On the vernal equinox, two men sat in straightback chairs on the roof of an El Paso hotel admiring how the sunset fell on barren, suede-colored hills to the south. One, who called himself John Bliss, had a pale burn scar on his cheek shaped like a spider. He was drinking mescal; from time to time, he hoisted the bottle from beside his boot and poured a double-shot jigger, momentarily resurrecting the pickled caterpillar. The other man, known as Will Hunter, watched it sink in the clear liquor and rest on the bottom like a laboratory specimen. Although Hunter was not drinking, he was extremely thirsty, and he kept picturing a clean glass sitting on the marble top of the washstand in his room below; beside it stood a white enamel pitcher of water, and if he lowered his face over the pitcher's dark mouth, it would give off a faint cool breath. He saw himself pouring the glass full and drinking the water slowly. Accustomed to ignoring such thirsts, Hunter merely sat smoking one Camel after another and watching the light ooze like butter down the slopes of the spiny hills. A pebble pinched his left sole, but he made no effort to remove it from his shoe because he had put it there.

"I should've stayed down there." Bliss was staring fixedly at the hills. An indistinct band of gray hovered over the far horizon. Hunter imagined the ancient city of the Aztecs steeped in darkness. "Why?"

"Because we lived like kings, I tell you. El jefes. A few of us, we'd go off on our own and come riding through those little villages scattering chickens and pigs and dogs. We'd shoot a greaser or two just to get everybody's undivided attention, then we'd have our pick of the señoritas. We'd stay sometimes a week, then we'd get restless and move on. Stay any longer than that and we'd start squabbling, and the peons'd start laying plans to get rid of us." Bliss chuckled. "I bet I got little bastard sons and daughters all over the state of Sonora."

Hunter slowly ground his cigarette out in the asphalt with his heel. Around his shoes lay a litter of crushed butts. He wasn't interested in Bliss' stories about riding with Pancho Villa--or, rather, riding on the periphery of the revolution like a nasty little tornado spawned by a hurricane. However, he did want to hear Bliss describe his modus operandi.

"So the Mexicans gave you trouble?"

"Oh, sure. Spics are like sheep, but you always got one wants to be a hero. Touchy about their women."

Hunter lit another cigarette. His hands were sweating from the nicotine in his blood. "So what'd you do?"

Bliss shrugged. "Squashed 'em like bugs, whatta you think?" Bliss described how he was set upon while sleeping by the father of a girl he'd raped, but Hunter could hardly bear to listen: Bliss had put a knife under his pillow in the story's expository overture, so the outcome of the yarn could easily be predicted, and the mano-a-mano struggle across the room--overturning a cookstove, fire spilling everywhere, exchanging blows, knife thrusts--was the stuff of a Tom Mix movie. While Bliss went on, animated, pleased to have an audience, Hunter wondered if the name Bliss was real; if so, it represented a dark, reverse twist on that irony occurring when Bones or Hart became a surgeon, and God had a hangman's wit. Probably the name was false, and Bliss-- who also went by the surname Shingle--had chosen the alias for the perverse delight it provided. It was hard to judge which was worse: that the name were real or invented.

"Had to choke the daughter," Bliss said, jolting Hunter back to the moment. "Jumped me after I gutted the beaner." Bliss smiled, moved by nostalgia. "You might say I took utmost advantage of her spasms."

Hunter told himself he hadn't understood; he changed the subject abruptly by asking, "You ever do a fire?"

Bliss turned to regard him thoughtfully. "See this?" He touched his scarred cheek with the rim of the glass.

"Burn scar?"

Bliss shook his head. "Acid. Girl who did it burnt up in a house fire after, though." Bliss sounded satisfied with the result, though apparently the revenge had afforded him only professional gratification. Or perhaps the lack of triumph in his voice was his way of expressing sorrow, Hunter couldn't tell. "Paper said 'burnt beyond recognition,'" Bliss added, and Hunter involuntarily shuddered. He licked his dry lips.

"Dynamite?"

Bliss chuckled. "You gonna write my memoirs?"

Hunter shrugged. "Always room to learn something."

"Did some road and bridge work down in Morelia. That's how I was in Mexico to begin with. I tell you, there's something in it, you know, to just stand there and push down on a little handle and a whole damn mountain just goes ka-blooey! right up into the clouds. I do love that de-construction work!"

