The vibration in the pool was no longer subtle, and had again shifted in frequency: to the slower, more evocative beat known as “Theta”. Around the circle, legs were spreading open, nipples and erections were stiffening, membranes moistening, limbic systems reacting, anuses unclenching, breathing slowing, muscles moving in a rolling rhythm, third eyes blinking.

A sound could be heard, but only to those in the pool: an inner sound like a thin, piping whistle or piccolo. Tuan automatically classified it as an artifact, a “beat” created by wave amplitude interference of the deeper frequencies. Which was more or less his last coherent thought on the subject. The pulse dropped lower and their bodies started rising, abdominals fluttering, inner visions seeing a long tunnel with a watery, golden light at the end.

Copper, veteran of hundreds of acid orgies, took it in her proprioceptive stride, opening herself to the beginnings of white waves of orgasmic release. Her lips grew cold and trembled, seeming to whistle a simple air like that of a piper.

Xchab, a virgin emotionally if not technically, had no vocabulary of stimulus or response to refer to. As wavelets of energy lapped at her mind she retreated into the stolid non-here of an Indian, then to the unreasoned purity of childhood. Her body floated upward, her mind sank into a vortex. She felt good. She felt. She…………

Winston, another inveterate shocktrooper in the campaigns of sex and psychedelia, had long since hung a Gone Fishin’ sign on his brain and surrendered serenely to what was happening. Which, judged by the storms and tsunamis his mind/body had weathered previously, was shaping up to one hell of a blow. He felt his legs spreading wider, his feet brushed the toes of Xchab and Charity on either side.

The vibration was slowing even more, and nobody involved would have, at that point, described what they were experiencing as due to pulsing water pressure. It was inside them, around them, all over and about them. They were strings being strummed, chants being hummed.

Bannock was on alien shores, but nothing in him resisted it. His spread feet touched MeiMei’s, then Loris’ and he was profoundly conscious of being in the right place, among the right people, at the right time, of the right stuff. He wasn’t really aware of his body floating slowly up in the water, of the tip of his straining penis breaking the surface like a periscope seeking visions and orientation.

Beside him, MeiMei felt her left foot touch Bannock, and a second later her right foot contacting Tuan’s. But she really had nothing to do with any of that. She was a disembodied point of view ascending a molten staircase of golden light, her arms spread wide to embrace the source of that light, which seemed to radiate from all around her, from an invisible bird calling above her head. The bird’s song was as sweet as a gold flute. She no longer climbed, she drifted up like a bubble in a tall flute of champagne.

The beat of the night had slowed further, hovered at about one hertz. The frequency was fixed in each person in the tub, their hearts synchronized at sixty beats a minute, the blood in their arteries lub-dubbing in unison. Once a second: one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus, four. The inner circuitry of their brains was also firing as one, running subprograms that released treasured molecules into their brain fluid and blood. They vibrated like insistently plucked harps, shook like the columns of wind twelve-toned saxophones.

Ganzo was almost completely horizontal at this point, his dick poking out of the water like the other guys’, one of a ring of standing members moving to inner fluctuations of blood pressure. He could feel Curtsy and Xchab touching him, could feel the music of inner tides and currents, the neaping and seeping that made him. He was alone in the dark except for that black, compelling littoral music. Then a star shone above him. As he looked at it, it widened. A comet, a moon, a distant sun. He lay as limp as he had very laid on a beach recovering from a deep dive. And the sun rotated, sucking his gaze into it, pressing down on him in a rhythmic massage. As he stared into that single light, something happened in him, as abrupt and definite as the flick of a switch. Ganzo woke up.

Seagull had felt like a third wheel when he first slipped into the water between Copper and Aphra, a useless membrane between them. But as his feet touched theirs, and as his fingers clutched around their necks and he felt other twined fingers on his own, that changed. He felt as though he stood between them on a high platform, singing while they harmonized, cosmic backup singers stepping up to do a trio turn as the piping grew stronger and the vibration shook deeper down. It was a shell, like the Hollywood Bowl, or more like Red Rocks. And in the darkness in front of him, as he sang his cellular choir, little points of light were coming on. A dozen flames out there in the night, a hundred flares held overhead by an audience of everybody who’d ever lived, a million, million stars that claimed him as their own. His mouth came open and his teeth stopped chattering. He ran to the edge of the stage and dived into the light.

Copper spun at the center of the sun. Surrounded by fire, warmed like soft wax in its radiation, buffed to metallic glory in its scarlet light, ignited with the proximity of all she had ever sought, she gave herself to the fire that moved upon her. It exploded into her eyes and she burst into flame like a bird bursts into song, like a shell bursts into a hot white flower of final flame. She was burning now, smoke coming off her in twisting, Sanskrit patterns, Tibetan flames layering out of her darkening skin, as her pubic hair rose above the surface of the pool, her nipples shed water like an emerging helldiver…she burned up and was gone. Finally rid of that. All gone. All gone.

The piping sound grew faster, louder, more piercing. It was an icepick now, sixty hertz buzz drawn out into a white lance that ran them all through.

