my face was frozen. "Just a feeling."
He gave me a strange look. John did not like statements based on vague feelings. "I don't really have enough information to do a reconstruction drawing. I was just fooling around a bit."
"Nothing wrong with that," I said. "Nothing wrong with using your imagination."
An awkward pause. John held the sketchbook as if he did not know what to do with it and frowned at me. Finally Robin leaned over to him and gently took it, asking if she could look. Tony got up to light the lantern and pour me another cup of tea. And the conversation went on.
I sat at the edge of the circle of light, listening and watching the three of them. John relaxed again, after a moment. They were comfortable together: Tony and Robin joked about studying pots; John's arm rested lightly on the back of Robin's chair; now and then, she smiled at him or touched his hand lightly. I watched them, much as I watched shades of the past, an observer but not a participant. But somehow, I could not leave.
Much later, Robin and John left the circle of light, walking hand in hand toward the cenote. Tony poured me another glass of aguardiente. Sitting together in the circle of lantern light, watching the moths circle and tasting the bite of the aguardiente at the back of my throat, it seemed that there was something new between Tony and me, or else something very old that was stirring once again. Something was shifting uneasily beneath the surface.
I had another glass of aguardiente, leaned back, and closed my eyes against the lantern light. The brown liquor comforted me, slowing the beating of my heart, blurring the cries of insects and birds in the monte.
Tony's lawn chair creaked as he leaned forward to take his pipe from the crate. I heard the rustle of his tobacco pouch as he began the endless process of packing the pipe with tobacco and lighting it. The sweet scent of unburned tobacco hung in the warm air. I heard the scratch of a wooden match and smelled the sulfur when it caught, then the first smoke of the tobacco. Tony's voice was as rough and warm as a block of granite in the sun. "I've been drinking too much lately," he said softly. "I wanted to let you know that I'm cutting back."
I opened my eyes. The glass at his elbow was empty and his hands were busy with his pipe. I had noticed that he had not been sharing the aguardiente, but had thought little of it.
He glanced at me. "I know that you've been worried about it, about my drinking. It just got to be a habit after Hilde died."
I nodded, not knowing what to say. "I guessed that."
"It's a habit I'm breaking. I wanted to let you know that."
"Good."
His pipe had gone out and he began poking in the bowl with a burned-out wooden match. He was avoiding my eyes and I knew that he was edging around a difficult topic.
I waited for a moment, then asked, "What is it, Tony?"
"Diane told me that you asked her to leave," he said abruptly.
"That's so." I leaned back in my chair, feigning a relaxation I did not feel.
"Why?"
"It doesn't much matter, does it? She refuses to go."
He sat on the edge of the chair, his hands clasped before him, drooping between his knees. Behind him, the open doorway was a blaze of light. He stared down at his hands. "Diane said that the curandera told you to send her away."
"Does that sound like something I would do? Listen to the advice of a Mayan shaman?" I shook my head.
"Then why do you want her to go?"
"I thought she might want to see something of the Yucatan besides one little dig. Just a suggestion."
"She was pretty upset. She seemed to think that you really wanted her to go."
I shrugged angrily. "Yes, there are times that I would like her to go. She seems to expect something from me that I can't give her." I rubbed my hand across my forehead, wishing I could clear away the liquor and the fever and think straight. "She's trying to learn who she is and she seems to think I can tell her. I can't tell her anything."
"I think that sending Diane away would be a mistake," Tony said quietly. "I think that you want to run from a situation that you're afraid you can't handle. You're afraid