"Let's say somebody wanted you to do some blasting on the Q.T." Bliss eyed him with a new curiosity. "You know somebody?"

"Maybe."

"You want me to teach you, that it?"

"Not exactly. Maybe I'm a de-construction contractor."

Bliss smiled. "Sure, if the money's right."

"How do I know you can get it done?"

"I'm experienced."

"You do a remote?"

"That's tricky."

"But you know how?"

Bliss nodded. "It's not hard to do; it's hard to hide it's been done."

Hunter couldn't probe too much without arousing suspicion. "It's not me wants it. Another party."

"I understand."

"You have satisfied customers?"

Bliss nodded.

"You sure?"

Bliss grinned as if he knew a tantalyzing secret Hunter might be astonished to learn. "Once I worked for a fellow--maybe you know him--" Bliss squinted at Hunter and leaned closer. "Fact is, you look a bit like him. You got kin around here?" Hunter shook his head. "Well, anyway, this fellow, he had a certain flotation device out in California obstructing his plans."

Hunter got to his feet, maybe too quickly, for Bliss' head snapped about and he lurched as if to rise from his chair, so Hunter froze, smiled to reassure him, and patted his empty coat pockets.

"Need some smokes," he said.

"Got any stogies down there?"

Hunter detected a yearning for celebration in the question; it was wholly out of keeping with his own grim mood.

"No. Sorry."

Bliss shrugged, poured himself another shot, and the pickled green worm tried to swim again.

The pebble pinched the arch of his foot as Hunter went down the steps to the hall and into his room. He had left the door open for ventilation, but now he closed it behind him. He went to the washstand, and, with his hands shaking violently, poured a glass full of water, spilling some across the marble. He drank it down in one long series of gasping swallows, poured another more carefully, steadily; this he drank slowly, resting and breathing deeply between sips. Several months of agonized, obsessive searching had brought him to this moment: he had to go on from here; he was afraid his rage would show, but having to damp it back made him swoon with dizziness. Bilious mescal boiled up from his gut, and he felt he might puke.

He jammed his palm flat to the wall, then he set the glass down. The washstand mirror framed his face, a stranger's beard. On the marble top next to a wash bowl lay a pair of spectacles and a folded straight-razor. He gingerly held the gold wire temples of the spectacles and hooked them over his ears. He picked up the razor, thumbed the metal moon to unsheath the silver blade, inspected it, snapped it shut.

He was on his way out of the room when the telephone rang. He hesitated, then answered it.

"Will?"

"Yes."

"I didn't recognize you."

Hunter coughed. "Frog in my throat."

The girl giggled. "I'm alone now. Mother and Dad went to a musicale, and I think they're going to Juarez afterward with some people. They'll be out late."

"I'll be there in a bit." The window framed a chunk of violet sky in which a quarter moon lay on its back, slowly levitating, pincers aimed at Venus hovering above it.

"You sound so strange."

"I was napping, Sissy."

"Lazybones!" When he failed to respond, she added softly, "I missed you all day. Did you miss me?"

He could picture the girl standing in the salon amidst her mother's heavy Victorian furniture, playing with the cord to the telephone as she spoke, putting her hand through its loops so it wound around her arm like a bracelet. A wave of nausea forced him down onto the bed. "Yes."

"Oh, really, Will!" she scoffed. "Your enthusiasm is overwhelming."

"Sorry." He looked about the room. The dry wash bowl, the empty glass, the blank mirror stood oddly expectant in the twilight dimness. "Like I say, I'm not awake."

"Well, please hurry. Please? I've been waiting all day." Now she sounded like a peevish child. "And bring me something to drink, will you?"

"What?"

"I don't know. Surprise me!"

"Tequila?"

"Ugh! No, bring stuff to make those, oh, what Daddy drinks?"

"Manhattans."

"Yes! And we'll be oh so so-phis-ti-cated! I'll wear a trayz chick negligee."

"I'll shave my beard," he uttered, surprising himself.

"Really?" she said, then fell silent, and Hunter thought he detected a faint uneasiness about seeing him beardless for the first time. "Oh, that's exciting, we can dance cheek-to-cheek!" Then she said, "How come?"

"No reason."

