AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When eyes remained on him a moment more, he said, “That means now!”
FOUR
Court Gentry sat alone at the little table on the balcony of his rented flat in Panajachel, nursing a beer and looking out over the rooftops in the direction of the lake. He didn’t have a view of the water from here, but he didn’t care because he wasn’t looking at anything. His mind was lost in thought, and his eyes just gazed vacantly as distant thunder rumbled softly in the sunny afternoon sky.
He heard the main door to the flat open and someone enter, but he didn’t stand, and he didn’t reach for the pistol in his waistband. He knew Zoya from the sound and cadence of her footfalls, so he just sat there, his face all but expressionless.
Eventually she stepped out onto the balcony, kissed him on the cheek, then looked out at the buildings and the surrounding hills for a moment. She sat down across from him and slid her little daypack off her shoulder.
Zoya pulled out a light green sundress as she let her bag drop to the ground. “What do you think?”
Court glanced at it, then looked her in the eyes. “That’s a sundress, all right.”
She cocked her head, sensing something, but she said nothing.
He took a sip of his Gallo beer and put it back on the table in front of him.
“Drinking at one thirty? That’s not like you. That’s like me.”
“Safer than the water.”
“You’re right,” she replied, and then she went back inside, headed to the kitchen, and retrieved a Gallo for herself. She was back at the table in thirty seconds.
“Anything else happen while you were out?” he asked, his voice emotionless.
She looked him in the eyes for a moment, then said, “There was a band playing in a bar down on Rancho Grande, you could hear the music from the street. It was that song by that group you like…the old one.”
Court said nothing.
She remembered. “ ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’ ”
“CCR.”
“Right. But these guys were playing it really fast, and singing it in Spanish. It was beautiful, actually.” When he made no comment, she added, “You would have loved it.”
“That and a sundress? Quite an eventful afternoon.”
A staring contest lasted twenty seconds.
A rooster crowed, and a poorly tuned bus engine backfired in the street below. Passing merchants hawked their wares loudly in the distance. A propane vendor in a truck spoke through a microphone, his voice amplified through a large speaker on the roof. “Zeta Gas! Zeta Gas!”
“What’s going on?” she finally asked.
“You tell me.”
Zoya slowly turned away from him and looked out over the street.
“You tell me…” Court repeated, then added, “while you are looking me in the face.”
Her eyes flitted back over to his. “Something…something else happened.”
“Huh,” he muttered, taking another sip of his beer. “Obviously something less important than buying a dress or hearing a cover band butcher a classic, or else you would have led with it.”
Zoya stiffened, fixed her gaze on his. “I’m not loving your tone right now.”
“What happened today?”
She looked away. “It sounds like you somehow already know what happened.” When he did not reply, she spoke with a touch of outrage in her voice, but it sounded forced. She wasn’t mad; she was defensive. “Have you been spying on me?”
