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Katie shrugged. "I guess I can donate my underwear to the farm, if I want to," she said.
"Is everything a contest, Katie?"
But she didn't answer him. She opened the bathroom door and left them with the pile of clothes and Danny's discarded running shoes. "I lost my sandals somewhere," she told them.
Outside, the skydiver was wearing just a towel around her waist and was drinking a beer. "Where'd you find the beer?" Danny asked her. He'd already had too much wine on an empty stomach.
Amy showed him the tub of ice. Rolf was sitting on the ground beside the tub, repeatedly dunking his face in the icy water. There was blood from his nose everywhere. He had a pretty good gash on one eyebrow, too--all from the head-butt. Danny took out two beers, wiping the necks of the bottles on his boxers. "That was a terrific idea, Rolf," Danny told the photographer. "Too bad she didn't land in the fire pit."
"Shit," Rolf said, standing up. He looked a little unsteady on his feet. "No one's watching the pig in the pit--we got distracted by all the heroics."
"Is there an opener?" Danny asked him.
"There's one in the kitchen somewhere," Rolf answered. The bearded painter who'd been hit with Amy's jab and hook was holding a
wet T-shirt to his face. He kept dipping the T-shirt in the icy water and then putting it back on his face.
"How's the roast pig coming along?" Danny asked him.
"Oh, Christ," the painter said; he hurried after Rolf in the direction of the smoking hole.
There was potato salad and a green salad and some kind of cold pasta on the dining-room table, together with the wine and the rest of the booze.
"Does any of this food look interesting to you?" Danny asked Joe. The writer hadn't been able to find an opener in the farmhouse kitchen, but he'd used the handle on one of the kitchen drawers to open both beers. He drank the first beer very fast; he was already halfway through the second.
"Where's any meat?" Joe asked.
"I guess it's still cooking," his dad said. "Let's go look at it."
Someone had turned on a car radio, so they could have music outdoors. Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" was playing. Rolf and the painter with the beard had managed to lift the bedsprings out of the fire pit; the painter with the beard had burned his hands, but Rolf had taken off his jeans and used them as pot holders. Rolf's nose and the cut on his eyebrow were still bleeding as he put his jeans back on. Some of the roast pig had fallen off the bedsprings into the fire, but there was plenty to eat and it was certainly cooked enough--it looked very well done, in fact.
"What is it?" Joe asked his dad.
"Roast pork--you like pork," Danny told the boy.
"Once upon a time it was a pig," Rolf explained to the two-year-old.
"A pretty small one, Joe," Danny told his son. "Not one of your big friends in the pen."
"Who killed it?" Joe asked. No one answered him, but Joe didn't notice--he was distracted. Lady Sky was standing over the blackened pig on the bedsprings; little Joe was clearly in awe of her, as if he expected her to take flight again and fly away.
"Lady Sky!" the boy said. Amy smiled at him. "Are you an angel?" Joe asked her. (She was beginning to look like one, to Danny.)
"Well, sometimes," Lady Sky said. She was distracted, too. A car was turning in to the long driveway of the pig farm--probably the little plane's pilot and copilot, Danny was thinking. Amy took another look at the roast pig on the bedsprings. "But there are other times when I'm just a vegetarian," she said to Joe. "Like today."
Merle Haggard was singing "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" on the car radio; probably someone had changed the station. Out on the lawn, Katie had been dancing by herself--or with her glass of wine--but she stopped now. Everyone was curious about the pilot and the copilot, if only to see what would happen when they arrived. Amy walked over to the car before the two men could get out.
"Fuck you, Georgie--fuck you, Pete," the skydiver greeted them.
"We were too high up to see the pigs, Amy--we couldn't see them when you jumped," one of the men told her; he handed her some clothes.
"Fuck you, Pete," Amy told him again. She took off her towel and threw it at him.
"Calm down, Amy," the other man said. "The guys on the farm should have told us there were pigs."
"Yeah, well--I made that point to them, Georgie," the skydiver told him.
Georgie and Pete were surveying the artists in the pig-roast crowd. They must have noticed that Rolf was bleeding, and the painter with the beard still held a wet T-shirt to his face; the pilot and copilot surely knew this was Amy's work.
