“Watch for a green flash.”
She turned to him, puzzled.
“No, don’t look at me,” Coltrane said. “Keep your eyes on the horizon. In a second, there’s going to be a green flash.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Packard wrote a book about photography. He called it Sightings, and in it, he claimed that during the instant the sun vanishes below the horizon, there’s a green flash. He claimed to have seen it many times, something to do with a change in the spectrum of light, and he said it had been one of his career-long goals to capture a photograph of that flash, although he was never able to, because by the time he saw it and pressed the shutter button, the flash was over. He tried to anticipate it and press the shutter button just before he thought the flash was going to happen, but he never managed that, either. I’ve spent many evenings staring at sunsets, trying to see that flash, but I’ve never been able to.”
“Was Packard telling the truth? Do you think the flash really happens?”
“Other photographers claim to have seen it. Ansel Adams used to take guests onto his porch and try to show it to them.”
“But it’s always eluded you.”
“Yep.”
“Then what makes you expect you’ll see it tonight?”
“Because you’re with me.”
Tash didn’t say anything for a moment. “That’s the tenderest thing anybody ever told me.”
“Will you please stop looking in my direction?”
Tash giggled.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon.”
“Yes, sir.” Tash giggled again.
She peered away from him, watching the last speck of the sun’s faint orange vanish below the horizon, and inhaled sharply, for as black invaded the sky, a green flash shot amazingly up, like a monocolored single beam from the aurora borealis. With equal abruptness, it vanished.
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“I saw it, too.” Coltrane felt pounding behind his ears.
“Holy God.”
“Yes.”
“I feel as if we’re the only people in the world who saw it,” Tash said.
“Yes.”
“Our own private show.”
Coltrane turned her toward him and brought his mouth to hers. As the cliff seemed to waver, he had a fleeting sense that it wasn’t their bodies but their souls that were trying to merge. Maybe that’s why this is called a “soul kiss,” he thought. Then he was incapable of thought as they held each other tighter, kissing deeper.
6
THEIR HOTEL WAS ONLY A TEN-MINUTE STROLL AWAY, but Coltrane had no recollection of the restaurants and shops they passed, hurrying back, seeming to get there instantaneously, and yet he couldn’t recall an occasion when a comparable amount of time had seemed to take so long.
They barely managed to lock the door to their room before they were all over each other, unable to get enough of each other. Their hands slid urgently under each other’s clothes, their need so great that taking the time to undress would have been an unbearable postponement. Then it wasn’t necessary to take the time to undress, for they were suddenly naked, their clothes scattered everywhere as they pressed against each other, chest-to-chest, stomach-to-stomach, groin-to-groin, their skin itself a powerful sexual organ that drove them to even greater urgency. His back pressed against the switch on the wall, activating the overhead light. They didn’t care. The light didn’t matter. They were too absorbed by each other to turn it off. When they sank to the bed, Coltrane felt he was falling, never to stop. He rolled and twisted, sliding sweat-slicked over her, into her, moaning, seeming to soar above himself as he thrust, to plunge into himself as he withdrew. His brain pattern flashed white, black, white, black. Then there was only white, and he lay disoriented beside her.
Gradually, his heart pumped slower, no longer threatening to burst. When he finally mustered strength, he glanced toward Tash, whose eyes were closed contentedly, her body glistening with sweat.
“Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” she murmured.
“I want to take your photograph.”
She didn’t answer for what seemed a long while. “Yes.”
When he stood and peered down, trying to decide what angle to use, he was so enthralled by the casual perfection of her unselfconscious nakedness that he almost forgot to reach for his camera. She was on her back, her arms spread with sensual exhaustion, her breasts at ease, gravity tucking her stomach in, her pubic hair a perfect triangle, her right leg straight, the left bent lazily.
He had never been with a woman who had so entranced him by the sheer fact of her being a woman. It was as if he felt attracted to her because of a subtle chemical signal that he was biologically programmed to find irresistible. But that didn’t explain it, even though the after-sex musk smell from her – it filled the room – made him feel intoxicated. His attraction was more than that. He had fallen in love with her long before he had met her. He had known her before and had been searching for her ever since.
He raised the camera, adjusted it, then lovingly sighted through the viewfinder, which heightened the impression she created. Her small, distant, yet close image became intensified, idealized. When he pressed the shutter button, he knew that this would be one of the finest photographs he had ever made. He took a dozen images from various angles, some of which were full shots, others half shots, a few of which showed only Tash’s breasts, one of which showed only her perfect dark triangle.
He knelt, easing his right hand onto her mound, luxuriating in its softness.
Tash placed her left hand over his. “That feels nice.”
Coltrane heard the forceful pounding of his heart.
“Do you think the photographs will be good?” Tash asked.
“Yes,” Coltrane managed to say.
“I’m surprised that I let you take them.”
“Thank you for letting me.”
“I trust you. I know you wouldn’t do anything with those photographs that would cheapen me.”
“… Never,” he said gently.
7
IN EYE-SQUINTING SUNLIGHT, the soldier, one of three at a roadblock between two Jeeps, held up his hand for Coltrane to stop. Coltrane was driving a five-year-old blue Ford station wagon with a crumpled fender and eighty thousand miles on it, the only vehicle that he had been able to find for rent. The car-rental agency had told him that the next day something better would be available, but Coltrane hadn’t wanted to wait. So, after making sure to get a good map and buy plenty of Mexican car insurance, they had headed south from Acapulco. Forty minutes beyond the airport, the rain forest-lined road had long since become two lanes, and the soldiers blocked their way.
Coltrane nodded in what he hoped looked like respect, asking in Spanish if anything was wrong.
Instead of responding, the soldier scowled into the station wagon’s backseat and rear compartment, both of which were empty except for an ice cooler on the back floor. The soldier lifted his right hand from his automatic weapon and motioned that he wanted the cooler opened. Tash bent over the backseat and complied, the two soldiers on her side of the car concentrating on her hips as she showed them that the cooler contained only soft drinks. With a dismissive gesture, the first soldier indicated that Coltrane could proceed.
“What was that about?” Tash asked.
“The man at the car-rental agency said the army’s been checking vehicles for guns and drugs.”
“They looked so sullen, God help anyone they decide to arrest.”
“This heat can’t have improved their humor.”