Hunter returned to the roof, and the sounds of his shoes crunching gravel startled Bliss from a reverie. Bliss twisted about to watch Hunter move toward him. Hunter didn't take his former seat; he stood behind and between the chairs, placing his left hand on the shoulder of the vacant one. His right hand propped the unfolded razor up his coat sleeve. Both men looked off toward Mexico, as if posing for a family portrait.

With his spectacles on, to Hunter everything observed from the roof now looked more real, therefore less real. He traced the sharp outlines of the craggy mountains to the south, their crenelations and folds holding the darkness, their ribs catching the ruddy last lumens of a sunset lurid enough to advertise the Apocalypse. The air was teeming with red and purple highlights like colored smoke, as if Hunter were seeing through a filter or had ascended from the hallway to find himself unexpectedly on Mars. White stars glimmered on the grid of Juarez across the border; on the outskirts, in the colonias, there were flickering orange lights from the cooking fires of the landless hordes who lived in shacks fashioned from crates and oil drums.

"I heard a phone."

Hunter nodded. "The aforementioned other party."

Bliss grunted. "What'd he say?"

"He wanted to know if the so-called 'flotation device' was a sailboat."

"Well, he is an inquisitive fellow."

"He doesn't want to waste his money."

"He's asking for too much and giving too little. Besides, I can't talk business on an empty stomach. I've been sitting here thinking about skedaddling across the bridge and getting some enchiladas and some poontang--you game for that? It's Friday night. You probably know some good pussy palaces. I haven't been over there in a while."

Hunter couldn't picture himself and Bliss carousing in a bordertown bordello, but he could see the two of them staggering with arms about each other's shoulders down a Juarez street, singing, then himself steering the groggy Bliss into a dark alley, and, suddenly sober, he'd stick his middle fingers in Bliss' ears and both thumbs in the man's eyes and squeeze until they all met in the middle of his brain. Such sudden death left much to be desired, though--Bliss would not suffer enough nor would he learn why he was to die--but it would be far safer than doing it here on the roof where they'd been sitting for the past hour and no doubt could have been observed. Poor planning, or too much planning, really--he'd played this out a thousand times in a thousand ways; consequently, the present reality seemed so much less satisfactory than his fantasies that it robbed him of the will to move decisively.

He stared at the nape of Bliss' neck and let the handle of the razor slip down into the nest of his grip. He started trembling. He'd longed for this moment; over and over he'd imagioned thrusting his rage into a black hole of opportunity. He clenched his jaw. Where was that speech? Nothing had occurred cleanly enough--no clear-cut confession, only teasing probabilities: a "flotation device"--could that be anything but Copperfield's boat? You scum! You killed my wife!

"I say what do you think about--" Bliss began, obviously about to repeat his invitation, but he'd also turned slightly in his chair to look up at Hunter and had seen that thunderstorm on Hunter's face, his shaking limbs, the razor. "Say, fella!" he barked. He bolted from the chair and tried to stand clear, but Hunter grabbed his lapel in one fist and, with a wide fierce swipe of his right hand like a haymaker, slashed at Bliss' throat. The swing went wide and only nicked him, and Bliss, astonished, the whites of his eyes showing like those of a spooked horse, frantically snatched at the razor. They fell to the roof and wrestled for it, breath heaving, grunting; Hunter wound up on top, his left hand in Bliss' mouth, and Bliss savagely clamped down on it with his teeth. Hunter howled in pain but managed to wrench the other man's head up and back and sliced him deep across the jugular with the razor.

While Bliss jerked and flopped like a huge, landed fish, Hunter lay on him with one hand jammed in his mouth and the other pressed against the man's nose. Bliss pounded his head and ears with his fists, but Hunter rode him without being bucked until, at last, Bliss lost consciousness.

Hunter snatched his hand from the slackened jaws. He rose and stood over Bliss, trembling violently. He kicked the man ferociously in the ribs, as if to wake him. Blood was spurting, a red ejaculate, from the gash in his neck.

"You fucker! You got off too easy!"

Hunter was so furious he began to bawl, and he squelched an urge to fling the corpse off the roof. He sank into the chair Bliss had occupied and fought to control himself, holding his bloody left hand in a fist on his lap and rocking, cooing from the pain. He bent over suddenly to the side and splattered with gravelled asphalt with vomit. He couldn't stop crying, like someone who has crawled from the wreckage of a home flattened by a tornado. After a while, his breathing evened, and he sat up. He felt drained. The razor lay in the other chair as if it had been placed there, but he couldn't recall having done that. He took out his handkerchief--it was an awkward reach with his right hand to his left hip pocket--and wrapped it around the razor. The moon had a hazy shape; he'd lost his glasses in the fight. He slid off the chair and duck-walked about, squinting at the asphalt, until one moon-white lens winked at him.

