Marie walked looking at Joseph, looking away from him and then back at him, her lips moving but not speaking, her eyes fluttering, a little neck muscle under her chin like a wire, a little nerve in her brow ticking. She passed the candy bag from one hand to the other. She stepped up a curb, leaned back somehow, gestured, said something to restore balance, and dropped the bag.
"For Christ's sake." Joseph snatched up the bag. "Look what you've done! Clumsy!"
"I should have broken my ankle," she said, "I sup-pose."
"These were the best skulls; both of them smashed; I wanted to save them for friends up home."
"I'm sorry," she said, vaguely.
"For God's sake, oh, damn it to hell." He scowled into the bag. "I might not find any more good as these. Oh, I don't know, I give up!"
The wind blew and they were alone in the street, he staring down into the shattered debris in the bag, she with the street shadows all around her, sun on the other side of the street, nobody about, and the world far away, the two of them alone, two thousand miles from anywhere, on a street in a false town behind which was nothing and around which was nothing but blank desert and circled hawks. On top the State Opera House, a block down, the golden Greek statues stood sun-bright and high, and in a beer place a shouting phonograph cried AY, MARIMBA … corazon … and all kinds of alien words which the wind stirred away.
Joseph twisted the bag shut, stuck it furiously in his pocket.
They walked back to the two-thirty lunch at the hotel.
He sat at the table with Marie, sipping Albondigas soup from his moving spoon, silently. Twice she commented cheerfully upon the wall murals and he looked at her steadily and sipped. The bag of cracked skulls lay on the table….
"Senora …"
The soup plates were cleared by a brown hand. A large plate of enchiladas was set down.
Marie looked at the plate.
There were sixteen enchiladas.
She put her fork and knife out to take one and stopped. She put her fork and knife down at each side of her plate. She glanced at the walls and then at her husband and then at the sixteen enchiladas.
Sixteen. One by one. A long row of them, crowded together.
She counted them.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
Joseph took one on his plate and ate it.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
She put her hands on her lap.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. She finished counting.
"I'm not hungry," she said.
