cigarette gave you time for thought. 'You never told me you'd been married,' he said.
'There really wasn't any reason to,' she said. 'I guess not,' he said. 'But I'm interested.' She laughed. 'I really ought to tell you it's none of your business. But I think I'll put on a pot of coffee and decide what I'm going to say.'
When she came back with two steaming cups, she handed one to Leaphorn with a broad smile.
'I decided I'm glad you asked,' she said, sat down, and told him about it. They had both been graduate students, and he was big, handsome, and sort of out of it and always needed help with his classes. She'd thought that was charming at the time, and the charm had lasted about a year.
'It took me that long to understand that he'd been looking for a second mother. You know, somebody to take care of him.'
'Lots of men like that,' Leaphorn said, and since he couldn't think of anything to add to that, he switched the subject over to Catherine Pollard and his meeting with Mrs. Vanders. 'I wondered why you decided to take that on,' she said. 'It sounds hopeless to me.'
'It probably is,' Leaphorn said. 'I'm going to give it a couple more days and if it still looks hopeless, I'll call the lady and tell her I failed.' He finished his coffee and stood. 'It's eighty miles back to Tuba City—actually eighty-two to my motel—and I've got to get going.'
'You're too tired to make that drive,' she said. 'Stay here. Get some sleep. Drive it in the morning.'
'Um,' Leaphorn said. 'Well, I wanted to try to find this Woody and see if he can tell me anything.'
'He'll keep,' Louisa said. 'It won't take any longer to drive it in the morning.'
'Stay here?'
'Why not? Use the guest bedroom. I have a nine-thirty lecture. But if you want a real early start there's an alarm clock on the desk in there.'
'Well,' Leaphorn said, digesting this, and recognizing how tired he was, and the nature of friendship. 'Yes. Well, thank you.'
'There's some sleeping stuff in the chest. Nightgowns and so forth in the top drawer and pajamas in the bottom one.'
'Men's?'
'Men's, women's, what have you. Guests can't be too Particular about borrowed pajamas.'
Louisa, taking their empty cups into the kitchen, stopped in the doorway.
'I'm still wondering why you took the job,' she said. 'It surprises me.'
'Me, too,' Leaphorn said. 'But I'd been thinking about that Navajo policeman killed up near Yells Back Butte, and it turns out Catherine Pollard disappeared the same day, and she was supposed to be going to check on rodent burrows about the same place.'
'Ah,' Louisa said, smiling. 'And if I remember what you've told me, Joe Leaphorn never could believe in coincidence.'
She stood holding the cups, studying him. 'You know, Joe, if I didn't have to work tomorrow I'd invite myself along. I'd like to meet this Woody fellow.'
'You'd be welcome,' Leaphorn said.
And more than welcome. He'd been dreading tomorrow, doing his duty, keeping a promise he'd made for no particular reason to an old woman he didn't even know without any real hope of learning anything useful.
Louisa still hadn't moved from the doorway.
'Would I be?'
'It would make my day,' Leaphorn said.
Chapter Eleven
A HIGH-PITCHED METHODICAL whimpering sound intruded into Joe Leaphorn's dream and jerked him abruptly awake. It came from a strange-looking white alarm clock on a desk beside his bed, which was also strange—soft and warm and smelling of soap and sunshine. His eyes finally focused and he saw a ceiling as white as his own, but lacking the pattern of plaster cracks he had memorized through untold hours of insomnia.
Leaphorn pushed himself into a sitting position, fully awake, with his short-term memories flooding back. He .was in Louisa Bourebonette's guest bedroom. He fumbled with the alarm clock, hoping to shut off the whimpering before it awakened her. But obviously it was too late for that. He smelled coffee brewing and bacon frying—the almost forgotten aromas of contentment. He stretched, yawned, settled back against the pillow. The crisp, fresh sheets reminded him of Emma. Everything did. The morning breeze ruffled the curtains beside his head. Emma, too, always left their windows open to the outside air until Window Rock's bitter winter made it impractical. The curtains, too. He had teased her about that. 'I didn't see window curtains in your mother's hogan, Emma,' he'd said. And she rewarded him with her tolerant smile and reminded him he'd moved her out of the hogan, and Navajos must remain in harmony with houses that needed curtains. That was one of the things he loved about her. One of the many. As numerous as the stars of a high country midnight.
He'd persuaded Emma that she should marry him two days before he was to take the Graduate General Examination for his degree at Arizona State. The degree was in anthropology, but the dreaded GGE covered the spectrum of the humanities and he'd been brushing up on his weak points—which had led him into a quick scan of Shakespeare's 'most likely to be asked about on GGE' plays and hence to Othello's discourse about Desdemona. He still remembered the passage, although he wasn't sure he had it quite right: 'She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them.'
'Leaphorn, are you up? If you're not, your eggs are going to be overhard.'
'I'm up,' Leaphorn said, and got up, grabbed his clothes and hurried into the bathroom. The point Othello was trying to make, he thought, was that he loved Desdemona because she loved him. Which sounded simple enough, but actually was a very complicated concept.