Townsend had fought against what he had no wherewithal or reason to fight off. And seen his inhibitions blown to smithereens, his defenses flattened. He was taken and squeezed flat, kneaded like a tube of toothpaste, forced into a constricted passage of darkness. He was massaged through that black tunnel for centuries, knowing no time or space but the eternal, prodding pressure toward something he couldn’t imagine or anticipate. He felt himself longing to be there, to emerge from this bowl of blackness into something open and light. And finally a time came when he could see it, somewhere in the distance or future. He squirmed toward it in vain, but was pumped on towards that light by the constrictions around him. He stop fighting to be born and let himself flow out into the world. He slipped into blinding light, light that burned him clean and dry, polished him like ivory. He looked up at the lights above and realized he was held by hands. And the hands lifted him upwards and the light became a face. This was where he came from, he realized in exultation. This is my source! And he felt the love of it. It was not familiar to him, so it came over him like twilight, but it was The Love. He loved his parents for giving him life, he loved the children to whom he would some day return it. He loved the world for coming into existence, and for going back to nothing. For the first time since he was born, Townsend felt the motes of rock-deep, unbound, star-high love. His tears blew back out of his eyes, fell the ground and sprang up as small beings of light.

Aphra, head lolling back on Townsend and Seagull’s laced hands, legs spread open to receive the subtle but insistence pulse in the water, thought she saw something forming in the steam cloud the hot water generated in the moist night air above it. There was a swirling in the mist, then a bunching and compounding, then it was as though a shaft of mist–or light, or impulse or hallucination, or something–flared up into the sky; a column of quivering vapor that lanced as far up as she could see. Damn, she thought before she moved way past thoughts, ET calling home for real. Hope he isn’t on roaming rates. Then her eyes dropped shut under the onslaught of internal sensation, the rhythm in the water deepening and spreading up through her body, down through her nervous system, out through her mind. Her head flopped back into cradling, shuddering hands, her long flat stomach muscles fluttered, then convulsed into a running throb. Her head filled with colors, with boomings, with sparkles and spangles and the wide pounding of oblivion.

Loris stood on top of a hill, looking up the Milky Way, which extended from the center of her eye to the end of the universe. She raised her hand towards the glow of it and her hair was blown back by an almond-scented breeze. The rising wind plucked the pure white cotton robes off her, blew them away behind her. The wind was caused by her own movement: she moved steadily up the causeway of stardust, led by the light of the center of All. The rising wind blew off her hair, then teased away her skin, which rippled back and away from her. The rest of her flesh was also blown away by the rising sirocco of her own acceleration. She was lying horizontal now, flying like a harpoon into the center of the center of the center. Her bones turned to dust, more dross to curl way into her wake. She elongated as her velocity approached that of light, she was expanding, becoming the only object in the universe, streaking forward pulling an infinite cone of change towards the point of her death and birth. She was beam, a ray just one point wide and infinite points long, motion no longer meaningful. As she pierced the eye of the cosmos… she bloomed.

All six men in the pool ejaculated at once, a tiny Vegas fountain in the glowing water. All six women orgasmed as they had never before, blasted into that sweet death as though lashed onto big rockets. They all shook and spasmed, arching up out of the water as though it had been electrified.

Then they went limp and subsided, slowing sinking back down, their feet touching the bottom, their butts drifting down onto the benches. But they continued to embrace each other, their eyes still closed. Their lips parted. Their throats loosened. In some cases, their balls descended.

From the window of his bedroom in the Lodge’s highest room, Francis Ford Coppola looked down at his jungle hot pool. It looked like a carnation, like a fractal star, one of those Esther Williams musical numbers. Twelve people he didn’t know from Adam, naked and arranged around the pool with their legs forming a Moravian star in the center. They seemed to be doing some sort of dance or exercise, kind of throbbing. He opened the mosquito screen for a better view through the dome of glowing mist over the pool… just in time to see it spring upward as though somebody had turned on one of those opening night searchlights under the pool. The shaft of golden light, the same diameter as the pool, leaped up, shone into the night sky, didn’t diminish as it shined out of sight, had no end.

Then it went out and the whole pool plunged into darkness. Great, Coppola thought. Now they’ll have to drain the pool to change the bulb.

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Francis Coppola emerged slowly from the hot pool and stood for a moment savoring the jungly scent of the night and the sounds of the waterfall into the pool. He was the last one out, the others slipping away to let him enjoy his soak.mayancalendargirls.com He didn’t understand why these guys would get into hot water to relax, then get all stressed-out jabbering about projects and budgets and agents and residuals. Especially those two latecomers. God, they were insane: talking about directing a film by séance if he got their drift. What I need up here, he suddenly realized, is a steam room.

Definitely. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? That was an offer to relax nobody could refuse. There was something really East Coast and borough about steam. Guys with Yawk accents sitting around naked in the mist, walking around in rough Turkish towels. This whole hot tub thing was so California by comparison.

He rubbed down with a soft, fluffy towel and shook drops from his beard into the hot water. Thinking, kind of like me, maybe? Gone California? Or have I just disappeared into some global stratosphere, a tower in The Cloud?

Chuckling at himself, he turned to head to bed and almost walked into a half dozen really beautiful young women, also wearing only towels or shifts. His eyebrows raised as he smiled at them appreciatively and waved them towards the pool.

