why I’m going to take the skull.”
“How did you get so smart?”
Martin chuckled and raised his chin. “It’s embarrassing to be a genius. I wish I were normal. My life would be easier. I probably wouldn’t have the moral compulsions that I do.”
The water had gone darker below. Lyle was buzzed, but his head felt very clear. Martin had said he wanted the girl’s skull. “You wouldn’t take the whole body? Jesus. You should take the whole body if you’re going to do it.”
“Listen to your voice. You sound like a kid. What are you so worried about?”
“If you’re going to bury her, you should bury all of her. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’d be respectful about it. To me, the girl’s skull represents her soul. Cézanne didn’t have skeletons lying around his studio; he had skulls.”
Lyle held his breath, picking out visible places in the water.
“Okay, I’ll bury the body,” Martin said. “To show respect. Which Levi obviously did not do. I am going to do it, though. It’s all planned. I can steal bolt cutters from my mom’s tools and buy a new padlock. The mausoleum gate is locked by a chain. It’ll be easy. I’m taking care of everything tomorrow, all the preparations.”
Lyle stared into the water and pictured feeling the smoothness of the skull, rubbing where the nose and ears had been, stroking the curve down the back of the head, thumbing the eye sockets. He let out the air he was holding and stepped back from the rail to shake off the image.
“Look,” Martin said. “What am I?” He took smoke into his mouth. Instead of inhaling he shut his eyes, tipped his head, and let the smoke drift from his lips. “I’m a dead soldier. Let’s do it at the same time, but keep our eyes open. Sometimes dead people have their eyes open.”
“No. You go ahead.”
Martin deadened his eyes, smoke slipping from his mouth. He grinned and fell out of the pose, laughing. Lyle chuckled and shook his head. They hung on the railing and shared one umbrella.
Martin told him he was going to walk to his house and change, then go read at a café if Lyle wanted to come. Lyle thanked him for the invitation, but he had stayed too long.
“I was supposed to meet her twenty minutes ago.”
“You’re not going to start hanging out with her constantly are you? I know that idiot thing that happens to new couples.”
“We’re friends.”
“Rosa goes boy to boy, parting her knees every time. Watch out. Somebody like us comes along—honest, monogamous. We fall in love and get herpes—or AIDS. I’d rather wait for a girl with morals.”
“I probably won’t see her much after tonight.”
“Here’s my number.” Martin took a book from his bag and crouched over it in the light rain, writing on a receipt. “Stop by the café later if you’re bored—it’s by the train station. Paradise Café. It’s open till midnight. Hey, best night I’ve had in a long time.”
Martin seized his hand and Lyle returned the grip.
“I was starting to feel depressed there for a while,” he said. “And I don’t care one wit about the Larios whores. You can tell Monique if you see her: any guy in the club could have her, and I would laugh and laugh. Say hi to Levi, the great enforcer. Tell him I miss him. Tell him I long for his old white beard.” He smirked then, and leaned toward Lyle. “Listen, what did you think of that story I told you? About his daughter. Want to help me rescue her?”
Lyle didn’t answer that. “I wouldn’t mind having a few more nights like this one.”
Martin said they would have more than a few, and told him to call. Lyle raised his hand in parting.
He recognized none of the faces in the window at Levi’s Café. A boy with long hair, in a green velvet shirt, squatted on the porch. He had black lipstick and purple fingernails and dragged on a cigarette holder. The boy was younger, and Lyle asked if he knew Rosa and Shanta. The boy waved his holder like a wand.
“They tumbled away, my friend. The wind blew them into the forest.”
“Where’s all the people from the club?”
“They have flown from this castle.”
“That’s a dumb way to talk.”
The boy went still, then drew on his cigarette. “You’re on a bad journey, my friend.”
“I’m not on a journey. I’m just walking around.”
Lyle pushed down the boulevard into the wind. When the fun of hanging out with Martin had passed, the booze took a turn in him, souring his mind as he felt himself alone again. The spotlight moved in the sky and the clouds broke and flew apart, as if the light operator were stirring up the heavens.
A far train cried like a mournful thing. He turned right toward downtown and scraped the tip of his folded umbrella along a brick wall. Blocks ahead, on high, the cross on Skinner Butte leaked bits of sickly light. The faces of church people smiled up at him from the wet sidewalk. They gazed sympathetically from the branches of trees and harassed him with whispered prayers from passing windows. He saw his brother smiling, Bible in hand.
His sister hated the concrete cross on the canyon wall above Marshal. She offered it displays of her finger. The cross was like a hand flipping off the world, Lila said. She wanted it covered over with a glowing neon whiskey bottle. “Jack Daniels would pay for the advertising,” she said.
His stomach twisted, and in his mind, his fists rained down on his brother’s head.
At Paradise Café, he hovered at the little windows in front. Martin, looking away from Lyle and grinning, shared a table beneath the espresso machine with Devon and Monique. He seemed trapped behind the wide smile. When Lyle moved a hand and caught Martin’s eye, he gathered his book and sketch pad into his bag and laughed out to the sidewalk. “Let’s walk,” Martin said to him, still grinning, his voice strained. They went up the short road toward the station where passengers were stepping into a silver, high-windowed train.
Devon’s shoes came slapping the pavement behind them. “I know you and Monique tried to sleep together, but you couldn’t do it.”
Martin laughed, staggering to one side at the accusation. Then he skipped up to the platform, smiling stiffly, and hurried along the windows of the train, Lyle in his wake. Devon followed at a jog, while Monique walked slowly at a distance on the platform.
“You couldn’t get it up,” Devon said. “Like five different times.”
At the far edge of the platform Martin stopped and turned, and the three boys faced each other.
“Maybe I wasn’t interested,” Martin said.
“Not interested in that perfect body?”
Martin’s grin was now a mere exposure of teeth. Lyle didn’t want to look at him.
“Go
