Thin Air

'I'm in LA now, when do I look for Chollo?'

'He needs to finish up his current project. When are you going back to Boston?'

'Tomorrow. When will Chollo show up?'

'Soon,' del Rio said.

'Does he know where to find me?'

'He'll find you.'

'Thank you.'

'Adios, amigo,' del Rio said and hung up.

Susan had on panty hose by now, and a pair of high-heeled shoes, and a honey-colored silk blouse. She was holding up a caramel-colored skirt and jacket in front of the mirror and looking at it approvingly.

'Remember before panty hose?' I said.

Susan turned a little to one side and looked at the caramel-colored suit from that angle.

'Garter belt and stockings,' I said. 'That was the look.'

Susan nodded to herself and hung the jacket on the back of a chair. She scuffed off her heels and stepped into the skirt. Then she stepped back into her heels and put on the jacket.

'Everything new isn't necessarily better,' I said.

Susan shook her head, took off the jacket, took off the honey-colored blouse, put on a gold necklace with some kind of amber stones in it, put the jacket back on, buttoned it, looked in the mirror, patted her hair a little, and turned toward me.

'Okay,' she said. 'I'm ready to go.'

'So quick?' I said.

L'Orangerie had a bouquet of flowers in the center of the room that was about the size of a sequoia. Susan and I had roast chicken and a bottle of Graves.

'So has the trip been successful?' Susan asked me.

'All trips are successful when we go on them together,' I said.

'Yes, they are,' Susan said and gave me her heartstopping smile. 'And did you learn anything that will help you find Lisa?'

'I gathered a lot of information,' I said.

'Useful information?'

I shrugged.

'Don't know. You can pretty well guarantee that most of it won't be useful. This case, any case. But you can't usually know it beforehand. I just trawl up everything I can find, see how it works.'

Susan carefully cut the skin off her chicken.

'Aren't you the babe that ate more Mexican food the other day than Pancho Villa?' I said.

'This isn't Mexican food,' she said.

'Oh,' I said. 'Of course.'

'We cannot spend the rest of our lives together without sex, Angel,' he said.

It was the first time he'd brought it up directly. She felt her chest tighten and the sharp jab o =f anxiety in her stomach.

'We cannot spend the rest of our lives together, period!' she said.

She was wearing a plaid shirt and a buckskin skirt with cowboy boots and feeling like a chorus dancer in Oklahoma.

'We have had sex many times.'

'I liked to think of it as making love, Luis.'

'And you do not wish to make love anymore?'

'I do not love you, Luis. Remember? I don't love you.'

'Love does not alter when it alteration finds,' he said.

My God, she thought. He must have been preparing for this discussion. He must have looked that up in some quotation manual. She knew it was a line from some famous writer, but she didn't know which one.

'It should,' she said. 'If you change, your love changes.'

'And you have changed?'

'Yes.'

'I have not,' he said.

He stood over her in black western clothes. She never remembered how tall he was. His