was Tuesday. You don't think he's forgotten?'
'If he has, we'll remind him,' Lanya said. 'No, I'm sure he hasn't forgotten.'
He could press his thumb or his knuckles against the sharp edges and leave only the slightest line, that later, like the other cross-hatches in the surface skin, filled with dirt; but he could hardly feel it. 'Maybe we'll avoid any run-ins with scorpions today,' he said as they crossed from Brisbain North to Brisbain South. 'If we're lucky.'
'No self-respecting scorpion would be up at this hour of the morning,' Lanya said. 'They all sleep till three or four, then carouse till dawn, didn't you know?'
'Sounds like the life. You been in Calkins' place before, you keep telling me. It'll be okay?'
'If I hadn't been in there before—' she slapped her harmonica on her palm—'I wouldn't be making this fuss.' Three glistening notes. She frowned, and blew again.
'I think you look pretty good scruffy,' he said.
She played more notes, welding them nearly into melody, till she changed her mind, laughed, or complained, or was silent, before beginning another. They walked, Lanya strewing incomplete tunes.
His notebook flapped his hip. (His other hand was petaled in steel, now.) He swung, in twin protections, from the curb. 'I wonder if I'm scared of what he's going to say.'
Between notes: 'Hmm?'
'Mr Newboy. About my poems. Shit, I'm not going to see him. I want to see where Calkins lives. I don't care what Mr Newboy says about what I write.'
'I left three perfectly beautiful dresses there, upstairs in Phil's closet. I wonder if they're still there.'
'Probably, if Phil is,' he said from within his protections.
'Christ, no. Phil hasn't been in the city for… weeks!'
The air was tingly and industrial. He looked up on a sky here the color of clay, there the color of ivory, lighter over there like tarnished tin.
'Good idea,' Lanya said, 'for me to split. I got you.' Slipping her hand between blades, she grasped two of his fingers. Even on her thin wrist, turned, the blades pressed, rubbed, creased her skin—
'Watch out. You're gonna…'
But she didn't.
Over the wall hung hanks of ivy.
At the brass gate, she said, 'It's quiet inside.'
'Do you ring?' he asked, 'or do you shout?' Then he shouted: 'Mr Newboy!'
She pulled her hand gingerly away. 'There used to be a bell, I think…' She fingered the stone around the brass plate.
'Hello…?' from inside. Footsteps ground the gravel somewhere behind the pines.
'Hello, sir!' Kidd called, pulling the orchid off, pushing a blade into a belt-loop.
Ernest Newboy walked out of shaggy green. 'Yes, it is Tuesday, isn't it.' He gestured with a rolled paper. 'I just found out half an hour ago.' He did something on the inside of the latch plate. The gate clanked, swung in a little. 'Glad to see you both.' He pulled it open the rest of the way.
'Isn't the man who used to be a guard here anymore?' Lanya asked, stepping through. 'He had to stay in there all the time.' She pointed to a small, green booth, out of sight of the sidewalk.
'Tony?' Mr Newboy said. 'Oh, he doesn't go on till sometime late in the afternoon. But practically everybody's out today. Roger decided to take them on a tour.'
'And you stayed for us?' Kidd asked. 'You didn't have to—'
'No, I just wasn't up to it. I wouldn't have gone anyway.'
'Tony…' Lanya mulled, looking at the weathered paint on the gate shed. 'I thought his name was something Scandinavian.'
'Then it must be somebody else now,' Mr Newboy said. He put his hands in his pockets. 'Tony's quite as Italian as you can get. He's really very nice.'
'So was the other one,' Lanya said. 'Things are always changing around here.'
'Yes, they are.'
They started up the path.
'There're so many people in and out of here all the time I've given up trying to keep track. It's very hectic. But you've picked a quiet day. Roger has taken everyone down town to see the paper office.' Newboy smiled. 'Except me. I always insist on sleeping late Tuesdays.'
'It's nice to see the place again,' Lanya consented. 'When will everybody be back?'
'I would imagine as soon as it gets dark. You said you'd stayed here before. Would you like to wait and say hello to Roger?'
'No,' Lanya said. 'No. I was just curious.'
Mr Newboy laughed. 'I see.'
The gravel (chewing Kidd's calloused foot) turned between two white columned mock-temples. The trees gave way to hedges; And what might have been an orchard further.
'Can we cut across the garden?'
'Of course. We'll go to the side terrace. The coffee urn's still hot I know, and I'll see if I can find some tea cakes. Roger keeps telling me I have the run of the place, but I still feel a little strange prying into Mrs Alt's kitchen just like that—'
'Oh, that's—' and 'You don't have—' Kidd and Lanya began together.
'No, I know where they are. And it's time for my coffee break — that's what you call it here?'
'You'll love these!' Lanya exclaimed as they stepped through the high hedge. 'Roger has the most beautiful flowers and—'
Brambles coiled the trellis. Dried tendrils curled on splintered lathe. The ground was gouged up in black confusion here, and here, and there.
'— What in the world…' Lanya began. 'What
Mr Newboy looked puzzled. 'I didn't know anything bad. It's been like this since I've been here.'
'But it was full of flowers: those sun-colored orange things, like tigers. And irises. Lots of irises—'
Kidd's foot cooled in moist ground.
'Really?' Newboy asked. 'How long ago were you there?'
Lanya shrugged. 'Weeks… three weeks, four?'
'How strange.' Mr Newboy shook his head as the crossed the littered earth. 'I'd always gotten the impression they'd been like this, for years…'
In a ten-foot dish of stone, leaves rotted in puddles.
Lanya's head shook. 'The fountain used to be going all the time. It had a Perseus, or a Hermes or something in it. Where did it get to?'
'Dear me,' Newboy squinted. 'I think it's in a pile of junk behind the secretary cottage. I saw something like that when I was wandering around. But I never knew it had anything to do with the fountain. I wonder who's been around here long enough to know?'
'Why don't you ask Mr Calkins?' Kidd said.
'Oh, no. I don't think I would do that.' Mr Newboy looked at Lanya with bright complicity. 'I don't think I would do that at all.'
'No,' said Lanya, face fallen before the desolation, 'I don't think so.'
At the brim's crack, the ground, oozy under thin grass, kept their prints like plaster.
They passed another vined fence; a deal of lawn, and, higher than the few full trees, the house. (On a rise off to one side was another house, only three floors. The secretary cottage?)
Set in the grass a verdigrised plate read:
MAY
From the five fat, stone towers — he sought a sixth for symmetry and failed to find it — it looked as though a modern building of dark wood, glass, and brick had been built around an old one of stone.
'How many people does he have here?' Kidd asked.