“Aqua termal,” he said in his best Corleone rasp. “Prego.”

The girls laughed. All except the stone-faced little Maya girl, who was starting to fascinate him. What a face she had, really. He couldn’t help framing her whenever he saw her.

“Mr. Coppola,” the tall brunette said, “We really appreciate your hospitality here. It’s such a beautiful, serene place.”

“You’re fairly beautiful and serene yourself, my dear,” he told her. “You do massage, I understand?”

“I do. And I’d be honored to give you one any time you like.”

“I’ll take you up on that. Maybe tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Any time. I just love your work. I saw Goodfellas six times.”

He almost laughed his towel off. “Good one. Thanks for the laugh. You ladies are taking a really late soak tonight.”

“We need to cleanse her skull,” Copper offered as she shed her towel and slipped into the water.

He looked at Loris’ hair a little differently, hoping it wasn’t infested. “Please don’t put any soap in the water.”

Loris smiled, held up the towel-wrapped object she’d been carrying, and let the towel slide away from oXo, grinning at the director with eyes aflare from the mosquito torches on the deck. “He doesn’t need soap, just running water,” she said. “And love.”

He fought the impulse to cross himself. “Okaaaay.”

He backed away towards the lodge. As he walked off he heard the girls all giggling, a sound as bright and clean as windchimes. But he didn’t even consider going back to bask in their beauty and youth. There were plenty of attractive young people who weren’t nuts. Turning, he saw them all shedding their wraps and slipping into the hot water like sirens of many colors. He called back, “Just don’t leave a ring.”

Xchab was the last into the pool, even with the other girls teasing her and beckoning her in. She looked balefully at Aphra, timidly at Copper and Curtsy. But when MeiMei smiled and waved her in, she stepped down to the stone bench that ran around the perimeter of the pool, standing there thigh-deep in her cotton huipil, frozen. Finally Loris walked the length of the pool and looked solemnly into her eyes, holding that spooky glass skull between her breasts. Slowly, gently, she reached up and rolled one shoulder strap down the Mayan girl’s shoulder, then the other. Xchab didn’t try to stop her shift from sliding down into the water and when Loris held up her free hand, she took it, stepped out of the floating garment, and lowered into the water. Loris beamed at her, turned and moved towards the other end of the pool.

She waded back across the pool to the waterfall that animated its narrow end, the other girls watching as she marched towards it holding oXo in front of her like a sacrament. She extended her hands and the glassy skull slipped under the little cascade, water flowing around the smooth contours rather than splashing off. She stood motionless, head bent forward and eyes closed, as oXo luxuriated in the wash of moving water.

Aphra was playing a little submarine footsy with Copper, and wouldn’t have minded sitting within hands-on range of the redhead, who it turned out contained a sexuality as wild and fiery as her own. But for whatever reason, the girls were all sitting a little too distant to touch, evenly spaced around the pool, heads leaning on the rim, watching Loris and oXo. So Aphra bided her time, and watched with them.

Curtsy luxuriated in the hot water, which almost seemed to be rhythmically palpitating her body. She played with the underwater sealed-beam floodlight beside her, trying to make shadow puppets in the water, her hands starting to move in time with the beat she felt in the water. The whole pool started to flicker in a slow, sure rhythm. She spread her thighs, then pushed them together. Her nipples tingled. She closed her eyes and for some reason had an image of Puch Pop, standing on top of a pyramid at Cobá, just looking at her.

MeiMei was feeling the same insinuation in the water and “decided” to just lay back and like it. It figured that wealthy directors would have devices like this in their hot tubs. She wriggled her hips around on the smooth tier, watching Loris’ careful laving of oXo, but caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked back towards the buildings. And saw Tuan and Winston strolling down the path, in quiet but intense conversation. She was glad to see OB, but wondered if he was crashing one of those “all-girl moments.” Then she saw Townsend and Bannock behind them, also talking with interest. And behind them, that “Seagull” character chattering to Ganzo, who regarded him with a serious gaze. Tuan saw her and smiled and she giggled, “Company, girls.”

Aphra opened her eyes and saw a group of males arriving, ringing the far side of the pool. They stood watching the women for a moment, probably impressed by the general tableau. Breaking the calm, she said, “Damn. There go the neighborhood.”

Everybody but Xchab laughed: she was eyeing the men a little nervously. And suddenly the big indio that had come up with the blonde just stepped in the water right beside her, took off his wet towel, and tossed it back on the deck. Curtsy, on Ganzo’s other side, smiled at him and reached out to stroke his hair as he settled down between them. Faced with the typical hot tub dilemma of what to do with his hands, he chose the usual approach and spread his arms along the rim of the pool. Curtsy leaned her head into his left hand, smiling happily. His other hand brushed the back of Xchab’s torrent of black hair but she didn’t shy away, for some reason. She looked sideways at him and he was looking back at her, his expression as blank and noble as a dog’s. One thing she realized at that moment: whatever else there was about Ganzo, she knew she would never have to fear him. She sunk a little deeper in the water, also feeling the beguiling pulse in the water and reluctantly starting to respond. A few minutes later she put her own arms on the pool rim, her left hand slipping behind Ganzo’s head, the other laying on the nape of Winston, whose other hand was buried in Copper’s cuprous curls.