When he put his glasses on and looked about, panic shot through him; dusk still hung faintly in the sky, and the rising moon would soon cover the roof with a wan light. So much left to do. He needed to move Bliss' body so it wouldn't be spotted at least until morning. He tried to consider his next moves with the calm rationality of playing chess, but his thoughts were fuzzy, electrified, wouldn't stay put. He saw himself driving to Sissy's house, her talking on the phone, the cord around her arm, then around her neck, tightening.

The hall was empty, though a radio was playing "My Blue Heaven." Hunter shut his door and tiptoed to the washstand. The furniture was draped in darkness. The spectacles pinched his nose; he removed them. He poured a drink; the pitcher's lip went tink tink tink against the shaking glass. Light dim as grey silk lay across the bed, the window open for exit or entry. Swallowing, he saw a swift dark movement on his right, and he spun, gasped, choked on the water, coughed it into the empty washbowl. Only his mirrored twin. Trembling, he groped the air over his head for the knotted cord, studying his dark reflected form. When the light popped on, he shuddered and gave an involuntary yelp: the man in the glass was bathed in blood. For an instant, Hunter wondered if he'd been cut then realized the blood was the dead man's.

He shivered out of his coat in a great panic. "Ohhh!" he groaned. He ripped off his shirt, then, nude to the waist, hurriedly scanned the room, grabbed a white towel, poured water into the bowl and swabbed at the blood on his arms and neck. His left hand ached. Bliss' bite had broken the skin, and it hurt so much he guessed a bone was cracked or broken. He tried to ignore the pain, relying on his right hand. He doused the towel, squeezed it over the bowl, and soon the water turned pink. He grimaced, picked up the pitcher, set it down, picked it up, scurried to the door, peeked into the hall. The radio music was louder, and he heard talking, but, seeing no one, Hunter slipped out, filled the pitcher in the bathroom down the hall and brought it back. He sopped a clean towel and scrubbed hard at his neck and shoulders; soon that towel was pink, also. He dropped it with disgust onto the blood-stained shirt and coat. He'd have to do something with the towels and the clothes. But he couldn't stash them here, had to take them. What to put them in, wrap them in something? Wouldn't that get bloody, too?

What about this pink water? Couldn't leave it for the maid. Have to flush it down the hall toilet, wash out the basin, hope no one sees. The razor? Get rid of it! But he'd wanted to shave his beard, part of the plan, now it seemed impossible, given his trembling and having to make so many trips down the hall for warm clean water. Plan? Yes, he'd "planned" to kill Bliss, but it seemed now he'd not thought of what would happen after the knife gun hammer hatchet cut pierced punched or bludgeoned the man. Now, his heart thundered and a thousand simple questions hummed like wasps in his brain. Someone on the roof? Was Bliss groaning or shouting? The razor was wrapped in his handkerchief in the coat pocket. What--

He licked his lips. His bloody clothes might stain the carpet. He bent, scooped them up, flung them down as something wet and cold brushed his arm. He removed a case from a pillow and stuffed the bloody shirt and coat into it. Jam the bundle into his valise? Blood might leak onto his clean clothing. Maybe wrap them in a blanket. But the blanket would prove he'd been here. Never get it into the valise.

His mind hopped nimbly away from whatever resisted it. He wondered suddenly if his trousers were clean. He ran his hands down his legs, felt nothing wet. They were dark and would hide a smudge, but Bliss' blood, on him, that was horrid!

He had to move fast.

No, don't hurry! He needed to take care that panic didn't cause a mistake, make him overlook a step that needed to be taken before he left this room.

First do the clothes.

No, first shave? because he'd need to put on fresh clothes after, then pack. Gather up the photograph of Bobette and Pearl, his ivory-handled toilet set from Bobette. Then the papers from under the bed, check that everything's there for presenting the evidence. Letter from Pearl in the desk drawer, don't forget it. Calm down, breathe deeply, slowly.

