Walker’s acquaintance and sometime connection. The photographer had initiated Joy’s career by spreading her frame across two pages of a slick nudie book.
“That’s twice today you fooled me,” Walker said.
“Gordon, is it? They won’t be happy to see you about.”
“You mean Drogue won’t. Where’s Lu Anne?”
“She’s in church,” Joy sniffed. “That’s what I heard.”
“Are you crying?” Walker asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Hoi,” Joy snorted. “I mean wow!”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m all right.” Her eyes in the darkness appeared wide and wondering.
“How’s Lu Anne?” Walker asked.
“Just fine,” Joy said. “Outside of being in church. Know where I’ve been?”
Walker considered his answer. “With someone?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
“O.K.”
“I’ve been up with Mr. Drogue.”
“Ah,” Walker said.
“Balling, like.”
“Well,” Walker said, “whatever turns you on, we used to say.”
“Not the younger Mr. Drogue,” Joy said unsteadily. “His dad.”
“Ah,” Walker said. “Well …” He broke off. Troubles enough of his own.
“I mean, I had to tell someone, didn’t I?”
“Strictly speaking,” Walker said, “no.”