“I know,” says Henry. “Flat, ain’t it.” Glancing toward Myra, he sees her going to the door to greet van Hoss’s latest girlfriend, still outside in the car repainting her face with the aid of a rearview mirror. Henry opens the bottle of Alka-Seltzer tablets and empties the entire contents into the punch. A jubilant fizzing begins at once in the murky depths of the bowl. He adds a chunk of dry ice. Billows of vapor rise whirling in the air.

“Lightcap, my friend, my very best friend, you’re a scoundrel.” Van Hoss draws a pint of bourbon from his pocket, offers the bottle. “Drink this, Henry, and let’s have a look at this palacio of yours.”

Henry drinks, returns the bottle, wiping his mouth on back of hand. “First I want to meet your new lady there.”

The girl approaches the table, staring with exaggerated awe at Myra’s huge paintings hung on the walls, then at the red-hot stove in the center of the gallery, then at the paintings again. She wears a fur coat, black cocktail dress, high heels; a mane of golden hair spills across her shoulders. She stares boldly at Henry and he remembers her instantly, a painful twinge of recognition. The yellow-haired chickadee….

“You like Camus?” he says.

“I love him.” Her eyes glow. “How did you know that?”

“We must talk.”

“How did you know?”

Henry smiles wisely. “I’m a philosopher too.”

Myra butts in, bringing new arrivals to the punch bowl: art students, models, dancers, a couple of young art-history professors—her crowd. Politely they taste the champagne, toast her new studio, before moving on to the warm red wine displayed on the table, the keg of beer in the corner.

And now more guests come crowding in as the winter sun goes down, bringing with them the smell of fresh cold air and windblown dust. Dodging his primary responsibilities as host, Henry takes van Hoss on a tour of the property, out the back door and into the garden.

You said her name is Melissa? That’s right. And she lives in Papaya Hall? I didn’t say, Henry, but that’s a good guess; who’d you bury here? El cabrito. They kneel to touch the raw mound. Slightly warm, a little heat seeping through, the goat should be ready. She’s only a sophomore, Henry, much too young and innocent for the likes of a dog like you; and besides, you’re a married man. I’m married but I ain’t dead. Henry, Henry, you shock me; you disappoint me; you’re in for a life of trouble, young man. I like trouble. Yes you do, Henry, and you’ll get it; but in the meantime—. Yeah? Willy’s big paw squeezes his shoulder—You’ll have to wait your turn.

They take shelter from the wind in the doorway of the farthest room, drawing out the bottle again. Van Hoss throws the cap away. They watch the yellow grit of El Culito swirl in moaning minitornados through the dead trees. Kill it. You kill it. Okay. Henry kills it, tossing the bottle away, and leads his guest back to the studio-gallery by way of the boarded-up, dungeonlike rooms of the north wing, stumbling over loose boards, old bottles, bound stacks of antique magazines—Woman’s Home Companion, Arizona Highways, Ladies’ Home Journal, The New Mexico Stockman.