The guy just stared, totally fascinated but not in a way that alarmed her. Which was a good thing, considering she seemed to be laying on the only bed in his weird little hovel, naked under a huge beach towel printed with jaguars and parrots peering out of a jungle. She didn’t see any of her clothes and couldn’t remember showing up here. The lack of a hangover led her to think it wasn’t another one of those deals, though. She just didn’t have a lot of recall at the moment. No big.

He brought her bottled water, then just sat staring at her. She sat up clutching the towel to her chest, smiled prettily, swept a handful of gold hair back from her face, and accepted the water. She sipped, then guzzled greedily, realizing she was very dry, perhaps borderline dehydrated. Might have something to do with her brain not hitting on all cylinders. He sat watching her drink, seemed to be working something out in his head. And must have finally figured out what it was because he suddenly said, “What your name?” in heavily flawed English.

“Let me get back to you on that,” she told him seriously. “But how about you?”

It only took three re-wordings of the question to understand that the guy was named Ganzo. Good start. The rest would come back pretty soon. It always did, like it or not. Meanwhile, she scoped Ganzo out. Obviously local, but taller than the normal Mayan and pretty easy on the eyes. Which rang a bell somewhere in her head, but she ignored it. Nicely muscled, maybe a swimmer. The tight, chiseled calves you get from using dive fins a lot. Another ringtone back in the warm, dusky wool. What she was really wondering was whether of not the guy’s looks and her nude presence in his bed were connected and if that was going to complicate her life. She kind of doubted it.

For one thing, she was getting the feeling this Ganzo guy was beyond uncomplicated: was more like not all there. Not so much because of his blank stare and limited conversational tools, or even the fact that he had a great-looking naked blonde in stock and didn’t seem interested in much more than staring like a little kid: there was just a blankness to him, like a big dog or draft horse. Exactly the kind of animals she was very comfortable around. More so than good-looking men, actually. Legacy of her rodeo farmgirl childhood. Hey, now there was backstory right there. She lay back to think that over, but when her head hit the ball of T-shirts that served as a pillow she yelped in pain. Apparently her head had been beaten pretty badly. Hmm, head trauma, can’t remember anything: just like the cartoons.

Her gingerly explorations of her lacerated scalp indicated that her wounds had been treated with iodine and a band-aid here and there. But no matted blood in her hair. Had he washed her hair for her? She palmed a handful over her nose and sniffed. It smelled of cheap hand soap. Like the big yellow cake sitting over there on the rickety table by the plastic paint bucket.

She raised the towel and took a peek: yep, her golden gorgeosity was marred into a camouflage pattern of scrapes and bruises. She thought about that a little as she drained the last of the liter of AguaPura, but came up with zip. Ganzo came up with another bottle of water. This time she patted his hand before taking the bottle and chugging another few pints. “You rescued me, didn’t you?”

He cocked his head at her like a dog, and with as much comprehension. Not much of a talker. She rather liked that in a guy, sometimes. Apparently. She toasted him with the bottle and slugged down some more.

And no, Ganzo never talked much. For one thing, he didn’t have much to say. A physical type, you could call him. But also there was a sort of reticence inside him. When he worked the beach he held up his wares for examination, dickered with the foreigners using his fingers, stared at the women when they tried to draw him out–and all the time conflicted whether he wasn’t worthy to talk to them or they didn’t belong in his world. Or something. Concepts swirled in his head like clouds. Sometimes the clouds came together and massed to form shapes. He could express those shapes, adroitly carving them onto shell, coconuts, coral, driftwood, fruit pits. But the clouds almost never formed words.

Meanwhile, she figured her dehydration was responding well to treatment because she had to pee. She looked around the cluttered little palm frond shack but didn’t see any sign of a bidet or vanity. She looked at Ganzo, who was still squatting on his heels, regarding her with his calm fascination. First word in Español a girl picks up around Mexico: “Baño?” He pointed at the door without breaking his stare. Okay. the towel was big, but not really up to a Dorothy Lamour shot. She tried another major word in Chick Spanish: “Ropa? My clothes? Nice fluffy guest bathrobe?”

