One day he saw her walking past Ashley Pond and he wanted to run over and take her by the shoulders. Why did you lie to me? But he couldn’t bring himself to ask her, and he realized with a sick feeling in his stomach that it was because he still wanted her. The wind blew her clothes against her and there was that rider’s stride, quick and straightforward, utterly without deceit. But why lie? What had she to do with Karl, with any of it? He drew his imaginary blackboard map, but she didn’t fit anywhere. Instead, she was in another map, an X at Theater-2 and the punch bowl, lines to Santa Fe, to Chaco, to-and he saw that she was everywhere on this personal map, it was about her, everything that had happened to him. Was any of it true? Where had they gone? Maybe just a lift into town. But the soldier hadn’t thought so, with his stupid, sly grin. The MP at Trinity hadn’t thought so either. In this hot, lazy afternoon with nothing to do but brood, no one was innocent. Not even him. He’d just been the next in line.
When they did meet, he was disarmed by her smile, easy and guileless, as bright as the day. Daniel had gone down to the test site again, and they went to the ruins at Bandelier, dodging the hot sun on the shady path along Frijoles Creek, down toward the waterfall that finally emptied into the Rio Grande. She was glad to see him, talking happily about nothing, pleased to be out. She hiked briskly along the trail in the boots and shorts she had worn at Chaco, when things were different. But in fact it all seemed the same, so clear and bright that for a moment he felt the weight of the past few days was nothing but an anxious dream, one of those nights whose gloom and dread were burned off by morning. She laughed when she washed her face in the stream, splashing him. He watched her, how easily she moved through her part, and he smiled back, unwilling to let her see him watching. He wanted her to say something, a disingenuous moment, so he could begin, but she hiked back in high spirits, and he waited. They ate a picnic near the Tyuonyi kiva, again like Chaco, with the sun overhead. There were no sounds but the stirrings of lizards and the faint hot breeze that blew the cottonweed seeds like bits of snow.
“You can see why they’d come here,” she said, her voice lazy and contented. “Water. Bottomland. Storage bins.” She pointed toward the caves hollowed out in the soft lava tufa above them. “Nothing like Chaco.”
“But they left.”
“Yes,” she said, facing the sun with her eyes closed. “Strange, isn’t it?”
In the quiet they heard a muffled explosion from one of the distant test canyons, a wave of intrusion from the Hill. They looked toward the sound, alarmed, but then it was over and everything was still again. She leaned back, closing her eyes to blot it out.
“Did the Germans come here too?” he said, stalling.
“I suppose they must have,” she said, not opening her eyes. “Or maybe it was the priests. It’s always the priests, isn’t it? Some bloody archbishop leading them to the promised land. Some idea. The Navajos were frightened by it, when they came. Found all these ready-made cities and never moved in. Wouldn’t touch them.”
“Maybe they were the Germans.”
“No. At least, we don’t think so,” she said, a seminar we. “No sign of fighting at all. Anyway, they’re not like that. They’re lovely. In the creation myth, one part of the darkness makes love to another and the one on top becomes light and rises up to be the first day. It’s lovely, that,” she said, her voice soft. “Think of ours. God blundering about making this and that, busy. Everything done in a week. No wonder we blow things up.”
“What happens after they have sex, the dark and the light?”
“They make the wind, the life force. I love the Navajos for that-everything beginning in bed.”
“They really say that?”
“Of course,” she said lightly. “Would I lie to you?”
“I don’t know. Would you?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him, but he didn’t say anything more and she let it pass. “There’s quite a lot of sex in the myth. The earth and the sky make love, and the moisture between them, the sweat, waters the earth and makes everything grow. Do admit, it’s a lot nicer than God just waving his hand here and there, making zebras and things. It’s funny, though, they don’t seem sensual at all, the Indians. But I suppose they must be.”
Her voice drifted away, so that in the quiet it seemed she had been talking to herself. She sat up and lit a cigarette, staring out at the swath of green near the creek, waiting for him to speak.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she said finally. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Why should anything be wrong?”
“I don’t know. You’re all- coiled. You haven’t touched me all day, so something must be wrong. You’re not the Navajo type.”
He said nothing, working a stick in the ground, making idle patterns. “I want to ask you something, and I’m not sure how.”
He felt her stiffen beside him, an almost imperceptible movement, like one of the tiny lizards flitting behind a rock.
“Oh. Perhaps you’d better just ask, then.”
“Tell me about you and Karl.”
She exhaled smoke as if she had been holding her breath, and continued to look ahead. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Oh, everything.”
“You told me you scarcely knew him, but that isn’t true, is it? You were seen with him.”
“Quite the detective.” She paused. “Is it so important?” she said softly.
“Of course it’s important. He was murdered.”
“Well, I didn’t bloody murder him,” she said, facing him.
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie to you. It’s nothing to do with this. It wasn’t any of your business.”
“You did lie to me.”
“Have it your way, then,” she said, getting up. “It’s still none of your business.”
“Tell me,” he said, standing.
“What does it matter? It was over.”
“Tell me,” he shouted, his voice breaking through the still air like the far explosion.
“Tell me,” she mimicked. “All right, he was my lover. Better?”
Her words hung in the air, as if neither of them wanted to pick them up.
“Why?” he said finally.
“Why. Why. He asked me, I suppose. I’m easy. You ought to know.”
They glared at each other.
“Tell me,” he said quietly.
She broke the stare, looking down to rub out her cigarette. “Last year. A few times. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Maybe I didn’t want you to think I was that kind of girl.”
“Where?”
“Where?” she said, exasperated. “Places. There are places, you know.”
“Santa Fe?”
“Nowhere we’ve been, if that’s what you want to know,” she said angrily. “Someplace on the road to Albuquerque. Look, it happened. I can’t help that. It was over. What do the details matter? You’ve no right.”
“Yes, I do. Did you love him?”
“Stop it.”
“Did you?”
“Of course I didn’t bloody love him. We had sex. I enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy it. Is that what you want to hear? Anyway, it stopped. I didn’t want Daniel to know. I was afraid.”
“You’re not afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid of you,” she said, then looked away. “You want too much. ‘Tell me everything. Where did you go? Did you enjoy it? Were you ashamed?’ All angry and wounded, as if it had anything to do with you. I didn’t even know you. It had nothing to do with anybody, really. Except him. And then later he was killed. What did you want me to do, run over and tell everybody in security that we’d been having it off in some motel down the road? I was relieved. I thought nobody would ever know.”
“And it didn’t matter that there was a murder investigation?”
“Why should it? I didn’t know anything about that.”