He turned out the light and sat on the bed for several minutes, forcing his mind to empty and his pulse to slow to normal. He told himself he had to go about the next few minutes--and the next few hours--with the same cool, unhurried economy that he'd practice had he not slashed a man's throat for the first time in his life only moments ago and on the roof hardly fifty feet away.
Yes, he would shave; it would give him a reason to go to and from the bath and allow him to dispose of the bloody water. Testing his procedures, he pictured himself packing and checking systematically to make sure all signs of his presence were removed.

The telephone jangled; he lurched but didn't pick up the receiver. It would be Sissy, impatient.

The clerk was reading a newspaper spread on the counter.

"Where's Fairfield?"

"Uh, I don't know," said Hunter.

The clerk tsked, tapped the paper, noted Hunter's bags and drew a ledger from a drawer. While the clerk leafed through it, Hunter read that Wilma Jones of Fairfield was tied to a bed in her hotel room and the bed set afire. He shuddered. A New York man ate forty raw eggs. Proposed name for new planet--Minerva. Mrs. Dugan to hang. First blonde Virgin Mary at Oberammergau.

"Leaving us for good, Mr. Hunter? Or just taking a business trip?"

"Yes. I mean I'll be back in a few days. On Wednesday. I've got business up in Santa Fe."

"Very good. Shall I--"

"Yes," Hunter put in quickly. "Same room, if you would."

The clerk said, while writing Hunter's receipt, "Burn your hand?"

"What?" The woman tied to the bed--

"Did you burn that hand?"

"Yes. No, I mean no. Car door. I shut the car door on it."

"Ouch."

The clerk slapped the bell; waiting, they both watched Hunter's bandaged hand resting on the counter as if it might suddenly commence some extraordinary activity, then Hunter held it against his chest and looked out the window onto San Jacinto Plaza. He could hear the clerk breathing. Every second they waited it seemed more possible that Bliss would stumble down the stairs to the lobby, severed head tucked under his arm. Hunter was sweating across his brow. He'd reshaped his glasses, but the right lens was low, the other high, giving him the sensation of standing at a list. The bridge pads pinched his nose. He was thirsty again.

"Warm tonight," he said.

"Think so? Seems cooler to me."

At last the old porter shuffled in from the hotel's kitchen, wiping his mouth daintily with his handkerchief. Both men were outside standing on the curb before Hunter recalled that when he had returned to the hotel this afternoon, traffic had forced him to park across the plaza. His heart skipped--another surprise, another decision: he could either let Sanchez walk with him and risk having the contents of the valise exposed by blood dripping from it or by the latches popping open-Oh, this is crazy! Calm down!-or let him--

"Only take a minute, Sanchez. My car's over on Main." He gestured with the bandaged hand. He started to say, "Just leave the bags here," then knew that would be strange. "If you'd just watch the bags."

"Bueno." Hunter set off across Mills, darting through the traffic. It was fully dark now, but on the Oregon side of the plaza the theatre's marquee showered light onto the walk and the crowd milling underneath. Like sheep, bleating. He resisted the compulsion to read the feature's title and plunged into the plaza. Under the arbor of cottonwoods and elms, old Mexican duennas sat crocheting while their young charges strolled about arm in arm. Hunter looked back to the hotel. Sanchez, now smoking, had one foot propped on the suitcase.

Hunter hurried past the pond where, by day, charcoal-colored alligators dozed in the sun, oblivious to the pebbles children tossed onto their backs. From inside the pit came a grunt, a splash. He strode on quickly, thinking of Sanchez standing over the bags, and a fleeting image beseiged him: Bliss, on the roof, throwing his voice like a ventriloquist into the valise, breathing the bloody clothes to life. Help me! He dashed in front of a trolley on Main, trotted to his Ford, jumped in, cocked the gas and spark and jammed the starter plunger. The engine's sudden bang jolted him; he pulled away and was almost rear-ended by a truck, came round the corner onto Mills, skidded to where Sanchez stood looking worried or surprised-I mustn't seem to be in such a hurry- leaned over to open the door, took the bags Sanchez handed in, and roared off. Three blocks away, he pulled to the curb. He hadn't tipped Sanchez. He breathed deeply, raggedly. He needed to feel secure, safe; he wanted to appear normal, but lapses in his behavior were undermining his confidence.

