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Loudspeakers played upbeat jazz or orchestral renditions of old tunes Valentine couldn't quite categorize but which fell under the penumbra of rock-and-roll.
He found the food market using his nose. A lively trade from grill and fish vendors added to the aromas of cut melons, fresh berries, and tomatoes. At another stall fryers bubbled, turning everything from bread paste to sliced potatoes into hot, greasy delight, ready for salting.
His stomach growled.
He placed his hand on a pile of ice at the edge of an ice-filled bin holding two gigantic Mississippi catfish, resting on a semicircular counter, and felt the wonder of the wet cold.
"Mind! Mind!" yelled the woman behind the bins of freshwater food. "You buy? No? Shove off!"
Valentine settled on buying a five-gallon plastic jug full of water and some "wheat mix for cereals." Then he found a bottle labeled aspirin-it also smelled like it.
"You just bought that, son," the trucker-cap-wearing druggist said. He paid, glad that Memphis scrip was good in here.
Valentine sought out some food. The rotisserie chickens were reasonably priced and looked fresh-he had to buy a stick for them to put it on, and he topped his purchases off with a sugar-frosted funnel cake. He ate half of the last as he wandered, getting a feel for the layout of the Pyramid-or Midway, as the locals seemed to call it.
An area labeled the Arena seemed to be the center of activity; he heard a woman's voice warbling through a door as a pair of sandal-wearing rivermen exited. There were also two huge convention-center spaces, filled with wooden partitions turning the areas into a maze of tiny bars, tattoo parlors, and what he imagined were brothels or sex shows. Guards stood in front of the elevators, checking credentials and searching those waiting in line for a lift. Valentine guessed that Moyo's offices were somewhere upstairs.
Few visitors seemed to be around at this time of day; Valentine counted at least one employee for every tourist. Red-jacketed security supervisors ordered around men in black overalls with tight-fitting helmets; the footsoldiers bore slung assault rifles and shotguns, but twirled less-lethal-looking batons as they walked in pairs around the concourses, grazing from the food vendor stalls or being passed a lit cigarette by a marketer. Beefy old women pushed buckets and wheeled trash bins everywhere, their gray bandannas wet with sweat and PYRAMID POWER! buttons pinned to their sagging bosoms.
Valentine had done enough sightseeing and returned to the line of houseboats. His Dallas neighbor had disappeared. He hurried back to his small, rented boat, roasted chicken in one hand, water in the other. He set down the water jug and unlocked the cabin.
Duvalier came into the sunshine and reclined on the vinyl cushions-spiderwebbed with breaks exposing white stuffing threads-and drank almost her entire oversized canteen of water. Valentine mixed her up some of the cereal (IDEAL FOR CHILDREN AND SENIORS-ADVANCED NUTRITION ! the label read) from the bag, and she ate a few bites with her field spoon.
"Gaw," she said, and tossed the rest to the Mississippi fishes. She leaned against the side of the boat and closed her eyes. He gave her two tablets of aspirin and she gulped them down, then gave him her cup to refill.
"Chicken?" Valentine asked
"You can have it. You get anywhere with this Moyo guy?"
"Haven't met him yet." He felt helpless against the heat coming up through her skin. "How are you feeling?"
"Weird dreams. Really weird dreams. Thought I was running in Kansas with a cop chasing me. He had giant bare feet with eyes in the toes. I know I'm awake now because you don't have flames coming out of your ears."
"I'm glad you're sensible. You were barking out profanity an hour ago."
"Give me a day or two. I'll be back up to strength-or I'll be ... either way, you'll be on your way."
* * * *
She slept, still sweating like a horse fresh from the track, in tiny doses all that night, waking Valentine now and then with brief cries. Not knowing what else to do, he stripped her and dabbed the sweat off her body. To add infestation to injury, both of them broke out in flea bites.
A firework or two went off outside, seemingly timed for the moments when she was sleeping. Forbes Abernathy made a noisy return to his boat about two A.M. with someone who communicated mostly in giggles.
Cotswald arrived the next day, dressed in a straw yellow linen suit. Valentine thought he had a ponderous elegance to him, but he still puffed and wheezed.
"Asthma," Cotswald explained. "Speaking of miseries, how's your bodyguard?"
"A little better," Valentine lied. Duvalier had visibly thinned as the fever wrung the water from her. Valentine, feeling almost as daring as the night he snuck into the general's Nebraska headquarters, had stolen a plastic bag full of ice from the fish vendor when her back was turned and used it to make a compress for her head. She now slept, perhaps a little more soundly thanks to ice and aspirin, in the flea-infested cabin.
He left her a note. Not knowing what the night might bring, he didn't lock her in the cabin. The only weapon he dared take was his little multiknife.
Cotswald puffed up past the stone pharaoh and into the cool of the Pyramid. The sun still seemed high, but the evening throngs were already milling around on the inside. The music played louder and livelier, and attraction barkers brayed. Rivermen in an assortment of outfits and assorted KZ thrill-seekers traveled in mutually exclusive clusters.
Women dressed so as to present decolletage, stomach, buttocks, and legs to advantage wandered through the crowd, selling shots of licorice-smelling alcohol called Mississippi Mud, or "party bead" necklaces of candy, aphrodisiacs, and Alka-Seltzers on a single convenient string, or hot pink Moyo-roses that could be presented to any working girl in tonight's theme costume-(Valentine overheard that it was a cheerleader outfit)-for a free tumble.
"Not that you really need one," a busty pimpette in a conglomeration of zippers and patent leather insisted to a young buck in a Mississippi Honor Guard uniform.
