you?' 'No, it's in the room in New Orleans,' I said. 'Damn,' She said. 'And yours?' 'I have mine.' 'Well, hell, we can get mine,' I said. 'We could check out and go to the airport and take the first plane to anyplace.' She flashed her big round brown eyes on me for so long I reached out to steady the wheel.
It was just before dark when we were barreling through the narrow streets of the French quarter, and she was telling the driver over the phone in the car to wake up. We got out of the car, mussed-up, tired, hungry, with a bunch of tacky paper bags full of junk, and started into the flagstone carriageway of the little hotel. She turned around before we got to the desk. 'You wanna do it?' she said. 'You bet I want to do it,' I said. I looked at her for a second, her white face, the pure fear in her eyes. I wanted to say what are we running from? Why does it have to be like this? Tell me you love me, goddamn it, Lisa. Let's get it all out! 'Lots of phone messages for you all,' said the lady at the desk. I wanted to say all that and more to her, but I didn't. I knew I'd settle for it on any terms she laid down. 'Go in there, get your passport,' she whispered. Her fingers were actually biting in my flesh of my arm. 'I'll wait for you in the car. Come right back out.' 'And company too for you all.' said the woman. She craned her neck to look through the glass doors into the yard. 'Two gentlemen still waiting for you all. Been waiting all day.' Lisa spun around and glared through the doors. Richard, that tall Master of Postulants, was standing there in the little garden watching us with his back to the doors of the cottage. And Scott, the unforgettable Trainer of Trainers, was just getting up and crushing out his cigarette.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
28 -- Elliott
The Walls of Jericho
They were both dressed in dark suits, rather somber and immaculate, and they greeted us very courteously, if not downright cheerfully, as we crossed the yard and went into the cottage and turned on the lights. Everything was orderly and cool and normal-seeming except that they had been in the cottage, obviously, and the rooms were still full of cigarette smell. There was something perfectly sinister about it, about them being here at all. Richard, bushy browed and smiling, looked enormous, which to be more specific means he was still a couple of inches taller than me. Scott, a shorter and much more graceful man, looked equally as physically powerful under the Madison Avenue drag. I realized I was sizing them up. Lisa was really shaking now. And she did this very peculiar thing of walking all the way across the bedroom and standing against the wall. This was something like a hysterical action. And I realized I was really rattled myself as I nodded to them both and took the sack of junk we had with us into the other room. Actually I wanted to see if there was anyone in the bath or the kitchen. There was not. Scott, who was rather fantastic looking in the slim-fitting black suit, came slowly into the kitchen -- all of their movements and gestures were calculated to put somebody at ease, it seemed -- and told me they would like to speak to Lisa alone. There was an obvious anguish in his face. He looked at me and I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking, that the last time he'd seen me we'd been playing master and slave for an audience of twenty novice trainers in his class. I did not really want to think of that at this moment. But I could feel it, like somebody had just opened the oven door and the oven was on full blast. He was one of those men who looks all the more like an animal when he gets dressed up. 'We just have to talk to her for a little while alone,' he said in a low, almost purring chest voice. 'Well, sure, of course,' I said.
He put his left hand on my neck and gave it a soft pressure, and he smiled, a flash of agreeable dark eyes and white teeth, and went back into the other room. I went out of