She said curiously as the bellboy placed the heavier of the two suitcases on the luggage rack, “Thank you, this is very nice. I’ve been here before, but could you tell me who Raoul is?”
He gave her a shy and charming smile and a little bow. “I am Raoul. How are Mr. and Mrs. Bell?” Mary, released from embarrassment by his tact, said that they were fine and Julian Bell had just had a new book published. “Ah,” said Raoul admiringly while between them the tip was managed with great delicacy. “If you should need anything, madame . . .”
He indicated the telephone and withdrew. A relative of the management? Or someone on the staff so long that he had a room at his own discretion? It was probably, thought Mary, going to the mirror for brief repairs to her hair and face, one of those mysteries better left unexplored. But she must ask him at the first opportunity the best garage to call about her car.
She had been lucky, finding a taxi almost at once although the rain was by then coming down in earnest. The suitcases were manageable, even with the books inside. A couple festive in dress but not in mood were being decanted as she reached the motel front; the woman had snarled as Mary climbed in, “I suppose your precious Mavis Jean will be here,” and the man had replied tersely, “Shut up, you hear?” (Shouldn’t that have been “You-all shut up?”)
. . . In the courtyard, pool and willows received the rain in rustly near-silence; the flagstones were loud with it. People here parked like mad sardines because of the inadequate space, and as Mary reached the bottom of the wooden stairs one driver was in the process of extricating himself from what seemed an impossible corner. It proved to be Brennan. As she passed in front of his headlights Mary held up her room key, ran inside, left it at the desk with the explanation that Miss Acton might be requiring it first, and, moments later, was in the car which had cruised successfully up to the rear entrance.
“That was a fast few minutes,” observed Brennan, mildly congratulatory. He steered through the narrow gate and made a surprising left turn. “About your car—were you thinking of going back tomorrow?”
Was she? No, thought Mary instantly, realizing that this decision had already been made in her subconscious mind. After all this trouble, and all this nervousness, she had to give Brian Beardsley time to learn at the Casa de Flores that Jenny was on her way or had already returned to Santa Fe, try to find her at the house there, realize that he was being eluded and—surely?—give up. He might be furious at the Actons, but he couldn’t very well devote an indefinite period of time to the arranging of some personal revenge; for all he knew, Mary had any number of sheltering, cooperating friends.
She started to say, “It depends—” but she had hesitated too long. Daniel Brennan said a little stiffly, “Because I’d be glad to have a look in the morning. It might be something simple.”
“It didn’t sound like that, but thank you very much, I’d appreciate it.”
Was there an inoffensive way to inquire if he knew where he was going? The lights of the Avenue of the Sixteenth of September, named after Mexican Independence Day, with its lively concentration of shops and restaurants and nightclubs, were steadily receding as the car threaded its way through narrow back streets. Mary liked driving here by day—the national tendency to decorate even the most utilitarian structure was a constant pleasure—but at night, in the rain, there was something secretive and even a little hostile about the shrouded windows behind iron grillwork, an occasional door whisked open and swiftly shut on a pulse of music, black alley-mouths which could lead anywhere.
She took a quick side glance at Brennan’s profile, and at once, as if he had been anticipating her as he had at the pool or because the silence in the car seemed to be assuming an actual shape, he turned his head. “Sorry, I’m not getting us there very fast, am I? Some idiot gave me directions for what he said was a short cut, but he must have had Chihuahua in mind.”
“I think—” began Mary circumspectly, and stopped, because Brennan had brought the car to an idling halt on the empty one-way street. He fished in a pocket, brought out not the scribbled map she expected but cigarettes, seemed not to know what to do with them, stuffed them away again. These maneuvers had brought him around in the seat so that he half-faced her. He is not the kind of man to make random passes, thought Mary, but her shoulders had stiffened involuntarily against the seat.
“I might as well tell you,” said Brennan, casual and astonishing, “that Jenny is quite right. About not trusting me, I mean.”
Jenny, tall and sprawly, childish and sardonic by turns—this was a flashback from the pool—coming along like an invisible third. Couldn’t she be content