He stood up smoothly and stepped over to some sort of workbench, snagged a bright red rayon sarong off the plastic armchair. Very nice hibiscus pattern. A Barcelona girl had given it to Ganzo two days ago. He’d looked a complete espectaculo, striding up out of the surf bronzed and naked, a blond goddess hanging off his hands. She wouldn’t have been completely comfortable with the idea of a guy just carrying off a naked unconscious woman like that, but one thing Tulum beachniks figured out was that Ganzo was harmless. She’d made a bit of a play for him, like some of the other little sluts in the cabañas, but he just didn’t seem to swing that way. He’d just stare at some topless Euro-hotty modeling his jewelry salaciously in front of him, his inner drum wacking out.

So she’d draped the red sarong over the comatose blonde and waved them off into the dusk before turning back to the bar swing for another cup of black espresso, shot of mescal, and line of toot.

When she stepped out of what amounted to an outhouse with a fall pipe located on top of a two story cement building in some tacky little village, she had figured a few things out. Or remembered them anyway. This was Mexico, the blue shine she saw to the east was the Caribbean, she was American, she’d been pounded over a coral reef. Indicating a familiarity with reefs. Another thing she figured out: she could just walk down those risky-looking wood stairs, head up that dusty street and be free of this situation. She wasn’t exactly kidnapped here. Slightly later she realized that walking around wounded, wearing only a wrap, with no money or clues, wouldn’t be the best plan of action available. So she turned back to Ganzo’s hovel, seeing it now as a palapa, a wedge of woven palm thatch sitting up here on somebody’s roof. She pushed aside the plush acrylic blanket with fading Mayan calendar print, stepped back into the dusky, gold-shot light of the palapa, and almost ran into Ganzo. He extended his hands toward her, running them into her hair and around her throat.

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Things had been going so well until Luis told the local INAH guys why they were there. Then the whole bonhomie and “enchanted to meet the esteemed Doctora Chiang” thing had frosted over and crashed. Luis shriveled as he discussed her quest with them, gesturing around the little Cobá museum. He glanced at her twice and all the come-on had evaporated. She knew the signs of a bureaucrat getting more bad news while hastily clabbering up a salvage plan.

It was so painful to watch Luis’ deflation that she slipped outside. She got a chilled Coke from a machine, and just held it to her temples while watching a sodden group of camera-draped Japanese, obviously completing a tour that involved scaling these daunting stairs. Of more interest was the guide, a very well set-up, athletic-looking guy about her age, probably Mayan himself. She watched him move, loose and unbothered by the sopping heat, his manner obviously ingratiating the tourists. Not too shabby, she was thinking when he waved good bye, pocketed his tips, and walked straight toward her.

His sudden turn and approach had taken her slightly aback, more so because she’d been fairly seriously checking out his shoulders and chiseled calves. He seemed to have homed in on her, striding across the parking lot with no hint of misdirection. Then she realized she was standing between a working man and the Coke machine. She moved aside as he glided up to it, grabbed a can from the slot, then pressed it to his temple like she was. And smiled. Hubba, hubba, some kinda smile, there, was MeiMei’s overall impression of Puch Pop.

The guide nodded a permiso? and moved by her, popping open the can as he entered the INAH office.

She drank half of her own Coke before he came back out and stood looking at her, a man obviously deciding whether or not to speak his mind. MeiMei was always in favor of men speaking their minds and tried to appear receptive and generally Yin. He walked by within a foot of her, using nothing but a glance into her face and subtle shift of his shoulders to suggest that she walk with him as he headed towards a thatch shelter obviously placed for the comfort of tour bus drivers. Boy, this guy knows how to guide, she thought as she followed him.

In the shade of the palapa he turned to face her, shot a glance back at the office to let her in on the idea that he probably shouldn’t be doing this, and spoke in a calm, soothing baritone. “You’re interested in the jade, aren’t you? Not its value; what it says?”