Curtsy hadn’t been the only mermaid getting an eyeful as Townsend and Bannock, standing side by side, peeled off their trunks and eased towards the pool. Couple of major swinging dudes, was the way she sized things up. Classic match-up: showy class versus brute power. It was hard not to linger on the sheer beauty of the slide of Town’s abs and pecs, but the scars and welts made a tour of the big lug’s torso rather interesting as well. She wondered what they’d look like out swimming. She watched Townsend move around and slip in beside Aphra, and the look she gave him. Something going on there, for sure. Didn’t think that muff-mistress swung that way. He also laid his arms along the rim as he unwound and Aphra gave him a “Oh, please, whitebread” look, but didn’t move away from his hand on her shoulder.

Bannock moved in between MeiMei and Loris, who smiled at him as she continued facilitating oXo’s brain scrub. Mei felt his hand brush her left shoulder at the same time that Tuan slithered into the water like an otter, ducked his head, then shook it off before settling beside her and placing his left hand under her hair to caress the down on her slim neck. She extended her arm to give him a friendly Dutch rub, before resting it on his hard deltoid. His right hand moved behind Curtsy, who reached behind his neck to twine her fingers with MeiMei’s.

Loris, who had been standing a few inches from oXo as she held him under the waterfall, had been exposed more heavily to the pulse that the skull was emanating. She moved slowly and dreamily as she turned around to face the circle of faces ringing the pool. Her nipples were tight, her aureoles puffy, her thighs tender, her face muscles slack and creamy. She moved to the center of the pool and bent forward to gently place oXo on the bottom. For a moment she appeared to everyone else as a sleek form on the surface, an hourglass of buttocks, fluted back and wide shoulders riding above the water like an island.

She straightened up and looked around, noticing the slackening and loosening going on around her. The Love, she thought, is the ultimate massage. Then she had another thought, which she knew she should share. “We are about to hear something,” she said. “It’s called the First Tone. There will be four Tones before this is over.”

As she backed away from oXo, towards her place by Bannock, MeiMei asked, in a voice so relaxed she could barely articulate, “Tones? Like the Calendar? What does that mean?”

Loris smiled as she moved away from oXo, to the edge of the pool. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Nobody else asked why she had done what she did or said what she said, nobody spoke. Nobody even really thought. oXo had begun to “broadcast” his pulse of live, whole, movement stronger and at a slightly lower frequency. A frequency that those who give names to such things call “Alpha”. She moved back to the edge and sat down. Immediately Bannock cupped the base of her skull. He extended the thumb and finger of his huge hand to rub behind her ears, like you’d do to a big dog. She closed her eyes in pleasure. Nobody ever thinks that massage people like to be rubbed, too. But this guy did.

She put her hand behind his head, as well, idly ruffling his short, wiry crop. She extended her other hand behind Townsend, then removed it to lift his hand behind her own head, then replaced it at the base of his skull. All twelve people were now touching, a dozen heads woven together by intertwined arms and hands. And in the water, an intimate pulsation was throbbing stronger and deeper, a righteous somatic dub that synchronized twelve heartbeats into a single chorus.

Kenny and Gareth discovered that somebody had walked off with their all-important director and spiritual leader and immediately spun into frantic, mostly ineffective motion. They blasted around the dark lodge, pushed into empty rooms–even Bannock and Loris’ room, which would have scared them green to intrude on in other circumstances. They burst out onto the side deck and looked down at the pool, where they could make out people lounging around in a gold mist suffusing the air above the water. They tore along the porch until they hit the stairs, then stopped as if they’d run into an invisible fence. Kenny was at the point of tears as he wailed, “It has to be down there. That bitch took it down there to play with in the fucking water.”

“I guess,” Gareth said, feeling extremely strange and out of place.

“Well, why don’t we just march our perfect butts down there and seize it?” Kenny demanded.

“Nah,” Gareth demurred. “You go ahead if you feel like it.”

Kenny stared at the mist, which seemed to be vibrating in some way, his mouth working. “Well,” he finally said, “As long as they bring it back.”

“It’s not like they can go anywhere,” Gareth hastily added. He turned back and headed for bed. After a few tortured seconds staring down at the pool with fists clenched, Kenny followed.

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John Milius sat up, beaming mindlessly. Loris knelt in front of him, smiling. “I’m a writer,” he said, “I should be able to think of something to say other than ‘Oh, wow’.”

“That’s what I said when I found out you wrote ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Dirty Harry’.”mayancalendargirls.com

Milius grinned as he slowly stood up. “Let me ask you,” he said, still beaming. “Do you only massage people with superb physiques like mine?”

She laughed. “Tall, short, skinny, fat, broken. Each one its own universe.”

“Well, screenplays are the same way. Each one is totally different. But when I sit down and crack my fingers, they’re all made out of the same stuff.”

He turned and walked to the door, feeling two inches taller and floating an inch off the floor. He opened the door and turned to say thanks and good-bye, but was immediately nailed by Kenny and Gareth, who must have been laying in ambush for a half-hour.