To calm himself, he upon his revenge like a man running a check before a vacation. Had he stripped the room of all his belongings? Did he put the razor in his jacket pocket? Had he been careful not to let the clerk know where he'd come from or who he worked for? Or who he knew in El Paso?

The shot glass! Where... no, the last thing he'd done before leaving the roof was to pitch it like a stone high over the adjoining building because the maid had probably seen it in his room.

He let out a long, slow breath. No need to panic. Even if the body were discovered in the next few seconds, Hunter was safe now. It might be days before Bliss stank enough to draw attention, and you couldn't see the body behind the chimney if you only looked out the doorway to the roof.

I am not running from the law. I am simply a man like any other young bachelor out on a Friday night in his car, on his way to court his girl. Officer, I am just on my way to Kern Place to pick up my girl. I am not a fugitive. I am a bachelor.... Coaching helped. He pulled the rod into first, set his good hand firmly on the wheel, and inhaled. On to the hard part. The justice. He slipped into the traffic and felt safely inconspicuous until he realized he was going the wrong way and had to make a block to get himself headed back toward Mesa and northwest into the hills. It shook him for a moment, but then he told himself it was just as well that Sanchez last saw him heading toward the rail yard. He could picture Sanchez being questioned, pointing east.

Heading out of downtown, he tended his speed like a clergyman. In his rearview mirror, across the Rio Grande, stood the Sierra Juarez and the Mexican town lying at its skirt. The lighted bridge over the river thrust nightly into willing Juarez, where the streets glowed with gin joints and whorehouses for scum like Bliss and his boss. The city sprawled for miles but shrank at night to the eye: electrification ran like a hot finger up Avenida Juarez and onto Avenida 16th of Septiembre, but a few blocks off to either side the city had only sporadic gas lights; on the outskirts torches and bonfires struck points in the darkness that showed where people lived.

The moon rising over Mexico made him think of feathered serpents, rain, corn, a flint knife plunged into a virgin's breast. A burning bed. Then he thought of candles, candle-lit processions, the Mexicans crawling into their churches on their knees, moving like a glimmering snake up the side of Christo Rey. The roaring smelter at its foot. Lent, light flickering under images of the Virgin. Sissy with an ashen cross on her brow. Mexico seemed a good place to to hide.

A police car was parked outside a diner, and a patrolman stood with one foot hiked up on the running board while calling out to another who leaned out of the diner to hear. Maybe they were talking about an ice-cold soda pop. Hunter checked his speed, held his breath, drove on with the hair prickling on his nape. I am not a killer on the run. I am just a fellow going to court his girl, a bachelor....

No, he was a killer. He needed now to remind himself that he could do this, the coaching went both ways.

He was not going to court his girl.

And I'm not a bachelor, I'm a widower. And a father.

The reminder snapped a line of resistance, and images tumbled through his mind, a shoe box of snapshots. Pearl here, there. What time was it in California? Friday evening, about suppertime, he'd guess. Pearl and Mildred sitting at the oilcloth-covered table in the kitchen, maybe Pearl's favorite, meat loaf. She hated Ovaltine.

He felt sick. He'd called only this afternoon, but it now seemed so remote it might as well have been a week, a month, or a year. I miss you Daddy. I miss you too, sweetheart. Give Gramma my love. No, I don't need to talk to her again. (She would only tell him to come home. Well, he will, he will!)

If anyone ever harmed his daughter, he'd go nuts.

He drifted away, thinking about Pearl. Then, startled, he saw that the ghostly chauffeur who takes over when one ruminates had wheeled the Ford off Mesa and up Cincinnati Street and had brought it to heel behind a clanging trolley stopped at the end of the line in Kern Place. Now the Ford blocked the trolley from starting its return trip to town. At about this place just last night someone had hijacked a trolley and robbed the motorman, and now this one was glaring suspiciously out of the window at him. Hunter cursed himself and swung the car around the trolley and made the turn onto Kansas. After a moment, he reached the grotesque gate to the exclusive subdivision at the base of the hills: constructed of pipe and wrought iron and festooned with illuminated globes, the contraption looked like two Christmas trees with the triangular gable mounted between them and over the street. This was the point of no return. He checked his watch, and, much to his astonishment, it was already 8:30. Sissy would be fretting. As he passed beneath the gate, white light drenched his arms and lap, then dried instantly with the darkness as the car moved on, and he thought of baptism, river water, coming up from a dive, going under again.