"I didn't mean to hurt you."
"I was a child!"
"Look, I did what I did. I'm not happy about it, I can't explain it. And I don't expect you to be happy about it, either."
"It was wrong, Indiana Jones. And you knew it was wrong."
Indy was silent, wondering how you could ever apologize for past events. "If I could go back ten years, if I could undo the whole damn thing, believe me, Marion, I would."
"I knew you'd come through that door sometime. Don't ask me why. I just knew it," she said.
He put his hands on the bar. "Why didn't you go back to the States, anyhow?" he asked.
"Money. Pure and simple. I want to go back in some kind of style," she said.
"Maybe I can help. Maybe I can start to do you some good."
"Is that why you came back?"
He shook his head. "I need one of the pieces that I think your father had."
Marion's right hand came up swiftly, but this time Indy was ready and caught her wrist.
"Sonofabitch," she said. "I wish you'd leave that crazy old man in peace. God knows you caused him enough heartache when he was alive."
"I'll pay," he said.
"How much?"
"Enough to get you back to the States in style, anyhow."
"Yeah? Trouble is, I sold all his stuff. Junk. All of it. He wasted his whole life on junk."
"Everything? You sold everything?"
"You look disappointed. How does that feel, Mr. Jones?"
Indy smiled at her. Her second of triumph pleased him in some way. And then he wondered if she was telling the truth about selling Abner's stuff, if it was all really so valueless.
"I like it when you look dejected," she said. "I'll buy you a drink. Name it."
"Seltzer," he said, and sighed.
"Seltzer, huh? Changed days, Indiana Jones. I prefer scotch myself. I like bourbon and vodka and gin, too. I'm not much for brandy. I'm off that."
"You're a tough broad now, aren't you?"
She smiled at him again. "This ain't exactly Schenectady, friend."
He rubbed his jaw once more. Suddenly he was tired of the fencing. "How many times can I say I'm sorry? Would it ever be enough?"
She pushed a glass of soda toward him and he drank from it with a grimace. Then she leaned against the bar, propped on her elbows. "You can pay cash money, can you?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me about this thing you're looking for. Who knows? Maybe I can locate the guy I sold the stuff to."
"A bronze piece in the shape of the sun. It has a hole in it, slightly off center. There's a red crystal in it. It comes from the top of a staff. Does it sound familiar?"
"Maybe. How much?"
"Three thousand dollars."
"Not enough."
"Okay. I can go as high as five. You get more when you return to the States."
"It sounds important."
"It could be."
"I have your word?"
He nodded.
Marion said, "I had your word once before, Indy. Last time we met you gave me your word you'd be back. Remember that?"
"I am back."
"The same bastard," she said.
She was silent for a time, moving around the side of the bar until she was standing close to him. "Give me the five grand now and come back tomorrow."
"Why tomorrow?"
"Because I said so. Because it's time I started to call some shots where you're concerned."
He took out the money, gave it to her. "Okay," he said. "I trust you."
"You're an idiot."
"Yeah," he sighed. "I've heard that."
He got down from the stool. He wondered where he was going to spend the night. In a snowbank, he supposed. If Marion had her way. He turned to leave.
"Do one thing for me," she said.
He turned to look at her.
"Kiss me."
"Kiss you?"
"Yeah. Go on. Refresh my memory."
"What if I refuse?"
"Then don't come back tomorrow."
He laughed. He leaned toward her, surprised by his own eagerness, then by the sudden wildness of the kiss, by the way she pulled at his hair, the way her tongue forced itself between his lips and moved slickly against the roof of his mouth. The kiss of the child was long gone; this was different, the kiss of a woman who has learned the nature of lovemaking.
She drew herself away, smiled, reached for her drink.
"Now get the hell out of my place," Marion said.
She watched him go, watched the door close behind him. She didn't move for a time; then she undid the scarf she wore around her neck. A chain hung suspended between her breasts. She pulled on the chain, at the end of which there was a sun-shaped bronze medallion with a crystal set into it.
She rubbed it thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger.
Indy trembled in the freezing night air as he went toward the car. He sat inside for a time. What was he supposed to do now? Drive around this hole until morning? He wasn't likely to find any three-star hotel in Patan, nor did he relish the idea of spending the night asleep in the car. By morning he'd be frozen solid as a Popsicle. Maybe, he thought, I'll give her some time and then she'll soften and I can go back; maybe she can show me some of that hospitality for which innkeepers are supposed to be famous. He cupped his hands and blew into them for heat, then he started the engine of the car. Even the rim of the steering wheel was chilly to touch.
Indy drove off slowly.
He didn't see the shadow in the doorway across the street, the shadow of the raincoated man who had boarded the DC-3 in Shanghai, a man by the name of Toht who had been sent to Patan at the express request of the Third Reich Special Antiquities Collection. Toht moved across the street, accompanied by his hired help-a German thug with an eyepatch, a Nepalese in a fur jacket and a Mongolian who carried a submachine gun as if anything that might move in his line of vision would automatically be a target.
They paused outside the door of The Raven, watching Indiana Jones's car depart in a flare of red taillights.
Marion stood reflectively in front of the coal fire, a poker in her hand. She stabbed at the dying flames and suddenly, despite herself, despite what she considered a weakness, she was crying. That damn Jones, she thought. Ten years down the road, down a hard bloody road, he comes dancing back into my life with more of his promises. And the ten years collapsed, time flicked away like the pages of a book, and she was remembering how it had been back then -fifteen years old and fancying herself in love with the handsome young archaeologist, the young man her father had warned her about. She remembered his saying, "You'll only get hurt, even if you'll get over it in time." Well, the hurt had been true and real-but the rest of it wasn't. Maybe it was true what they sometimes said, that old wives' tale-maybe you never really forgot the first man, the first love. Certainly she had never forgotten the delicious quality, the trembling, the feeling that she might die from the sheer anticipation of the kiss, the embrace. Nothing had touched that wicked heightening of the senses, that feeling of floating through the world as if she were insubstantial, flimsy, as if she might be transparent when held up to light.
She decided she was being stupid, crying, all because Mr. Big Shot Archaeologist comes strutting through the door. The hell with him, she said to herself. He's only good for the money now.
Confused, she went to the bar. She slipped the chain from her neck, laid the medallion on the bar. She picked up the money Indy had left and, reaching behind the bar, put it inside a small wooden box. She was still staring at the medallion, which lay in the shadow of the huge taxidermic raven, when she heard a noise at the door. She whipped quickly around to see four men come in, and at once she understood that there was trouble and that the trouble had come in the wake of good old Indiana Jones. What the hell has he landed me in? she wondered.