“I think you’ve seen we can bring a show,”

Kenny gushed. “And these girls and talent here are in the film. Are the film, really.”

Milius hid his wince at having his serenity crash down to Biz with these two yapping yorkies, but maintained his manner. “Does that Mayan girl even speak English?”

“Xchab? No way. She’s authentic all the way. Tribal. Magically realistic.”

“She’ll play the Mayan princess,” Gareth yammered. “Speaking Mayan, English subtitles.”

“Except in, you know, foreign distribution,” Kenny tacked on, nodding.

“Didn’t Mel Gibson already to that?”

Gareth shook his head forcefully. “No way. He was just spouting a bunch of weird bullshit and they subtitled him with a booking number.”

He rounded the corner to where the main deck gave views of the gardens and on down the tiers of enchangment to the river below. And saw their host standing at the bannister, intent on the lawn below. He moved closer to speak, hoping it would scrape the Valley Boyz off his shoes since they were desperate to importune Coppola, but too intimidated to even cross his shadow. He saw the hand held up in warning and stepped quietly to the rail where only he could hear the soft, “Have you seen this, John?”

He looked where Coppola was pointing at Copper, practicing her firespin with two tennis balls on her chains, each trailing three feet of bright ribbon. The chains spun a web around her, the ribbons defining a twisting sphere of influence as though trying to weave themselves into a solid ball of color.
And three paces behind her, Xchab continued her apprenticeship, moving with the flame dancer step for step, her arms echoing each movement.
And each of her movements was traced by a hovering cloud of hummingbirds.

A brilliant buzz in the green-tinted sunlight, the flock meshed and morphed behind her, tendrils of vivid birds outlining every movement of her hands, the mantle of irridescent feathers spreading and whirling behind her like a cape.

“That’s the really amazing thing up here,” he said quietly to the writer. “Things happen in real life that would be preposterous to try to bring to the screen.”

Gareth cleared his throat and stepped forward, holding up a timorous finger. “Excuse me, Mr. Coppola, but actually we have some ideas on that…”

Aphra figured she could get in, grab the goodies and be back at the well-provisioned dining table before anybody thought she was taking a long time answering the call of Nature. This whole wide-open, secure feel of the Lodge was great. Totally unsecure. She slipped into the room where Tuan and MeiMei were staying in a Robinson Crusoe With Luxuries setup, everything rustic and Tarzan/Jane where it counted and the jungle just outside and doing it’s damnedest to come on in and get homey. Her tracking gizmo was in her hand, blinking and twittering to itself as she panned the room and oops, there it was, over there in the dresser. The little subdued signal it gave from its own min-battery, meaning somebody had removed the camera battery. And in a place like this, with scenery outside yelling for attention and every other guy you run into some famous movie type, that would mean they were hip to the camera doing a little multi-tasking. Smarter than your average slope, these two, and that’s damned smart. But us corn-row niggahs known to come up with a few wiles, our ownselves.

She had her spare sender-cam ready, but under the circumstances took three seconds to open it and dump the batteries out into her pocket. The one she wanted turned out to actually be behind the dresser, but it’s all good. She pocketed it and carefully taped the ringer back where it had been, shoved the dresser back to the wall and headed back to the dining room. This place had to be good for some scrumptious kind of dessert.

Loris reached for the ceiling, staring straight up, stretching powerfully and rotating her fingers as their voices dwindled down the walkway from this mediation room to the main lodge. Those poor saps needed more than she could give them in a weekend. She thought about oXo again, sitting in their room on a dresser. She could just walk in, pick him up, and walk out. But she knew that wasn’t the right thing. Or not the right time.

She slowly brought her hands down, then lowered her head. And found herself looking right at Aphra Alisander, modest in a big white terrycloth robe. And saying, “So, you do women, too?”

“Massage is equal opportunity,” Loris said, patting the straw mat flooring. Aphra flowed down into a prone position, the robe drifting off along the way. Loris arranged her arms and head, pulled her feet together, rubbed scented oil on her hands, and leaned into a long push up the black girl’s spine.

After a minute she felt some of the residual guardedness start to unwind, but was waiting. And sure enough, Aphra said, “Believe I asked if you do women, too?”

Hands ringing her biceps, working in for the concreted fascia, Loris said, “My relationships with people are about who they are, not what sort of plumbing they have.”

“You sound like my kind of girl,” Aphra purred. After another minute she said, “Course you got that hunky boyfriend. Kind of a new one if I read the signs and scent correctly. Looks like he’s plumbed pretty good.”

“I haven’t known him long, but I think it’s something that’s going to last and grow.”mayancalendargirls.com

“So how’d you kids meet?”

“It was a business deal.”

“Turned into a pleasure deal. I cotton to those myself. Hint, hint.”

She turned over face up, sliding snake-like under the oil and light coat of sweat. She faced Loris, supine, and spread her legs a little. “I been liking you since we met, honey. And I’m wide open to getting to know you better, you see what I’m saying.”

Loris adjusted her rub to her new position, working silently, but keeping her eyes on Aphra’s.

