The room the man led him into was a small bedroom, a table holding a fruit basket, oranges and bananas, and a narrow cot against the wall. There were two windows in the back wall, and a stone stairway leading down a few steps at the room’s side. Carlos could see the still pool there, a few leafy shadows on the water’s surface. The man saw him looking and lifted his hands and touched his bare breast and shoulder in a gesture of bathing, then moved to the cot and pulled the light woven coverlet to the side. Then he moved to one of the windows and lifted the hooked-up blanket and let it fall across the opening. He gestured toward the stack of rough towels on a shelf beside the stone stairway leading to the bath and nodded to Carlos and smiled a little coyly and turned, his blond ringlets bobbing at his shoulders and his necklace clacking softly and brushing his nipple, and left the room.
He awoke to the faint sound of laughter and splashing and turned his head on the pillow, still half asleep, and thought there might be someone in the bath off in the dark, but the sounds were more distant than that, and as he returned to wakefulness he knew they were coming through the rock that formed the bath’s far wall and from another bath beyond. He rose and sat at the bed’s edge and rubbed his eyes. He could feel grit in the creases, and when he lifted his head again and gazed into the room, he saw that it was darker now, not night yet, but surely dusk. The silhouettes were gone from the floor, but he could see the descending steps that led down into the bath, the towels on the shelf, and the table to his right. The fruit basket was gone, and in its place someone had set a pitcher and a mug. He rose and stretched, then moved to the table and poured from the pitcher and drank deeply, cool water, then filled the mug and drank again. Then he was peeling his clothes away and dropping them to the floor, and once he was naked he moved to the bath’s descending steps. He saw his pack and the cloth satchel he had brought along, off in a corner as he stepped down, his feet entering the water, and in a moment he had sunk in up to his neck and could hear the faint splashing and a few satisfied groans through the thick stone wall.
It was dark by the time he had dressed again, in clean clothing, light khaki pants and shirt, and had stepped out through the building’s open doorway and onto the walk that edged the square. He found they were all there waiting, even Alma, in shorts like the bare-chested men had worn, but in a loose white shirt with beaded piping at the pockets. His father stood beside Ramona, who had traded her western costume for a long dress. She wore a silver necklace, but no makeup now, and Carlos thought she looked her age and might even be comfortable in it. Gino stood beside them, dark splotches on his bare legs that looked like thin sticks below his baggy shorts. Larry stood off to the side a little, looking toward the square’s center in the distance. He was wearing his loose, pajama-like outfit once again and his tennis shoes, and he’d replaced his cowboy hat with that beaded skullcap. Carlos could see lights where he gazed, around the dark shadow shapes of the low fountain, torches he thought, their flames dancing in the soft cool breeze he felt at his collar. Figures moved at the fountain’s edges, and some seemed to be carrying and adjusting things around it.
“The bath was very good,” Frank said. His clothes were almost formal, a pair of cotton slacks and a black belt and white dress shirt, tucked in at the waist and bulging over his thick chest, and black tennis shoes. It was too dark now to see clearly under the shadow cast by the building, though the last remnants of sun, those final geometric figures, covered the square, starting beyond the walkway and the planters lining it, an enigmatic pattern that moved down its length to the fountain and beyond.
John stood beside his wheelchair, the bright feather dusty in the brim of his derby hat now, in pants reminiscent of the ones Alma had worn on the trail and a similar woven shirt. His hand gripped the sidebar, and Carlos waved him off and lifted the chair down the few steps to ground at the square’s edge, and once John was seated and settled in, they started their slow procession, heading for the fountain. John lit a cigarette, as Carlos walked behind him and pushed him, and smoke flooded from his tracheotomy tube, to rise and disappear above them.
There were lights in the huts along the hill, a shimmering in doorways like vacant movie screens, and the light seeped up into their roofs, leaking through the thatching, and the roofs seemed to be levitating. The flames off in the distance at the fountain had steadied, breeze rising from the square and leaving, and Carlos could hear it going in faint rustling in leaves and branches high above the huts where the hill peaked, and he thought he could see light in the sky there, though there was no moon. And he saw a glow of light too at the glass house.
“Oil,” John said, a faint creak in the mechanism as Carlos pushed him, “all that dust and sand along the way.” His voice was creaky too, a deep exhaustion in it, but it held some energy as well, and the others seemed expectant also. He thought he could see it in their shuffling gait and even in Ramona, his father at her side, in the way she shook her loose hair that fell gracefully to her shoulders. Then, in a while, they were moving out of the darkness, coming into the edge of light cast by the torches at the fountain’s sides.
The fountain was made of heavy slabs of dark stone that had been fashioned into rectangles to form a low wall that contained it. The wall was broad, at least a yard wide, and the lanterns rested on it, three on each side of the roughly rectangular shape, the contained pool rising up almost to the edge and lapping there. What had been a small animal figure stood up at the center, worn away over time, and a broad cylinder of water climbed up in the air above it, just a few inches, to form a mushroom head that spilled down, causing a turgid bubbling at its base, then changed to quieter ripples that dissipated into that lapping when it reached the walls.
Carlos heard Ramona laugh lightly, then laugh again through a quiet sneeze, and when he looked beyond where she stood beside his father and Gino, he saw two women at a table on the far side of the fountain. He heard a click on glass, then saw the light flame at the fat candle wick as one of them lit it, and in that light a flag of white fabric floated on the night air for a moment, then fell to cover the wooden table, upon which the woman placed the candle and covered the flame with a glass chimney.
There was another table beside it, set slightly askew as in some Paris café, and the women prepared it and more candles were lit and men came out of the darkness with more lanterns and yet another table. Soon light bathed the entire area, and Carlos could see the food in the wooden boats the men carried, those two that had met them earlier in shorts only, but now wore fabric smocks that hung down below their knees, brushing at their legs. They still wore their earrings and the blond one wore a beaded bracelet, and Carlos thought he could see a hint of color on their cheeks and noses, and he saw that Larry was watching them as well. They set the bowls down on the tables, then turned and walked back into the darkness at the lights’ periphery, only to appear again, carrying pitchers and baskets piled high with tortillas and a kind of cakey bread.
The women held dishes then and wooden utensils, and they all watched as the tables were set for dinner and mugs were placed to the right of large pottery plates. Then Alma raised his hand again in that now familiar gesture, and the old men shuffled toward the tables, speaking softly, negotiating a proper seating, and Carlos and his father and Ramona followed after. Gino joined them, and so did Frank, and John and Larry sat with Alma at the other table, which was slightly smaller and edged out into the darkness a little where the lantern light failed. Then the wooden boats were lifted by the two men and the women and were brought to their sides and offered up so they could serve themselves.