said. "I think she'll fit right in."
I said nothing. The priest chanted and the rock-and-roll band sang about love.
"Did you have a nice chat when you took her around the site?"
"Curious, aren't you?"
"Yes." He leaned back in his chair. The hand holding his glass of gin was propped up on one knee; the empty hand on the other. He was waiting. A moth was battering its head against the glass chimney of the lantern. I dimmed the light and moved it to the other end of the table, but the insect circled, found the lamp again, and continued its efforts to die.
"I don't understand what she wants from me," I said finally.
"Didn't you ask her that?" Tony said.
"I did. She said she wanted to dig up the past and see what was under the rubble."
He nodded.
For a moment we listened to the slap of the cards, the low murmur of the students' conversation, and the soft whir of the cassette player rewinding. The priest had stopped his wailing and I could hear the scrape of the obsidian knife against the hide. I realized that I was holding the burning cigarette, but not smoking. I took a long drag and exhaled slowly.
"I don't understand what she's doing here," I said abruptly. "It's all past history. I left her. Why should she look to me for comfort now?"
"Is she looking to you for comfort?"
"She's looking for her mother. I'm nobody's mother."
"Then she'll figure that out," he said. "And then she'll go. Is that what you want?"
I shrugged, unable to say what I wanted. "That would be fine," I said. "Just fine."
"All right," Tony said. "Maybe that will happen."
We sat quietly for a while. The priest resumed his chanting, but the card game seemed to be winding down. Carlos had his arm around Maggie's shoulders and the two of them were laughing a great deal.
"She seems to have hit it off with Barbara," I said.
"True. And having another person on survey isn't a bad idea."
"I suppose." I frowned out at the darkness. "I wonder why she's so wary. I suppose that's Robert's doing."
"Give the woman a chance, Liz," he said. "Just give her a chance."
"She seems bright enough," I said grudgingly.
"That's something."
"All right," I said. "It was brave of her to come down here by herself. Is that what you're waiting for?"
He shrugged. "I'm not waiting for anything. I was just thinking that arriving unannounced seemed like the sort of thing that you would have done in her position."
"I suppose you're right," I admitted reluctantly.
"I think I am."
Carlos reached over to the tape player and the music clicked off. Carlos and Maggie headed off, arm in arm, on the path to the cenote, talking in loud whispers. John and Robin headed toward their huts. Tony poured himself one more drink. "You ever going to sleep?" he asked.
"Later," I said. "I'm not tired yet."
"It'll be all right," he said.
I shrugged and watched him walk away. I sat alone at the table.
In the dim lantern light, I could see only the outlines of the huts. The trilling of the insects in the monte seemed to match some internal rhythm, and I knew with a certainty born of experience that if I went to my hut now, I would not sleep. I would watch the shadows on the ceiling swaying as my hammock swayed, and wait until the morning came. I had learned, at times like this, to wait it out. Alcohol would put me out for a time, but when I drank myself to sleep I woke at five in the morning, feeling stony-eyed and wide awake. Sleeping pills would put me out—the university physician had prescribed some for my bouts with insomnia—but I did not like to resort to drugs. A pill would shut the lights out, as surely as a pillow forced down over my face, and there would be nothing I could do to chase the darkness away.
The darkness seemed to be pressing closer. The heat was oppressive. Diane's appearance made the past come back too vividly.
I had walked for miles in the two weeks before I ran away to New Mexico for the first time. Up and down the narrow streets, past fenced yards filled with weeds, past barking dogs and old men on porches and screaming children who always seemed to be running or fighting. Each morning, as soon as Robert drove away to the hospital, I would leave our small apartment. I always wore an oversized sun hat and