"You know why?" Robert said. " 'Cause they all bad guys got shot. Sheriff's people and the CIB won't have to deal with 'em no more. And what looks like happened is all they have. No witnesses, no kind of clues lying around out there to go on. Anybody look suspicious? Uh-unh, 'cause we all look alike in the uniforms, become part of the crowd. You know what I'm saying?"
Robert stood at the opening to the balcony watching the diving show, Dennis performing on the springboard at the moment, showing his stuff, Charlie making the announcements.
Anne was packing. She'd come out of the bedroom when she had something to say and Robert would catch her.
"What did John Rau ask you?"
"If I saw it developing," Anne said. "If I thought it had anything to do with Jerry's background, his Detroit connections. I said, `In the real estate business?' "
"Same kind of things they asked me, for three hours."
"John was nice. I cried a little, sniffled, blew my cute nose. I could've had him on the floor."
"You think of any other strange places?"
"The shower?"
"Girl, your next husband, get yourself a straightup business executive thinks doing it in the shower would be a trip." Robert put on his white voice. “`In the shower? Really?' " And said, "They gonna let you have the body tomorrow for sure?"
"John doesn't see a problem. I'm not looking forward to the flight."
"Baby, they won't prop him up next to you, they'll put him in with the luggage."
"I don't know why," Anne said, "but I had a feeling he was gonna get popped."
Robert left that one alone. She asked if he was coming to the funeral. He said he'd most likely fly up for a day or two. Anne went in the bedroom and he looked out at the show, nothing happening, Dennis getting ready for the next one, taking time, maybe getting ready for the one Charlie told him Dennis was doing for the first time here, his fire dive.
He heard Anne say, "Are you worried about me?"
Robert turned to see her in the bedroom doorway in her little bra and panties. He said, "Not with all you have at stake. There ain't any way you'll blow it. But you know John Rau could come at you again, pull that Columbo shit. You think you're off the hook, he comes back and says, `Oh, by the way, you not sleeping with that colored fella, are you?' "
She came toward Robert in her undies. "I'll tell him oh, once in a while, to change my luck. Shall we?"
"Baby, just another few minutes. Dennis is out there finishing his act."
"I thought you two broke up."
"I haven't seen him except on TV, but we talked on the phone. Gonna get together tomorrow. Baby, come on watch this with me, Dennis gonna light himself on fire and dive off the ladder." He looked out at the show again and said, "He's doing it, climbing up the ladder with his cape on." Anne came to him and he put his arm around her shoulders and felt her skin. He said, "You gonna miss me, you know it? Gonna miss the fun." He said, "Look, see him up there? The cape's been soaked in high-test gasoline. He wears two pair of black cotton warm-ups underneath, a hood on the sweatshirt he pulls closed with the string. He went in the pool a minute ago to get the warm-ups soppin', wet as they can get. I think it's his only protection."
"He lights himself?"
"Charlie lights him. They run a line from a battery up there to a squib, a baggie with black powder in it. Charlie pushes the switch and Dennis lights up, becomes a human torch. I said to Charlie, `Is this symbolic? He's the fiery cross of the Klan, he hits the water and puts it out, extinguishes racism?' Charlie says, `He just calls it the fire dive.' " Robert smiled with his white teeth.
They watched Dennis, at the forty-foot level, become a ball of fire and he stood there on the perch not moving, not even seen but he was there, inside the flames, and Robert yelled from the balcony,
"Jump!" And Dennis did a straight dive into the pool.
Robert said, "Man."
Anne said, "Big fucking deal."
Dennis walked around the rim of the tank in sixty pounds of wet clothes looking for Loretta in the crowd, the young girls screaming, but didn't see her. Loretta hadn't been here last night, either.
Billy Darwin, bent over and walking with a cane, Carla helping him, came around behind the tank where Dennis was getting out of the wet warm-ups and the wet suit he wore underneath. Darwin didn't mention his injury. He told Dennis that fire dive was a show-stopper and asked if he could do it from the top perch. Dennis said he wouldn't want to go in headfirst from eighty feet with all that weight on him, it was too steep. He said he'd jump lit up, "But how would you announce it, as the death-defying fire jump?" Billy Darwin said, "Going off the top's tricky, but you sure get a rush, don't you?" Carla didn't say anything about the fire dive. She said, "You looked cute on TV, in your uniform." Meaning when Diane and her crew caught him in the Union camp Sunday.
It was right after the shooting and he had come back through the woods with Robert, Dennis trying to decide if he should go tell Loretta what happened or wait till she heard about it, and there was the video camera in his face. All Diane asked him about was the reenactment: if he had fun, if he took it seriously, if he thought he'd ever do it again. Robert stood watching and John Rau, coming into the camp, had looked over at them. Dennis answered yes to all the questions, not having time to think with all he had on his mind. After the interview Diane said, "Are you ready to talk to me yet?" Meaning the Floyd Showers business. "Remember you said you would." He remembered it wishing he'd never told her he was on the ladder that night-Diane using her soft eyes on him, asking if he wanted to go to Memphis. Once she found out Arlen was dead… Robert saved him, Robert saying, "Come on, man, we gotta go," and Dennis told her he'd be in touch. In the car Robert said, "You notice John Rau was let out of their prison? He saw us, too, knows we weren't someplace else." That was Sunday, the business with Diane.
Billy Darwin and Carla left and Charlie said the TV lady was here tonight, without her crew. "I imagine you'd like to see her. She said to tell you she's in the bar. But let me mention, Vernice's fixing a late supper for you. She's hoping you come right home after this. You don't, you'll miss a fine spread and Vernice'll be hurt, but what do you care?"
Dennis was dressed now in his jeans and a work shirt. He said, "Wait for me. I have to go up and unhook the squib wire." Charlie said he'd be in the bar and Dennis said, "But Diane's in there."
"You're a big boy," Charlie said. "You don't want to talk to her, you say you have to go home and eat."
Dennis went up the ladder to the forty-foot perch, unhooked the wire and dropped it. He stepped around to the other side of the ladder to go down, and saw the figure standing out on the lawn watching him. No one else around. He knew without seeing her face it was Loretta.
In a short black skirt and some kind of lightcolored blouse. She said, "I couldn't come yesterday, I was at the funeral parlor."
"I looked for you."
"I wanted to but-you know, there things have to be done."
He said, "Do you have a car?" and saw her smile because she had asked him that.
"I do now. I have two, but don't know where one of 'em is."
"Can we go somewhere?"
"I won't take you home. There's still too much of Arlen in the house." She said, "Did you want to get something to eat," her voice slowing down, "or go to a bar, or a motel?"
"I know where we can go," Dennis said, took Loretta into the hotel where they got a suite for one night and had a wonderful time.
They did. They turned on music and took their clothes off and just let loose being a man and a woman who couldn't keep their hands off each other. They made love and had vodka drinks and calamari. Loretta said, "Sunday was the best day of my life. I don't mean-you know, Arlen dying. I mean from the time you came in the tent to wash my back. I'm amazed I asked you to do it, but I'm so glad I did. I can live offa that one the rest of my life. Even with it being so hot in there. Now I have another one-whatever this day is, Wednesday? I'm gonna think of them both together."