“Yes!” MeiMei blurted without attempt to disguise her excitement. “You know something about it?”

He tossed another signal glance, at the INAH seal on the door of Luis’ VW. “I can tell you,” he said, “But only if it’s private words. Just you.”

“I understand. And yes, this is for me, not the history institute.”

Luis stepped out of the office, flanked by two of the local functionaries and visibly unhappy to see MeiMei over there under a leafy bower with a handsome young stud. But trapped into what the two guys in white guayaberas were saying to him so insistently. MeiMei turned her full attention to Puch, great-looking Native whose name had yet to be dropped. And heard him say, “You want to know about the Oracle? The Talking Skull?”

Hey, wait a minute, did we flash over into Indiana Jones that fast? Archaeologists have to be careful of that, you know. “Excuse me? Talking skull?”

“Ah, then you haven’t seen it.”

“No, and that’s why I’m here. And it’s pretty mysterious that there’s no pictures of the back side, don’t you think?”

“It’s a skull. Not like these here, more the old Palenque style.”

“Okay. Like the Temple of Inscriptions? So it’s giving some news? ‘Talking’?”

“Yes, exactly. A big block of symbols small and close together.”

“Yes, jade because it holds more detail… wait, so you know what it says?”

He nodded but paused slightly, which she read as embarrassment. “I speak Mayan, but I can’t read that old writing.” He smiled again. “Only foreigners can read my own language. And slick chilangos from the Institute.

MeiMei always had an odd feeling around actual Mayans. Not awe, exactly, but a hushed respect like you feel in museums: they are artifacts, vestiges, remains of the day. It’s like meeting a Carthaginian or Cro-Magnon in the flesh.

The guide-muffin seemed to anticipate her thought. “We’re still here. Nobody ever managed to get rid of us. And we do have a legend about that jade skull. It’s like the calendar… you know, the Sun Stone, the Tzolkin?”

“It’s my specialty, actually.”

He nodded solemnly. “That’s wonderful. Anyway, it orders our days. It’s why there is order, how our lives move through time, you understand? But outside that circle of order there is chaos, like a jungle or wilderness where things came from, and go back to when they’re no longer in time. I hope I’m making sense. And the skull on the jade is telling about that disorder, about the life outside of time. Telling the living about the world of the dead, of the unborn.”

MeiMei almost whispered. “Do you know where it is?”

He lowered his voice as well, leaned in close to her. “I am trusting you now. Please don’t mention what I’m telling you to anybody else. Especially not that guy you came here with.”

“I promise.”

“It’s in private hands now.”

Puch saw the dark squall that blew across the face of the pretty Chinita and knew why. He was surprised at the hardness that set up in her serene face and mild voice, saying, “Oh, man! Same story everywhere. Grabbed off…”

She spun around and looked at the unlikely little local museum with narrowed eyes. “Probably why it was brought here? Easy place to lose something, am I right?”

She must have transferred some of her anger when she turned to him because he made placating gestures. “Not me. I grew up around these ruins. If I wanted to steal artifacts…” He surprised her with a sharp, clear laugh. “Actually, I have stolen them.”

She didn’t even manage to shift gears to deal with that confession before he went on. “We used to pick up things from the old buildings, then sell it out at the highway.”

Raggedly little Mayan kids flogging broken carvings and potshards to tourists, she thought. Well, it was their stuff, wasn’t it? “I wasn’t thinking of you. But maybe you know who has it?”

“Of course not.” But he was speaking from a too-straight face, so she waited. “It would be crazy to know that, you understand? Dangerous. What if was some rich, powerful Chilango collector, kind of guy who runs Mexico, does whatever he wants?”

She thought it over a moment, watching Luis run through the elaborate leave-taking process. Better cut to the chase here. “That would be a bummer. Some guy up in Mexico City, you’re saying.”

“Probably not. His headquarters has been Cancun almost since they built the place. And the word is that he bought a big yacht and is outfitting it like a palace, plans to live on it, traveling around the world.”

“And where is it now?”

