She expected to get to know him better over dinner and a couple of glasses of wine — and to understand, by dessert, why he fascinated her. However, his skills as a conversationalist were equivalent to his looks: pleasant enough, but far from beguiling. Nothing that Miro said, nothing that he did, no gesture, no look brought Eve any closer to understanding the curious attraction that he held for her.
By the time they left the restaurant and crossed the parking lot toward her car, she was frustrated and confused. She didn’t know whether she should invite him back to her place or not. She didn’t want sex with him. It wasn’t that kind of attraction, exactly. Of course, some men revealed their truest selves when they had sex: by what they liked to do, by how they did it, by what they said and how they acted both during and after. But she didn’t want to take him home, do it with him, get all sweaty, go the whole disgusting route, and
She was in a dilemma.
Then, as they drew near to her car, with the cold wind soughing in a nearby row of palm trees and the air scented with the aroma of charcoal-broiled steaks from the restaurant, Roy Miro did the most unexpected and outrageous thing that Eve had ever seen in thirty-three years of outrageous experience.
An immeasurable time after getting down from the Explorer and into the Range Rover — which could have been an hour or two minutes or thirty days and thirty nights, for all he knew — Spencer woke and saw a herd of tumbleweed pacing them. The shadows of mesquite and paddle-leaf cactus leaped through the headlights.
He rolled his head to the left, against the back of the seat, and saw Valerie behind the wheel. “Hi.”
“Hi, there.”
“How’d you get here?”
“That’s too complicated for you right now.”
“I’m a complicated guy.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Where we going?”
“Away.”
“Good.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Woozy.”
“Don’t pee on the seat,” she said with obvious amusement.
He said, “I’ll try not to.”
“Good.”
“Where’s my dog?”
“Who do you think’s licking your ear?”
“Oh.”
“He’s right there behind you.”
“Hi, pal.”
“What’s his name,” she asked.
“Rocky.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“About what?”
“The name. Doesn’t fit.”
“I named him that so he’d have more confidence.”
“Isn’t working,” she said.
Strange rock formations loomed, like temples to gods forgotten before human beings had been capable of conceiving the idea of time and counting the passage of days. They awed him, and she drove among them with great expertise, whipping left and right, down a long hill, onto a vast, dark flatness.
“Never knew his real name,” Spencer said.
“Real name?”
“Puppy name. Before the pound.”
“Wasn’t Rocky.”
“Probably not.”
“What was it before Spencer?”
“He was never named Spencer.”
“So you’re clearheaded enough to be evasive.”
“Not really. Just habit. What’s your name?”
“Valerie Keene.”
“Liar.”
He went away for a while. When he came around again, there was still desert: sand and stone, scrub and tumbleweed, darkness pierced by headlights.
“Valerie,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“What’s your real name?”
“Bess.”
“Bess what?”
“Bess Baer.”
“Spell it.”
“B-A-E-R.”
“Really?”
“Really. For now.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means what it means.”
“It means that’s your name now, after Valerie.”
“So?”
“What was your name before Valerie?”
“Hannah Rainey.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, realizing that he was firing on only four of six cylinders. “Before that?”
“Gina Delucio.”
“Was that real?”
“It felt real.”
“Is that the name you were born with?”
“You mean my puppy name?”
“Yeah. That your puppy name?”
“Nobody’s called me by my puppy name since before I was in the pound,” she said.
“You’re very funny.”
“You like funny women?”
“I must.”
“‘And then the funny woman,’” she said, as if reading from a printed page, “‘and the cowardly dog and the mysterious man rode off into the desert in search of their real names.’”
“In search of a place to puke.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
She applied the brakes, and he flung open the door.
Later, when he woke, still riding through the dark desert, he said, “I have the most god-awful taste in my mouth.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Bess.”
“Bullshit.”
