The people who had gotten an early start were getting louder, their laughter cacophonous and disjointed. The evening air was suddenly cooler, the sandstone formations more lavender than red, more like tombstones than castles.
“If it’s not death, what is it?” I asked.
“Something unknowable.” His eyes were hollow, sightless, even though he was staring straight at me. “We drown in it. This is the omphalos, the center of it all. You were there, sir. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I was where?”
“You bloody well know what I mean. Where you see the realities and never tell anyone.”
I wondered if I was talking to a madman. Or someone who had been in the Garden. Or someone who shot up with hallucinogens.
“Sorry. After seven in the evening I develop logorrhea,” he said.
“You’re fine. I need to take a walk.”
“What about dinner?”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. I have sciatica trouble sometimes.”
“I’ll come along,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
“I see you walk with a purpose,” he said. “I can always tell a military man. You ever count cadence? It puts your blood to pumping, by God. Orwell said it. Maybe there’s something beautiful about war after all.”
Wrong, I thought. But why argue with those who are proud of their membership in the Herd?
• • •
AT FIVE-THIRTY A.M., I went down to breakfast inside the hotel restaurant and thought I was seeing an apparition at a table by a big glass window that gave onto the desert. Clete was wearing his powder blue sport coat and gray slacks and shined oxblood loafers, his porkpie hat crown-down on the tablecloth. He was surrounded by a stack of pancakes inserted with sausage patties, scrambled eggs, hash browns, a bowl of milk gravy, toast, coffee, a pitcher of cream, and a glass of tomato juice with an orange slice notched on the rim.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Thought I’d get out of town in case Helen wanted to chat about Hugo Tillinger. Maybe I’ll hike in the hills. Lose a few pounds.”
I sat down. “Are you up to something?”
“No, you got my word.”
“I know you, Clete.”
“Bailey Ribbons is on her way. I heard Helen is beaucoup pissed.”
“Bailey is coming here?”
“Cormier is casting her. I didn’t know how you’d feel about that.”
“She can do whatever she wants. Stop trying to micromanage my life.”
“Want some pancakes?”
• • •
I WENT TO ALAFAIR’S room. She was just coming out the door. I told her what Clete had just told me.
“Clete is here?” she said.
“Helen isn’t in the best of moods.”