“The lagoon on Isla Mujeres. Last week they installed a helicopter platform on it. I know some guys who worked on it.”

“Ohmigod… so he’s leaving the country?”

“Impossible to know. This guy is… well, he’s not really a person like you or me. More like a government.”

“He works for the government?”

“The government works for him.”

“Oh, shit.”

“This is Mexico, chinita.”

Luis was heading towards them now. She spoke quickly. “Would this non-person who didn’t do what we weren’t talking about have a name?”

“Julio Cesar Ronchel del Cumbre.”

“Thank you…?”

“My name is Puch.”

“I’m May. Thanks so much. Listen…” She could sense Luis approaching and blurted without really believing she was doing it, “How can I get to Isla Mujeres? Right now?”

He shook his head mockingly, but she could see fun and admiration in his look. “From Tulum. Local buses pass on the highway.”

She was already moving past him, towards the road. And people say I’ve never impulsive, she thought. She turned her head without stopping as he called to her. She saw Luis standing and staring, the Mayan guy effortlessly catching up.

“Look, if you’re going to Isla Mujeres,” he said quickly, “There’s this girl there. She works at that “swim with dolphins” place. Blonde. Her name is Curtsy.”

“And if I see her?”

“Well, I guess…” it was cute seeing a guy as self-possessed as him flustered and unsure of himself. “Could you tell her…?”

“That you think about her a lot?”

“Yes! Thank you.”

“Oh, no,” she said firmly as she quickened her pace along the access road, her shirt already plastered to her skin. “Thank you.”

“If you plan on trying to take on Ronchel, you don’t want to thank me. You should stay away from him. He can like turn everything against you: police, government, heaven, earth, hell. You know?”

“Only in a really vague way. But I have to see that skull. It’s like the summit of my work, my life.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

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Bannock got the feeling oXo dug the vibrations of the big jet, but couldn’t have said where he got that impression. Like last night: he’d wanted to leave the skull in the hotel safe, but he just somehow knew that oXo hated being locked up like that. A distaste he strongly shared.

But he’d wanted to hide the skull because he’d gotten a feeling that he and the girl were going to let the second double bed in the suite go to waste. And had no macho vanity to con him into thinking a woman like that couldn’t leave him way too stunned and exhausted to wake up when she slipped out of the room with Mr. Muerte Under Glass. So he’d sent her down to the lobby for whatever personal items she didn’t have stashed in her monster bag from Oaxaca and slipped the ever-grinning oXo into the toilet tank. And immediately gotten a strong vibe that he’d picked the perfect spot to suit oXo.

He touched his foot to the carry-on bag that currently held the skull, tucked under the seat in front of him like the cute Aeromexico stew had told him. Plenty of room for his mystic aura here in First Class. Which he didn’t usually spring for, but there was Loris. You didn’t cram a beauty like her into steerage seats any more than you’d put an orchid in a jelly jar. Or let her run around in those Little Annie Amphetamine rags she’d come with. They’d lunched and shopped on Rodeo Drive, but she’d headed into way different shops than he had expected, came out looking like Congo Harem Queen meets Old Testament: soft, unstructured wraps in slubby weaves and warm autumns. He picked the Porsche Carrera sunglasses himself. He’d felt she was something he had to step up to, frame her right, choose the perfect setting for an unflawed stone: he’d wanted her to get the incognito movie star treatment the flight staff was lavishing on her. And yeah, okay, he wanted her to grace his life. He had it coming.

She leaned forward slightly to peer out the window he’d graciously granted her and he admired the way the raw silk russet wrap slid around her slim frame. Reminiscent of the way her hard peach-sized breasts had ridden around on the noble arch of her rib cage last night, the way her supple body had skated all over him, cloyed and burnished him like a fine coat of fragrant oil. Definitely, absolutely a keeper. First one he’d met, actually. And he had no idea how you handle the keeping. But he was going to figure it out. And had a strong indication that the key to it was a blob of yellowish quartz currently adding the airframe thrum of a 747 to his library of vibrations. She turned from the window and touched his hand happily, the perfect blend of pat and caress. Finder’s keeper.

