The two men shot each other the quickest and most startled of glances, as if each had guessed what might happen next. They hurried across the lobby, breathing hard, to sit on the very edge of the hot velvet lounge, wiping their faces with damp handkerchiefs.
Miss Hillgood drew a chair under her, rested the golden harp gently back on her shoulder, and put her hands to the strings.
Mr Terle took a breath of fiery air and waited.
A desert wind came suddenly along the porch outside, tilting the chairs so they rocked this way and that like boats on a pond at night.
Mr Fremley’s voice protested from above. ‘What’s goin’ on down there?’
And then Miss Hillgood moved her hands.
Starting at the arch near her shoulder, she played her fingers out along the simple tapestry of wires towards the blind and beautiful stare of the Greek goddess on her column, and then back. Then, for a moment, she paused and let the sounds drift up through the baked lobby air and into all the empty rooms.
If Mr Fremley shouted, above, no one heard. For Mr Terle and Mr Smith were so busy jumping up to stand riven in the shadows, they heard nothing save the storming of their own hearts and the shocked rush of all the air in their lungs. Eyes wide, mouths dropped, in a kind of pure insanity, they stared at the two women there, the blind Muse proud on her golden pillar, and the seated one, gentle eyes closed, her small hands stretched forth on the air.
Like a girl, they both thought wildly, like a little girl putting her hands out of a window to feel what? Why, of course, of course!
To feel the rain.
The echo of the first shower vanished down remote causeways and roof-drains, away.
Mr Fremley, above, rose from his bed as if pulled round by his ears.
Miss Hillgood played.
She played and it wasn’t a tune they knew at all, but it was a tune they had heard a thousand times in their long lives, words or not, melody or not. She played and each time her fingers moved, the rain fell pattering through the dark hotel. The rain fell cool at the open windows and the rain rinsed down the baked floorboards of the porch. The rain fell on the rooftop and fell on hissing sand, it fell on rusted car and empty stable and dead cactus in the yard. It washed the windows and laid the dust and filled the rain-barrels and curtained the doors with beaded threads that might part and whisper as you walked through. But more than anything, the soft touch and coolness of it fell on Mr Smith and Mr Terle. Its gentle weight and pressure moved them down and down until it had seated them again. By its continuous budding and prickling on their faces, it made them shut up their eyes and mouths and raise their hands to shield it away. Seated there, they felt their heads tilt slowly back to let the rain fall where it would.
The flash flood lasted a minute, then faded away as the fingers trailed down the loom, let drop a few last bursts and squalls and then stopped.
The last chord hung in the air like a picture taken when lightning strikes and freezes a billion drops of water on their downward flight. Then the lightning went out. The last drops fell through darkness in silence.
Miss Hillgood took her hands from the strings, her eyes still shut.
Mr Terle and Mr Smith opened their eyes to see those two miraculous women, way over there across the lobby, somehow come through the storm untouched and dry.
They trembled. They leaned forward as if they wished to speak. They looked helpless, not knowing what to do.
And then a single sound from high above in the hotel corridors drew their attention and told them what to do.
The sound came floating down feebly, fluttering like a tired bird beating its ancient wings.
The two men looked up and listened.
It was the sound of Mr Fremley.
Mr Fremley, in his room, applauding.
It took five seconds for Mr Terle to figure out what it was. Then he nudged Mr Smith and began, himself, to beat his palms together. The two men struck their hands in mighty explosions. The echoes ricocheted around about in the hotel caverns above and below, striking walls, mirrors, windows, trying to fight free of the rooms.
Miss Hillgood opened her eyes now, as if this new storm had come on her in the open, unprepared.
The men gave their own recital. They smashed their hands together so fervently it seemed they had fistfuls of firecrackers to set off, one on another. Mr Fremley shouted. Nobody heard. Hands winged out, banged shut again and again until fingers puffed up and the old men’s breath came short and they put their hands at last on their knees, a heart pounding inside each one.
Then, very slowly, Mr Smith got up and still looking at the harp, went outside and carried in the suitcases. He stood at the foot of the lobby stairs looking for a long while at Miss Hillgood. He glanced down at her single piece of luggage resting there by the first tread. He looked from her suitcase to her and raised his eyebrows, questioningly.
Miss Hillgood looked at her harp, at her suitcase, at Mr Terle, and at last back to Mr Smith.
She nodded once.