She was instantly appalled at herself; why had she put it that way? Jenny stared briefly, and the stare was not friendly. Mary said rapidly, “That was my own translation. What he actually said was that you’re a marvelous swimmer, you could compete, and he thinks you’re very nice.”
Although it was exactly what he had said, it acquired a faintly patronizing flavor in the conveying, but Jenny didn’t seem to mind. She collected a lock of her black hair and draped it experimentally over her upper lip. “Come to that, I saw your Mr. Brennan downstairs. Spying out the territory for tomorrow, would you say, or panting for another glimpse of you?”
We’re needling each other, thought Mary in amazement. I like her, and I think she likes me, but listen to us. She jumped up. “I brought bath powder, if you didn’t. Wait a second and I’ll get it for you.”
It was a fragrance Jenny had admired. Mary picked up her book when the bathroom door had closed and the ablutions begun, but although it was a very good English mystery novel she did not immediately plunge herself into it again. “Your Mr. Brennan,” Jenny had said—but something in that brief interchange at the restaurant, although she had not realized it until now, had rung slightly false.
“I’m always surprised to see another Santa Fe face down here,” Daniel Brennan had said as an excuse for his dwelling regard, but, apart from Texans, New Mexicans formed the largest bloc of U.S. visitors. In the course of one weekend the autumn before, while staying at another motel, Mary had seen three people she recognized.
Firmly, she resumed her book, wishing that it were possible for her to like steak-and-kidney pie.
The pool area was deserted, and the underwater light had been switched off.
The man on the concrete deck had been holding his right hand in the water for over five minutes. Two fingers had been frostbitten when he was a boy, and even after all these years any prolonged exposure to cold turned them a startling tallow color, the nails tinged with blue. People tended to comment on it.
He took his hand out of the water, straightened, used his handkerchief and walked away from the pool, lighting a cigarette for anyone who might be watching although curtains were drawn everywhere. Carelessly, a guest taking a stroll before retiring or entering one of the bars for a nightcap, he passed under one of the lanterns directing the way back and glanced at his hand.
As he had hoped, he would not draw any attention to himself if he decided to use the pool. His middle fingers had not turned white.
At something after ten o’clock, Mary gave up on the recovery of her books.
Her swim had revived her briefly that afternoon; so, later, had drinks and dinner. Now, all at once, the various encounters of the day had her so stunned that it was a matter of almost no moment when the stopping mechanism of the bathtub did not work, so that she had to settle for a shower instead of a sleepy soak, or when, presently, her bedside light did not function either; all this in spite of the imposing trappings.
Jenny, necessarily reduced to the hotel’s brochure about what to see in Juarez, offered to turn off her own lamp at once, but Mary assured her, “Not on my account.” Unlike many people, she found a faint reflected glow on her eyelids a positive aid to sleep, a pleasant borderland between wakefulness and dreaming. Back turned to the other bed, she gazed between dropping lashes at the door in its well of dimness beyond the bathroom and facing closet . . .
. . . And heard herself arguing away the marriage to Spencer Hume. She had been mainly a devil’s advocate at first, because neither of them regarded such a step lightly, but little by little, like a convert to vegetarianism putting someone else off his chosen food, she had convinced them both, although at the end Spence had said, between bewilderment and anger, “Damn it, Mary, we can’t both have been crazy.”
Unlike people in plays and books and possibly real life, they had not remained friends. They had avoided each other assiduously, not easy in Santa Fe and posing difficulties for hostesses who had entertained them both, until Spence’s company had offered to transfer him to San Francisco and he had leaped at the chance. Taking with him his blue gaze which could suddenly fall into a reverie about the oddest things, and the flicker of beginning gray in the dark hair above his ears although he was only thirty-four.
But that wasn’t Spence. That was . . .
“Mary,” Jenny was saying in a frightened, insistent voice. “There’s someone at the door, trying to get in.”
Mary, jerked out of her dark-gold, sleep-buzzing trance, saw that the doorknob was indeed turning, sprang out of bed, cried distractedly, “Oh, I don’t believe this!” for the benefit of whoever it was, and fumbled her way into her robe as she went to the door. “Who is it?”
“Alfredo.”
At close to eleven o’clock, if not after? Still a little dazed, Mary undid the chain which was more of a decoration than any real safeguard and opened the door a cautious two inches. A pile of recognizable books met her eye, with above them the expressionless face of the bellboy. There was no apology for the late hour, no query, even by means of facial gymnastics, as to whether he had disturbed them.
Mary opened the door wider, took the books, thanked him, didn’t ask where he had found them, and knew that she was spineless to give him a dollar for this eccentric