“So listen,” she went on, starting a slow and subtle movement under Loris’ hands. “Turns out I’m the kind of person gets to know things and find out shit beyond the average schlimizzle gets his 411 from Google.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“Ah, my reputation precedes me? We should talk about that sometime. But let me tell you about the studly Mr. Bannock there. At least his third surname, by the by.”

“It suits him well enough.”

“There’s girls kind of cream over your bad boys, them roughup scary types. But they’re going for the image, not the real item, they gotta a brain left in they head. But your guy there is the real thing. I’d even go so far as to classify his tight ass–and this is not a term I drop lightly–as a rather badass motherfucker.”

“He’s done pretty well so far.”

“Not a guy to take crime lightly. Oh, no… quite serious is how the man takes his crime and punishment. Like Federal time, for instance. And would still be doing that time if they could’ve nailed down a couple of unfortunate fatalities that he was believed to have had guilty knowledge of. Heard anything about that?”

“Not until just now. But how about you? Have you ever been in prison?”

“Nah, there’s still some of us sassy black folk ain’t been rounded up yet.”

“Because you seem a little dangerous yourself. And nosy. And maybe the type who doesn’t pay much attention to laws and orders.”

“No, I’ve not yet had the privilege of incarceration.”

“Well if you did, do you think you’d do whatever it called for?”

“Oh, you just know it, sweetie.”

“I appreciate the information. I know you mean it well. Well, more or less.”

“Ah, ‘More or less’. Pretty much my M.O.”

“I mean, you’re also hoping to weaken a relationship I’m growing increasingly content with, so you can get your hands on me for ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes? Give me some credit, Slim.”

“Flattering, but also kind of, well… you know. You must run into it all the time. So let’s try something different.”

“Hey, something different…”

“No. I mean different thinking, also. Listen to me, okay?”

Aphra seemed to hit a deeper level of relaxation, subsiding on the mat and looking up without the arch manner she’d been showing since she walked in. Might not be a bad idea.”

“Why go to the trouble? Why not just relax?”

“Girl, I was any more relaxed, I wouldn’t have any vital signs.”

“No, you’re on the prod. Playing angles.” She put a finger over Aphra’s lips to stop the game. Then said, “I read people. No name on it or anything. I just have the gift to read people.”

Aphra’s legs edged wider apart. “Now me, I’m just an open book.”

“More than you know. You think of yourself as a very sensual, sexual person. But I think you’re playing yourself.”

“I always thought if they make a movie of my adventures I could play myself.”

“People use sex as an expression of love. They use it to get pleasure, to feel good and released at a deep level. But that’s not what you do.”

Aphra had a half-dozen quips to lay on that one, but instead was quiet under the seeking, calming hands.

“With you, it’s all about power. You play a game you can win, you use your body to get things from people, get things on people. You seem selfish, and maybe you think you are. But actually, you aren’t really getting any for yourself. You’re just wasting it.”

It took Aphra, her eyes closed and mouth soft, several long minutes to respond to that. Finally she said, “Okay, Dionne Warwick, what you think I should do? Long as it don’t take wearing white clothes and coffee enemas.”

“Don’t just do something,” Loris said, “Lie there. Try thinking about yourself instead of me. Try feeling instead of reacting.”

Aphra spoke very softly at that point, no longer making the rhythmic movements. She said, “Just lay here? Think only of myself? I think I can swing that.”

“You lay still, keep your awareness on yourself, what you’re feeling. Not me. And I’ll give you a very special massage.”

“Oooo,” Aphra murmured in a voice so low Loris could barely hear it. “I hope you’re talking about the famous happy ending.”

“I don’t believe in endings,” Loris said, shifting her weight forward onto her probing hands. “Just cycles.”

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One’s moving away from you on a road that only leads one place, the other one you’ve been chasing for weeks is coming toward you. Which signal do you follow? Eenie, meenie, mo, catch a negress by the toe.

No decision at all, Aphra decided. She’d felt the slight buzz of her tracker and pulled it out for a look. Ought to keep the thing tucked in my thong, she thought, let that vibration do some good. She read the little touchscreen, frowning, then broke into a shit-scarfing grin. Her little sender was heading straight towards her, and at a really good rate of speed, sending steadily now, not the little dribbles it had doled out to her for day after hair-tearing day.

Almost as frustrating as trying to vet that ditzoid Curtsy on what happened to her raid. Goldilocks in the back seat now, you could almost smell her brain burning while she tried to put her junque back together. Or as together as she ever had it. And her pet MayaBoy just sitting there, staring out the window like he’d never been in a car before. She almost thought of Ganzo’s take on travel as “like a little boy”, but not quite: there was that solemn gravity about him. But pretty well just along for the ride.

All she really had was that the boat was long gone, there were pictures of the jade skull but God knew where they were, and that MeiMei was last seen being dragged off naked by some goons. Well, that little chinadoll could take care of herself.

And since the sender in the camera seemed to be coming out of the cold, she evidentially had. Unless somebody else had it now. In which case they would have to be spoken to. The slim Detonix .380 she’d brought incountry inside a lead-lined radio/clock had been under her seat all the way and she was almost wishing there would be somebody to shoot up. She was fed up with this whole gig. She took one more look at the screen, the green dot coming right toward the Chetumal lagoon, and grinned again. “Yeah, baby. Come on to Mama.”

