Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

clearance. Hardly the resume of a slacker.”

“I’m supposed to sleep better nights knowing the likes of you is guarding the henhouse? It amazes me you’ve lasted in that job.”

“Over a decade now.”

“It amazes me they ever recruited you in the first place.”

“It was my firm jaw and air of tragic nobility.”

“It was your academic record.” There was an irrepressible yeast of pride in her voice when she said, “The dean of students at Berkeley told me personally they’d never seen the likes of you when it came to cybernetics and linguistics. . . .”

“Don’t forget modern poetry. I had nine hours of modern poetry.”

“He neglected to mention that. And the rugby fellow, that swarthy Englishman, he said you were the only American he’d ever coached who actually understood the game.”

“Nigel was just buttering you up. He was consumed with desire for you. You drove him wild.”

“Heh! Rubbish. I was a senior citizen even then. Rugby’s barbaric. Worse than football. But there’s no denying it, you hit the grade-point jackpot.”

“Genes, Maestra. Abilities I inherited from you.”

“Heh!” The old woman beamed in spite of herself. “You were clever, in some areas, but I’m still surprised they’d recruit you, considering your extracurricular activities and your weak moral fiber.”

“It’s government service, Maestra. Morality’s scarcely an issue.”

“You have a point there, unfortunately. So what monkey business has that agency of yours got your nose into now? What’re you up to? What’re you doing in Seattle? How long before you leave me?”

“Upon the rosy-fingered dawn.”

“Tomorrow? No!”

“I fly to South America first thing in the morning—but I’ll be back in a wink. Actually, I’m supposed to be starting a thirty-day leave, but the yard boss insisted I postpone it just long enough to dash down to Lima and back. Really, I’ll probably only be there overnight.”

He saw her eyes narrow behind her spectacles.

“Assassination?”

“I don’t do windows. You’ve been watching too much TV. Company recruited a very promising young dude down there, indigenous operative, fronted him a new Honda as a signing bonus, and now he’s backing out on the deal.”

“You’re going to terminate him with extreme prejudice.”

“Get real. I’m gonna lobby him, try to talk him into staying aboard.”

“Why you?”

“I guess because we have similar backgrounds. He earned a double master’s from the University of Miami. Computer science and languages.”

“No modern poetry?” She was needling him.

“Methinks not, Maestra. But I bet he can quote a line or two from Howl.”

“And what’ll you do on your vacation? May I expect another intrusion?”

“Absolutely. Another bangle, too. First thing when I get back. Uh, I was hoping you’d let me use the cabin up at Snoqualmie Pass for a week or two. I’ve sucked way too much cement this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees. Then I may hop over to Sacramento briefly, regale the family.”

“Including Suzy?”

“Uh, well, uh, Suzy quite possibly may be on the premises. I believe she’s going to school.”

“Of course she’s going to school! She’s a teenager!”

Maestra fell quiet and remained quiet for such a lengthy period that Switters wondered if she might have nodded off, as the elderly are wont to do. Either that or she was truly very angry. He cleared his throat. He cleared it again. Louder now.

“South America,” she said abruptly.

“Yes.”

“Nice.”

“Not nice. No. South America holds a minimum of charm for this buckaroo.”

“I suppose. The death squads, the poverty, the corruption, the destruction of nature.”

“Hmm, well, yes, there’s that.” He scratched himself, as if thinking of South America made him itch. “And then there’s the fact that it’s just too goddamn vivid.”

She regarded him quizzically, but when she spoke she asked not what he meant by “vivid” but to what country, exactly, was he traveling in South America?

“Peru.”

“Peru. Yes. That’s what I understood. Lima, Peru.”

There followed another long silence, but this time he could tell she wasn’t drifting in any geriatric ozone. Her eyes simultaneously narrowed and brightened until they looked like the apertures through which Tabasco droplets enter the world, and the zing zing zing of synaptic archery was very nearly audible.

“Jeez,” he muttered eventually, shaking his head. “If J. Robert Oppenheimer had thought that hard, he’d have invented video poker instead of the A-bomb.”

Maestra smiled sardonically. “Prove to me,” she said, “that chivalry can still eat lunch in this town.” With a rattle of bracelets, she extended both arms. “I need to be excused.”

Switters was taken aback at how light she was, how frail. Her body was a husk compared to the meaty pulp of her spirit and her voice. Yet once he had helped her to her feet, she left the room rather briskly, barely relying on the rustic mahogany cane that she seemed to sport mainly for effect. He heard her rat-a-tatting it along the banister posts as she climbed the stairs.

After tossing his trench coat over a modem (underneath, he wore a gray Irish tweed suit and a solid red T- shirt), he strolled to the library windows. Maestra’s house sat high on the bluffs of the Magnolia District, so called because a botanically challenged early explorer had mistaken its profusion of madrona trees for an unrelated species that graced more southerly climes. Magnolia’s cliffs overlooked the shipping lanes through which all manner of vessels, from warships to oil tankers to funky little salmon-snaggers, sailed from the Pacific to Seattle’s docks by way of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Maestra’s second husband had been a sea captain and owner of tugboats, and he liked to keep an eye on the tides. On this drizzly day, the captain wouldn’t have seen very much. The sky and the water looked like separate panels of the same chalk-fogged blackboard. Nature had erased the diagrammed sentences and multiplication tables, leaving a view that was all pan and no orama.

Switters turned from the misty void and was instantly confronted with its opposite: namely, a well-defined object of lurid coloration. It was the pumpkin, only its orangeness had become so intense it seemed to be undergoing spontaneous combustion right there on the library table. Switters didn’t know whether to reach for a fire extinguisher or fall down and worship. The thing was blazing—and spinning, as well. At least, it appeared to be, for a minute or two. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Then he remembered.

He had forgotten about ingesting the XTC. It was starting to come on, and come on strong. Knowing that 150 milligrams of 3, 4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, to call it by its rightful name, would not produce hallucinations, he figured that his present-moment awareness must be substantially heightened. With that in mind, he pulled up a chair and sat directly facing the gourd. It was no longer afire, but it was very pretty and very friendly, and Switters felt compelled to caress its haptic contours.

“We search for the door in the side of the pumpkin,” he whispered, “but unlike Cinderella’s coach, it is drawn only by its own slow ripening.” (Where was this coming from?) “Distracted by the toothy glitter of corn, mice leave it to round, to orange: a globe of lost continents, a faceless head, its true identity known only to the Halloween knife and certain deputies of the pie police. O pumpkin, pregnant squaw bladder, hardiest of moons, scarecrow’s beachball, in the name of farmers’ daughters everywhere, remove your hood and—”

“Switters!” Maestra had entered the room behind him. “What the hell are you saying to that poor fruit? Is this