about him) before they looked up and saw?
'…perfectly terrified,' Milly said in a tone neither flip nor rhetorical.
'There isn't anything to be terrified of,' Lanya said. 'I'd think, with the rumors of rape and violation going around, you'd be fascinated to meet the man himself and get a look.'
'Oh, the rumors are fascinating enough,' Milly said, 'in a perfectly horrible way—'
'And the man is rather nice—' Lanya turned her harmonica, examining it as she walked—'despite the rumors. Don't you find reality
The two young women passed beneath. He imagined his reflection sliding across her harmonica; her eyes starting up—
'In principle,' Milly said. 'In practice, when the rumors get to a certain point, I'm willing to let the whole business alone and go off exploring in the opposite direction. Suppose the reality turns out to be
'Oh, really…!' Lanya raised her harmonica, played. 'You're going to chicken out, again, aren't you?' She played another snatch.
'Someday,' Milly said, pensively, 'I wish you'd play a piece from one end to the other. The snatches are awfully nice.'
(Kidd looked after them.)
Lanya looked at her harmonica. 'I guess that's because I never play for anybody else.'
'You should,' Milly said. 'I mean, everybody hears it anyway. Sometimes, all those little pieces, pretty as they are, practically give me a headache because they aren't connected to each other.'
'I'll try,' Lanya said. 'And
'Look,' Milly said, 'going to
'But I've
'Oh, you know everyone,' Milly said; her hair shook. And then, '…' which was maddeningly beyond ear shot. Lanya's answer was another burst of music, that went on as they disappeared around the next turn; after a few wrong notes, the tune halted.
Kidd crab-walked down the dirt, stepped from behind the last bush, and looked where the girls had been.
The mention of George Harrison left a funny feel. A subterranean frown battled the inner smile still behind his face. His cheek twitched, his lips moved to shape vowels from no languages he spoke. Again he was tempted to run after them. But his curiosity had shifted a thumb's width toward anxiety.
The path, apparently, wound back the other way.
Perhaps he could cut through again, overtake them once more—? Speculation became resolution. He crossed into the bushes, again climbing; he scrambled over a stretch of rock, pushed forward through leaves. Ten feet away, fifteen — a long note from Lanya's harmonica, a flicker of Milly's bright hair! He crouched, cheek and one palm against bark. His bare boot, over a root, rocked him unsteadily.
Through dull leaves, he could just make them out.
There was another musical sound — not her harmonica, but their two laughters.
'Okay,' he heard Lanya say, 'we'll do it that way— if you want.'
'Oh, yes,' Milly cried. 'Let's!'
'It's silly.' Lanya laughed. 'But all right. He's there every afternoon, almost. All right, we'll do it that way, but only because you're my…'
They were further away, so he heard less this time — except their laughter, leaving. What, he wondered, were they going to do
He stood again, took three loping steps through the brush, the worried laugh to stop them with, ready in his throat. (Thinking: Hey, what kind of crazy idea have you two nuts gotten into your—)
A root caught his sandal toe and spun him out on the concrete. He almost fell. Pushing up from one knee, he turned. And was suddenly confused.
Which way had they come from?
Which way had they gone?
He'd only glimpsed them this time. In both directions the path curved the same way… His faulty left-right orientation, always worse under strain — the plague of the ambidextrous, a doctor had once explained — gave way completely. Well, he'd come from
The growth — of course — was thicker. The slope here was so steep he had to scrabble with hands as well as feet. Thinking: When was the last time I saw sunlight a golden flutter in bright green? The sky, flickering through, was the color of iron. The leaves, each in a caul of ash, were like grey velvet scraps, or dead mice.
Pebbles rolled underfoot. No, he thought, they
And where the hell was the third? Trees cleared to high boulders. He skirted one and, leaning on it, vaulted down a small drop, brushed aside brush—
Across flat rock (a section had been filled with cement to level it) was a building of black stones, rounded and the size of heads, webbed in white mortar. Above the building's several wings rose a square tower with a crenellated balcony of the same black stone. The building was not large; the tower was not quite three stories. The vaulted windows, paned with pebbled glass, deeply recessed, were so thin he would have had trouble climbing out.
A waist-high wall of stone went along two sides of a large, informal courtyard in front of the building.
On the corner, wearing black-framed glasses, work-shoe heels wedged in a deep tenon, elbows on the knees of soiled khaki coveralls, and reading the
Kidd squatted.
Leaves flicked up the image.
Knuckles mashed in dirt, Kidd leaned forward.
Leaves tickled his cheek.
Kidd was afraid; Kidd was fascinated. Whatever caused both left him clammy-handed.
George took off his glasses, put them in his shirt pocket, slid from the wall and, work shoes wide and fist- heels up, stretched. Khaki creases fanned from flank to shoulder.
(Squatting, watching; curiosity and alarm resolved, into a sort of self-righteous, silent mumble: Okay, fun is fun, but what sort of prank
George's face twisted under a metal sky so low the city's fires had scorched and marred it like an aluminum pot-bottom.
Beyond a break in the wall (which, Kidd realized only from her gait, had steps below it) Lanya — hair, nose, chin, shoulders — emerged. 'Hey, George,' she said. 'You're back here again this afternoon? City life too much for you?'
Milly
'Hu'?' the aspiration voiced and the vowel voiceless; George turned as she gained the top step. 'Y'com' ba' '