The Navy chopper zoomed in low over the lagoon and hovered over the military pier for two minutes before skipping sideways to set down beside the municipal dock, where several fishermen gave it dirty looks and unappreciative hand gestures. Aphra stood at the edge of the dock, looking for all the world like a tourist, one hand in her stylish Biaggio purse–handy to the grip of the pistol and a few other devices she lumped into the “rotten surprises” category–the other holding up a little digital camera, taking pictures of the nifty little helicopter sitting on pontoons in the middle of a self-created storm like a tempest in a washing machine. She moved the camera away from her eye to admire her shot, thus scanning the read-out identifying its position in the Mexican armed forces and Jane’s abstracts… and a taint of DEA. Hmmph, she sniffed as she resumed “shooting” to conceal her face behind the camera: honkies in the woodpile.

The slick white MacDouglas popped back up and skittered sideways to land on the city pier. And she saw why it had hit the water first, the big, finned, black pod she’d seen between the floats was now revealed as a kayak, bobbing in the water with a guy paddling it in towards the boarding float. He had a hat brim to big to see his face, but looked Mexican. And she got a piece of the picture, right there. Her cute little transponder had been paddling south for three weeks! She just hated these third world scenes.

But wait, who’s crawling out of the helicopter now? Well, on the side toward her, some clown wearing a trench coat. Seriously, a trenchcoat in the tropics. And a Bogart hat to go with it. Now handing out a cute little señorita… whoa, there! What was her name? Yullia or something. Worked in the damn museum. Aphra was getting that feeling.

Looking under the aircraft, she could see a man’s legs on the other side, then a pair of female calves. Something familiar about them, too. Got a feeling…

Then the aircraft just hopped straight up in the air, but leaned towards her a little. She saw the pilot giving her the eye, and a thumbs-up of approval. So glad I pass your checklist, sucker. Then she looked down at the passengers and couldn’t decide whether to do some sitcom double-take or whip out the pistol. MeiMei fucking Chiang and Townsend fucking Hardley, standing there staring at her!

She pointed the camera and took advantage of the fact that it could actually take a picture when it wanted to. This was a keeper moment, for absolutely sure.

She wanted to hold a cool pose until her quarry and nemesis walked up to her, but she heard the door of the Bora fly open like there’d been a bomb inside and the pitter patter of feet running toward her. No need to make the obvious guess: Ms. Mayflower also started running toward her, and now both deserters from her crack commando team were yelling and squealing like sorority girls at homecoming.

But she was paying attention only to Townsend Hardley, stalking up the pier towards her like a gunslinger coming after the blackhat and not amused. She had her gun and whatnot, but Christ only knew what he was packing. Probably some button he could push and she’d get taken out by a hotty-seeking missile fired from an NSA death star. She stood and waited for him, while Lluvia and Denny’s eyes were ponging back and forth from the laughing/crying/hugging girls to the classic showdown poses of their mysterious coffeehouse chum and the Grace Jones lookalike over there. Who also drew the incurious gaze of Ganzo, sliding out of the car and taking it all in.

Not to mention Tuan, who had tied up the kayak and come up the ladder to see the two spies stop and eye each other with a palpable truculence. What went through his head was; Draw, podnah. He saw a simmer that was quite likely to get ugly and realized who Aphra must be. He looked at MeiMei, jerked his head toward the embattled beeatch in question, and got a confirmatory nod. Combined with a touch of trepidation. He knew she had the camera, snapped into one of his waterproof gadget boxes, in the little kangaroo pouch around her waist. And that she’d been pretty clear about not surrendering it to anybody at all. He walked over to the two snoops and tipped his floppy sunhat.

“Hi. I’m Tuan, but you can call me OB. Hope everything’s okay here?”

Town ignored him, but Aphra pulled her dagger-stare away and actually smiled at him. “Oh, yeah, the Flipster. I think I got it now. She made it back to you, you grabbed your canoe there and headed south. I’m not as clear on how you hitched a ride here, but we got time, right? Glad to see the Doc’s OK, by the way. We were worried about her.”

Tuan nodded empathetically and she could read his unspoken attitude even through the semi-Asian inscrutability. Along the lines of: Yeah, sure, you lying niggah ho who obviously had a bug on her all this time and is just interested in getting your hands on the jade. It was nice to be understood sometimes.

Meanwhile, the lying, etc. had been doing some fast thinking. Along the lines of: Gonna be a bitch getting into Belize with Curtsy not having identification and Ganzo, near as I can tell, not even having an identity. But here’s my main man with a chauffeured government helicopter. She looked back at Townsend, who was obviously pissed, hostile, and–whether he knew it or not–hurt. Kind of touching, actually. Despite all the weirdness, and him being on the wrong side of the sexual fence, she had a hard time not feeling a certain fondness for the guy. She looked him right in the eye, spread her hands in a disarming/apologetic way, and said, “Look, we should get along.”

He stared at her, apparently entertaining mixed emotions, and she motioned for him to walk beside her as she strolled towards the far side of the pier. He fought it out, then followed her. Whatever the hell else she was, she was still The Key.

She topped at the edge of the dock, peered down into the murky water. Said, “Hear me out, okay? I know where it is. The skull.”

