He'd just turned onto Robles, head down, oblivious to the heat, reflecting bitterly that he wouldn't even have the dogs to keep him company, when he became aware that someone was calling out his name. He swung round to see a tall, vigorous and vaguely familiar-looking man striding up the pavement toward him. “Delaney Mossbacher?” the man said, holding out his hand.
Delaney took the hand. But for the two of them, the street was deserted, held in the grip of that distant molten sun.__
“We haven't met,” the man said, “-I'm Todd Sweet? — but I saw you at the meeting-the one over the gate thing awhile back? — and I thought I'd introduce myself. I hear you do a column for one of the nature magazines.”
Delaney tried to work his face into a smile. The meeting? And then it hit him: this was the athlete with the willowy wife, the man who'd spoken out with such conviction against the gate. “Oh yes, sure,” he said vaguely; mortified to be in the presence of anyone who'd seen him waving that bloody dog's appendage, and then, realizing that this wasn't exactly an appropriate response, he added, _“Wide Open Spaces.”__
The man was grinning, beaming at him as if they'd just signed the contract for a deal that would make them both rich. He was wearing a silk sport shirt in a tiger-stripe pattern, pressed slacks and sandals, and though it was a hundred and two degrees, he showed no trace of discomfort, not even a bead of sweat at his temples. He looked both earnest and hip, a jazz musician crossed with a Bible salesman. “Listen, Delaney,” he said, dropping his voice confidentially though there was no one within a hundred yards of them, no one visible at all, in fact, not in the sun-blistered expanse of the front yards or behind the drawn shades of the darkened windows, “I'm sure you're aware of what our friend Jack Jardine has in store for us-”
_Our friend.__ Delaney couldn't help but catch the ironic emphasis. But yes, Jack was his friend, though they didn't always see eye-to-eye on the issues, and he felt defensive suddenly.
“Well, I just thought, being a naturalist-and a writer, a fine, persuasive one, I'm sure-that you might oppose what's going on here. It's coming down to a vote at next Wednesday's meeting, and I'm going house-to-house to try to talk people out of it-me and my wife, that is, we're both going around. I mean, isn't the gate bad enough? Isn't this supposed to be a democracy we're living in, with public spaces and public access?”
“I agree,” Delaney said quickly. “Couldn't agree more. The idea of a wall is completely and utterly offensive and it's not going to be cheap, that's for sure.”
“No-and that's what I'm emphasizing with these people. Nobody wants to see their assessment go up, right?” If he'd been beaming a moment ago, Todd Sweet looked positively reverential now. It was a look Delaney knew well, a California look, composed in equal parts of candor, awe and dazzlement, and it usually presaged the asking of a small favor or a tiny little loan. “Look,” Todd Sweet said finally, “I wonder if I might stop by your place tonight and maybe we could write something up, together, I mean-I hate to say it, but I'm no writer-”
And then something came over Delaney-right there in the street, under the sun-a slow wash of shame and fear, a bitter stinging chemical seepage that carried with it the recollection of the Mexican in the bushes, the stolen car, Sunny DiMandia, Jim Shirley, the Metro section and all the rest. He had a vision then of all the starving hordes lined up at the border, of the criminals and gangbangers in their ghettos, of the whole world a ghetto and no end to it, and he felt the pendulum swing back at him. There would be war in his living room if he actively opposed this wall, war with his wife and with Jack and his triumvirate of Cherrystone, Shirley and Flood. Was he willing to risk that? Did the wall really matter all that much?
Todd Sweet was studying his face, the eyes harder now, more penetrating, the mask slipping. “If it's too much trouble,” he said, “I mean, if you want to live in a walled city like something out of 'The Masque of the Red Death,' that's your prerogative, but I just assumed…” He trailed off, a thin petulant edge to his voice.
“No, no, that's not the problem,” Delaney said, and why shouldn't he defy Kyra and Jack and stand up for what he believed in? But then he saw that phantom car again, the one with the rumbling speakers and impenetrable windows, and he hesitated. “Look,” he said, “I'll call you,” and turned to walk away.
“Seven-one-three, two-two-eight-zero,” Todd Sweet called at his back, but he wasn't listening, his mind gone numb with ambivalence. He went on up the block, barely registering the world spread out before him, glum, dogless, on his own. Nothing was moving. The sun was everything. And then he turned into his own street, Piñon Drive, and saw that life existed after alclass="underline" another figure was drifting across that static landscape in the blast of late-summer heat. He couldn't be sure, but it seemed to be the bipedal figure of a man, slipping through the heat haze like an illusion, legs scissoring the light. The man had a white cloth shoulder bag slung over one arm, Delaney saw as he came closer, and he was crossing the Cherrystones' lawn with the lingering insouciant stride of the trespasser-which is what he must have been, since Delaney knew for a fact that the Cherrystones had gone to Santa Monica and wouldn't be back till seven. And then Delaney came closer still, and noticed something else, something that struck him with the force of a blow: the man was Mexican. “Hey,” Delaney called out, quickening his stride now, “can I help you?”
The man looked startled, looked guilty-caught in the act-and he just stood there on the lawn and let Delaney come up to him. And now the second surprise: Delaney knew him, he was sure he did. It took him a minute, something missing from the composite, but then, even without the baseball cap, Delaney recognized him: this was the hiker, the illegal camper, the man who'd soured the first half of one of the worst days of Delaney's life. And even then, even in that moment of recognition, the net widened suddenly: didn't Kyra say that the man who'd threatened her at the Da Ros place was wearing a Padres cap turned backwards? The man just stood there, guarding his satchel. He didn't look away from Delaney's gaze, and he didn't respond.
“I said, can I help you?”
“Help me?” he echoed, and his face broke into a grin. He winked an eye. “Sure,” he said, “sure, _hombre,__ you can help me.” And then: “What's happening, man?”
Delaney was hot. He was uncomfortable. He was aggravated. The man stood a good three or four inches taller than he did and he was letting Delaney know just how unimpressed he was-he was mocking him, bearding Delaney right there in his own community, right there on his own street. Camping in the state park was one thing, but this was something else altogether. And what was in the satchel and why had he been crossing the Cherrystones' lawn when the Cherrystones weren't at home?