The driver looked in his rearview mirror: “A very angry man.”
“No,” Valerie said. “The temple. I was right!”
The driver veered, jolting Valerie almost out onto the hard dry ground covered with dead and dying grass. She faced front, and saw they were angling around the airplane, where Whitman Lemuel — oh, she remembered him — stood holding his jacket up over his head like arrested numbers runners in newspaper photographs. “I know you!” Valerie yelled, shaking her finger at him on the way by.
And to think, to think, she’d been embarrassed at dinner last night, afraid he would notice her!
The driver leaned forward, squinting at the rearview mirror. “That hill?” he said. “That’s really a temple?”
“Over a thousand years old,” Valerie told him, awed by its existence, its reality, her own astonishing brilliance in rescuing it from oblivion. “A Mayan temple.”
“Well, that’s pretty good,” the driver said. “And nobody knew it was there.”
“The world is going to know, just as soon as I get back to Belmopan,” said Valerie.
“Uh huh,” said the driver.
23
Currents of Passion
“Not back yet?” Innocent shook his head, smiling at the desk clerk. “Women,” he said. “Never on time anywhere.”
The desk clerk answered the smile; he and Innocent St. Michael had known one another a long time, in a limited but satisfactory way. “But what could we do without them, eh?” he said.
“Bugger all,” said Innocent. Before the desk clerk could decide whether that had been idiomatic or literal his switchboard lit up and he had to excuse himself, being the only person on duty at the desk at this time.
Innocent studied his watch: a Rolex, a birthday gift from his wife, selected and paid for by himself, gift-wrapped by the girl in the store. Two minutes to five, it said; by the time he got to the bar, the sun would definitely be over the yardarm.
“Yes, yes,” the desk clerk was saying. “I’m doin the best I can, Mister Lemuel, but it just may not be possible. Oh, yes, sir, I’ll go on trying.” Hanging up, he turned back to Innocent, shaking his head and saying, “It always be Americans. Impossible.”
Innocent had heard the name Lemuel and his ears had pricked up, because he knew who that was. Another of Kirby’s strange visitors from the States; a teacher on vacation, he claimed. “What’s this one want?” he asked.
“The Earth and all,” the desk clerk said. “He registered here for two more days, but now in a rush his plans all different. He run in here an hour ago like the end of the world, had to be on a plane today, had to be out of Belize this very minute, sudden urgent message from home. Foo,” commented the desk clerk. “If this man got any sudden urgent message from home, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? I’d hand it him, wouldn’t I?”
“Of course you would,” Innocent said, thinking, Hmmmmmm. “Sounds like he picked up the running shits,” he said.
“I don’t know what that man’s problem be,” said the desk clerk. “I done all I can. I told him, there’s no more flights out to the States today, so then he wants a charter, he won’t spend another night in Belize. I told him, he already got to pay for tonight at the hotel, it way too late to check out, he don’t care ’bout that. I tell him, any charter out of the country, there’s all kinds of paperwork, Customs clearance, police, all that, now he’ll take a flight anywhere, he don’t care. Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, all the same to him. Now, you know there’s nothin I can do bout that.”
“So he’ll spend the night,” Innocent said, “and go out in the mornin.”
“Complainin, complainin,” commented the desk clerk. “Well, I go off at six.”
“Let’s hope my little lady’s back by then,” Innocent said. “I’ll be in the bar.”
“I be sure to let you know,” the desk clerk promised.
On his way back to the bar, Innocent paused at the public phone booths to make three calls. In the first, he said, “There’s a man at the Fort George called Whitman Lemuel. Just a couple minutes after six, you call him, tell him you hear he’s looking for a charter flight, tell him to meet you at the Municipal Airport right away to make the arrangements, you’ll get him right out tonight. No, you don’t have to go to the airport.”
In the second call, he said, “There’s an American fella named Whitman Lemuel gonna be out to the Municipal Airport around six- thirty, looking for some charter flight. Arrest him on twenty or thirty technical charges. No, no, you won’t have to defend them.”
In the third call, he said, “There’s an American name of Whitman Lemuel gonna be comin in around seven. He’ll be spendin the night. Don’t hurt him, but do scare him. I’ll be comin down in the morning to rescue him, and I’m hopin to see a grateful man.”
Smiling, well pleased with himself, Innocent went on to the bar, where he ordered a gin and tonic and sat on one of the low broad swivel chairs, looking out at the view over the tame swimming pool at the feral sea. The pool, in the hotel’s late afternoon shadow, looked cold, but the sea, glistening in amber sunlight, looked warm. The impounded black freighter still stood in the offing, awaiting auction. White sails far out moved toward the barrier reef.
White sails. Valerie’s round white behind. Innocent smiled, content to wait.
24
When, in the Middle of the Air
When, in the middle of the air, Kirby saw his land and temple again, it was just 5:00 o’clock, and he’d been flying into the sun for half an hour. As though he weren’t annoyed and irritated and angry and irked and furious enough already.
Lemuel had been absolutely unsoothable on the flight back to Belize City, had refused to talk rationally, had alternated between moaning about his lost reputation and bitterly accusing Kirby of being responsible for blighting his career. At the Municipal Airport, he’d flung himself from the plane the instant it stopped rolling and went galloping off toward the operations building, yelling, “Taxi! Taxi!”
And now Kirby was back to his mousetrap, the sun in his eyes and ashes in his mouth. Skimming the temple top, he flashed down the other side, buzzed the Indian village low enough to cool soup, rotated Cynthia on her left wingtip, snarled over the hill again, hurled the plane to the ground as though he hated her, and stomped up the slope to the temple roof, where Tommy and Luz and the others were grouped about, gazing at him wide-eyed. “That was pretty close, Kimosabe,” Tommy said.
“You don’t know what close is,” Kirby told him, disgusted. “There was a goddam archaeologist here a little while ago. She’s on her way to report she has just found a previously unknown Mayan temple.”
“Shit,” said Luz.
Tommy said, “On her way where?”
“We can’t stop her,” Kirby said, “and it doesn’t matter who in particular she talks to, what matters is that this goddam pestiferous woman is honest.”
“Ugh,” said Luz.
“I hope she can’t bring back reinforcements tonight,” Kirby said, looking over his shoulder at his blasted plain. “But she’ll certainly be back tomorrow. She thinks I’m here to despoil the temple.”