“So where’d you get a name like that?” First time he’d bothered to ask a hippie why people called them Rainbow or Ganja or Snot or whatever.

“I made it up for myself.”

“So I’m guessing his folks didn’t christen him Blaster, either?”

Blaster was no longer a citizen of her universe. She said, “I did a quest for a spirit animal. The one that found me is called a Slow Loris.”

“Sounds like a Brit truck.”

“It’s kind of like a sloth.”

He gave her admiring glance. “Amazing. Anybody I ever heard who had an animal vision, it was always an eagle or wolf or cougar or something cool you’d name a car or NFL team after.”

“I didn’t choose it, it chose me.”

“You don’t seem particularly slow, to me.”

She smiled and rubbed the back of her hand down the side of his neck. And held up her boarding pass, with her still-uncolored fingernail on the destination. “If you were telling the truth about taking oXo home, Cancun’s certainly the right direction.”

“I’m pretty good with directions. And I’m doing this risky social experiment: telling the truth to a woman I’m sleeping with.”

“Then maybe I can get away with the kind of question I don’t usually bother asking men.” There was play in the gold flecks in her brown eyes, but backed up with a heavy dose of No Shit. “Snatching oXo wasn’t your idea, was it?”

“Luckily, I’m not one of insecure macho guys you hear so much about.”

“Yeah, I noticed the gun you brandished was kind of small. Good sign, I figured. Bet you drive a cheap compact, too.”

“Some people knew about it and sent me after it. That’s one of the things I do. Go get stuff and bring it back. And I get a decent amount of jobs. Know why?”

“Because you always bring the stuff back.”

“You got it.”

“No, you do. And you’re going to take him to these people, right? Criminals, probably. Certainly people with money.”

“I’ve found it best to work for people with money.”

“So people with money, who know about oXo, sent you to steal something they could have just bought?”

“Well, oXo hadn’t really kept in touch. They didn’t know he was slumming around with some raggedy-assed hippie. Last they heard he was hanging out in a coke mansion.”

“And…”

“I think I mentioned you’re not very slow for a Loris. They said they’d go as high as a quarter million.”

“He’s changed hands for much more than that in his time here. I know of at least two where he brought more money. Well, merchandise, anyway.”

“More wholesale money or street value?”

“You only offered Blaster a hundred thousand.”

“That what he told you?”

“Blaster quit trying to lie to me. So don’t you start.”

“Not a chance. Hey, I got the nine millimeter discount.”

“Your clients are going to be so pleased they saved so much.”

“I’m pretty ethical, actually. But not stupid.”

“An ethical strongarm thief. Interesting.” She leaned to touch her lips to his ear and whispered, “Especially the strong arms.”

He gave her the nicest smile she gotten out of him yet but seemed to want to make his point.

“Let me ask you this: did I really deprive Blaster of anything of personal value?”

“No chance. He hasn’t got a clue. Any benefits he got from oXo were second-hand from me.”

“Hmmm. Was your boyfriend once removed, by any chance, also a previous owner of oXo?”

“Matter of fact, he was.” Her look challenged him to make something of it.

“Hey, there are far shabbier things to be than a skull groupie. But how did that doofus get something that so many heavier people want?”

“He was there doing a buy when Ricardo’s house got busted. I made him grab oXo on our way out the back.” She shrugged, doing nice things to the drapey fabric. “Otherwise he’d have ended up in an evidence locker or something.”

“And he doesn’t like being locked in.”

She nodded, probably understanding why he knew that. “Neither do I.”

“So you tagged along with Blaster.”

“No, I offered him a ride. In my Mercedes.”

Boy could he ever go head over heels for this kid. “So why didn’t he just sell it?”

“I didn’t want him to.”

“Ah, I can understand that. But why did he offer to sell it to me?”

“His brain is starting to go kind of Swiss cheesy. Also, I think you scared the shit out of him. Go figure.”