She took in Town’s netural expression saw it wasn’t just a studied mask: he really didn’t know, did he? He had MeiMei, but didn’t know what it was all about. “What you’re after, right? What we’re both playing for.”

“If you say so.”

She smirked knowingly. “Fine, play it that way. But you got any questions, ask the good “Doctora” there, would she like to hook back up with the talking skull.”

Townsend turned on his heel, went and did just that. When he came back to Aphra he had to turn twice to motion MeiMei to wait where she was and not run after him.

“Okay. You know where it is.”

“That’s right. I got a trace on it.” She pulled out her receiver and held it up. “‘HomerBoy’ here’s all over it. And you didn’t get to sneak in and diddle this one.”

“Didn’t have to. I tumbled the one you’re holding. All cc direct to me.”

“Nice try, whiteboy. We all virgin on this end, dig. So you wanna play? Or you want me to go cop the real goodies on my own?”

Townsend seemed to have frozen up, running the parameters and trying to rule out his own feelings. She stepped closer to him, gave him a little of the eyes. “Listen here. She trusts me. Well, more than she trusts you, anyway. Maybe we can both get what the fuck we’re after and look good, huh? Or maybe one of us can get well and leave the other one SOL. All’s fair, and all that shamizzle. But why can’t we be buddies?”

She looked up at him, a portrait of inner conflict and incredulity. She laughed and tapped his upper arm with her open palm. “Look, I figured out you didn’t know about my mama and your daddy. So that’s all cool. Sorry to kick you out of bed. Oh, and I did the math.”

She left it hanging, but could see he knew what she meant.

“There’s almost no chance we’re related.”

“Great,” he finally said. “Peachy keen. I feel better already.”

“But look ahere. Maybe whoever put you on this knew about our folks? Didn’t happen to mention it to you?”

Townsend glared at her some more, then looked away down the lagoon. He seemed to suddenly unclench, looked back at her and said, “Oh, it’s even more humiliating than that. My old man says they probably picked me for my looks and my way with women.”

She stared at him and broke into a big, wide laugh. “Way with women? So much for their grade of intelligence. And you think that’s humiliating? Listen, I got looks and have my way with women. And the last thing I feel about it is humiliated.”

“Well good for you.”

Aphra waved it off, smiling at him earnestly. “I just think we could be friends. Who knows what sides we’ll be on for the next gig? Meanwhile, I got off on talking with you. We should do lunch.”

“You mean we can still be friends?”

“Oh, no.” She got it then, and almost felt like patting his cheek, giving him a hug. “I get it. Well, that’s extremely flattering. But it wouldn’t work out. We have some pretty big differences. I mean, you’re Baptist and I’m Rastafarian.”

She saw a trace of smile and stepped closer to him. “Let me tell you something else, sugar. I like you. And I liked you even when you were dicking me. Not a common occurrence. So maybe you can take a little ego from the fact that a stone cold dyke finds you attractive.”

“Whoopee. Can you send me a letter for my commendation file?” He stopped and looked down, kicked a scuzzy lead weight into the water. “But yeah. Buddies. Let’s do lunch. I’ll buy.”

She beamed at him, and meant it. “We’ll dutch it. I don’t have many men friends.” Don’t have many friends, period, come to that. “But first let’s scamper up there to the Godfather’s and see can we get to the bottom of this shit.”

He thought it over, then nodded, He stuck out his hand for a truce shake, but when she reached for it, he jerked his hand up and smoothed his hair.

She laughed and moved past him, towards the helicopter. “Too little, too late, homeboy. That copticopter got your hair so blown out, you might need to borrow my pick.”

The pilot had wound down the big Pratt Whitney turboshaft and stood beside the cockpit door, staring blissfully at this little gathering of international pulchritude. When Town asked him about heading for inland Belize he grinned and said, “Totally illegal and a violation of international law and airspace sovereignty. When do you want to leave?”

“As soon as I can herd all these cats. Mind lifting us all?”

“Of course not, I can’t stand being in small spaces packed full of beautiful women.” He seemed reluctant to add, “But we won’t all fit. I’d suggest leaving all the men here.”

“Don’t count me,” Denny said. “I got paid as soon as Ms. Chiang made that phone call.”

He moved off towards the land end of the dock, where a fairly large crowd had gathered; fishermen scowling, joggers ogling, and tourists snapping pictures. Aphra noted the way Lluvia had brightened when he said he wasn’t leaving (and that he was getting paid) and the way she held his elbow as they said adios and walked away. When the Mexican girl passed her she winked broadly and said, “Did I say you could do better than that Luis fool, or didn’t I?”

She slinked up to the helicopter, whose rotors were starting a slow, lazy rotation, and nodded at Tuan when he offered her a hand into the cabin. He’d heard most of Curtsy’s blurted and fragmentary tale and smiled as he handed her up over the pontoons to the deck. “Why are you the only one of these Angels that doesn’t show up naked?”

“Oh, she does naked when it suits her,” Townsend griped from inside. “She’s just not as upfront about it.”

The pilot looked over his shoulder and got a better load of Aphra. “Does she want to sit up front?” he asked innocently. “Much better view.”

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