In the silence I could hear the wind moving in the trees around the cabin, the whispering, the rustling and creaking as familiar to me as my own breathing, my own bones.
Lydia stood, crossed the room. She sat on the arm of my chair, kissed my bruised cheek very gently. Freesia and citrus mingled in the cool air.
'Okay,' she said. 'Just making sure.' Her face grew serious. 'I just hope you're not—missing something,' she said. 'Because of how you want things to come out.'
'That's one of the reasons I asked you to come. I wanted someone I could trust, someone who's detached.'
'Well,' she said doubtfully, 'detached hasn't ever been my best thing.'
'You'll be fine. And besides being detached,' I said, 'you have that beautiful, anonymous, rented car. I have plans for that.'
'My car,' she said, standing. She clipped her gun to her belt. 'I drive.'
'Always. Besides,' I added casually, 'it's probably not a stick shift. I bet it wouldn't be any fun anyway.'
'Forget it. I drive.'
So she drove, up my driveway and on to 30, north under the bare winter trees spread against the dark sky.
Our first stop was the 7-Eleven, where we picked up cigarettes, beer, and a chicken parmesan hero. The clerk stared at Lydia as though she were a black-petalled orchid that had sprung up in the daisy patch. Back in the car, Lydia grinned, said, 'Not many Asians up here, huh?'
'Especially in black leather.'
'You think I'm too downtown?'
'I think you're adorable.'
'Seriously, Bill. Will it be a problem? That I can't blend?'
I shook my head. 'Outsiders don't blend here, no matter what they look like. I've been coming here for eighteen years; once I lived here through the fall and winter into the spring. I'm still a weekender. Brinkman calls me city boy.''
'When did you do that?'
'What?'
'Live here.'
I lit a cigarette, found the ashtray in the unfamiliar dash. 'Seven years ago.'
Lydia said, 'Mmm.' I didn't say anything.
She rolled down her window. The wind blew her silky hair across her forehead. She combed it back with her fingers.
When the first cigarette was gone I pulled out another.
'If it makes you that crazy,' Lydia said, 'you can drive.'
'Do all Chinese read minds?' I pushed the cigarette back in the pack.
'Only me and my mother.'
'I love your driving. Hear that, Mrs. Chin? I love your daughter's driving. Turn here.'
We had reached the steep hardscrabble road. We bounced up it, emerged from the trees onto the flat, rock- strewn plain.
'We're here,' I said.
Tonight there was a moon. The ridge was clearly visible, towering on the other side of the great pit, in whose glassy surface stars glittered.
'God,' Lydia said, staring. 'Where are we, Mars?'
'It's an abandoned quarry pit. The one I told you about, where Jimmy dropped the cars.'
A truck went by on the ridge road, its headlights passing behind trees a hundred yards above where we sat.
'That's weird,' she said.
'There's a road up there, but you can't get here from it, except on foot. Stay in the car a minute.'
I got out, moved away from the car. The shack was dark and silent. 'Jimmy!' I shouted, 'It's Bill. I have a friend with me. I need to talk to you.'
A short silence. Then from behind me, some distance away, Jimmy's voice, hoarse and loud: 'Who's with you?'
I turned. There was a great mound of jagged rock, with smaller mounds piled at its feet like the ritual remnants of some brutal civilization. Nothing moved. I called, 'No one you know. Another PI.' I motioned Lydia out of the car. She stepped out cautiously, her jacket unzipped but her hands empty.
Scraping sounds came from the mound. The moon covered everything with a silver light that had no dimension. The scraping stopped, and Jimmy, rifle in one hand, jumped from a rock that jutted sharply from the mound's face.