“Moi? But what I’m saying, am I really taking anything from Blaster? Other than you?”

“He could have gotten money from other people.”

“So you think there are other people with money who would give Blaster money for something instead of just taking it?”

“Okay, probably not. So who you took oXo from was me.”

“That worked out, though, didn’t it?”

She leaned back against the leather cushion, eyed him sidelong past a fall of rich brown hair smelling of Indian soap, an evaluating scan. She said, “So far, so good.”

Smiling and feeling as good as he ever remembered, Bannock looked past her to the window, a frothy cloudscape over the Sierra Madre. On a cloud just about covers it, he thought.

Then she said, “So now you’re going to give him to these rich assholes.”

“They’re looking for business advice.”

She laughed, a hearty male sort of laugh. “Then they’re in for a rough ride. Because it’s really hard to get business advice from oXo without being greedy. And greedy questions turn out to be self-destructive.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said, in the self-obvious tone we use to instruct slow children. “Because greed is self-destructive. So is violence.”

He did his own pause, staring out at the cloud-frosted blue. She waited without fidgeting or losing interest. “Know what?” he said casually. “I’m hoping you stick around. And not just because you’re gorgeous and sensational in bed. I think you’re good for me. I realize that’s not a romance novel declaration.”

“A violent thief wants somebody to be good for him?” Her eyes were back out at play.

“I’ll admit that moral reform exposes me to certain professional risks. On the other hand, I’m about to come into a couple of hundred grand capital and can swing some risk.”

“By turning over oXo.”

“Hmmm. So maybe you’d go with him?”

“Hard to say. Understand, I have a long, rewarding relationship with oXo and I don’t know you that well yet.”

He lolled back in his seat and smiled up at the comfort controls on the overhead panel. “Know what, honey? You’ve said a lot of interesting stuff since I knew you but so far my favorite word was that ‘yet’.”

“My favorite was ‘good for me’.

That seemed like a good place to shut up for awhile. He raised his right hand, palm upwards and spread. Her long, fine fingers slipped in and entwined. For a hundred miles they sat like that, seated in the clouds, rocketing towards the Yucatan through clean skies. Then he spoke to her in a soft, easy tone that she immediately recognized as the voice a man uses with his mate, not somebody exciting he’s trying to win.

“By the way, the buyers here aren’t exactly big CEO types looking for stock tips.”

“Lucky for them, then, because I could tell you about a few guys who tried that. They were asking so many questions about how fast things would go up they never got past that part of it. They’re talking to a genuine oracle and don’t want to know the whole future, can you believe it?”

“Oh, I can believe it. Half the jobs I do are because some smart, rich, powerful jerk did something incredibly stupid.”

“I don’t think they were the only people like that who went down the dumper with Enron.”

“This is different. These guys aren’t greedy, crazy, short-sighted egomaniac assholes. They’re movie producers.”

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Copper walked out of the jungle into the circle of firelight and rhythm: an emergence that echoed the story of her life. She stood at the edge of the pounding drummers and girls swirling around the bonfire, holding her hands behind her back but weaving to the deep tattoo of congas and djembes. Steven looked up from trying to keep his crisp Senegalese djembe rhythm aloof from the chaotic hippy “dope beats” and saw her standing there, head tilted forward to strafe him with that seductive half-smile from under the spillgate gush of flame-colored hair. And thought; Uh, oh.

She wove her way through the circle of dancers: post-Deadhead hippies swirling dreamy in clouds of white gauze, Euro clubbers pogo-ing in tubetops and mini-wraps, two athletic Oz chicks joyously stomping, colorful sarongs twirling like petals. She came right up to the wall of drums, leaned in over his sunfishing hands, and yelled, “You think of Palenque, what do you think of?”

“Ticks? Leeches?”

Paco, whamming away on a set of three congas, yelled, “Cockfights!”

Disgusting. After all she’d gone through to find these things. She held out her hands, heaped with fresh-picked Psilocybe Cubensis, then screamed, “Shrooms, you moron!”

She dumped the sacred mushrooms into the fanny pack riding low across her tight belly and slammed her hands onto the two closest drumheads, popping out a pattern of contra-rhythmic dissonance she’d picked up from Kenyan drum master she’d had a fling with in Santa Cruz. The dancers faltered, the drummers stuttered and stopped, confused as to why their beats weren’t working out.

Livid, her coppery mane seething with fireglow, she screamed at Steven in the impactive silence. “We’re here in Palenque, you putz! In the shadows of Mayan wonders. We’re surrounded by shroom vibe and you don’t get a clue.”

She sneered at the long-suffering Steven and spun around to dress down the dancers and assorted flautists and didgeridudes. “You should be swarmed over with hongos here, for shit sakes. The people who built these temples were shroom-heads: you can feel that in a second. Just look at those carvings and shit: stone cartoons for people tripping. Zap Comix for Mayaholics. Get with the program, you… drones.”

She turned back to Steven, washed over with the realization: What am I doing, hanging with this eunuch? She strode over to her pack and grabbed her chains, then flashed back to the circle of drummers and embarrassment. She stepped up to lean on his drum, right in his face. “By the way. I’m out of here, you clueless dork.”

Steven shrugged, “How you gonna dance with no drummer?”

She held out her hands again, but this time each held a charred ball of Kevlar cuffed to her wrists with two feet of chain. “I don’t dance to music, dickhead. I dance to fire.”

She stepped back, brushing through the dancers, almost into the flames. She extended her hands over them and leaned her head back, eyes closed. Invoking the closest thing she had to a religion, the cosmic circles of blaze. Then she turned her hands over and the balls fell into the fire, the white gasoline they were soaked with immediately turning them into crackling comets. She turned and her two fireballs swung around her: Deimos and Phobos sizzling out tight orbits of streaking light. Blurring into arcs around her as she danced, sheltering and exalting her in a red-orange sphere of hot light.

The drummers started up again, as if on command, and she moved smoothly into the shifting polyrhythms. Several of the drummers grinned at her. You go, girl. The dancers also swung back into motion, but outside the hot circle her dance carved around her.

She stalked out of the thatch lean-to wearing her road warrior drag: Doc Martins and jeans, big old backpack slung over both shoulders, liter bottle of gasoline dangling behind. Ah, shit, Steven thought, standing up and brushing off the remains of the green tamales he’d just had for breakfast. Another one rides the bus.

“Yo, Coppertop,” he called out, moving to intercept her as she moved out of the encampment and towards the village and highway. “Hey, thought we were going to do some shrooms.”

“Wasted on you,” she snapped, obviously in no sort of kiss and make up mode. “I’m going sola, asshola.”

“Where?”

“The coast. Make some money for a change. Meet a better class of drummer.”

“Meet the class of veterinarian who’ll sell you enough Ketamine to veg you out again.”

She nodded grimly, continuing to stride up the path. “Vitamin K deficiency; you bet. But also need a cash transfusion. And a man who can keep a beat and swing his meat.”

“Oh, dick is a big priority for you now?”

She stopped and turned on him, her simmer breaking into open fire. “No, but a man is! You know, human male? I’ve been carrying our busking, and I’ve been carrying the whole relationship. Making all the decisions, dealing with all the crises while you space out. I’m sick of having to be the macho around here. Now get out of my way before I slap you and make you cry.”

That pretty well did it. He recoiled and slunk off, bitterly aware that he was proving her point. She turned back towards the highway and ran into Paco, a hammy sad look on his broad indio face. “Copper!” he said as if deeply wounded, “Where do you go?”

She leaned in for a quick peck on his cheek, avoiding any further contact he might have in mind. He was another one who’d seen her as being essentially bereft of proper male company and had offered to remedy that lack, do his part to serve her pale flesh, fiery crest, and tigrish moves. “To a Caribbean island,” she said brightly.

“You having that much money?” Paco asked with more than passing interest.

“No need,” she called over her shoulder as she continued to hit the dusty trail. “I know the guy who built it.”

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