In his imperfect memory, the truck had shuddered past with a load of white-faced cattle looking out between the slats. But how could he have seen them? He was concentrating on keeping the little Camaro on the road; he must have observed the cattle truck at some other point in that glorious, wide-open morning. The vast alkaline sky with its translucent towers of cloud, the purple-tinged pastures stretching on either side of the highway. Mirabella lifted her head from his lap and raucously asked, “Where do you get all that stuff? I’d have thought you’d be pumped out by now.” Her face was shining with sweat from the close quarters she had been working in. She sat up, and with a thumb and finger wiped the corners of her mouth. Batsy. She settled back, leaning her skull on the padded headrest. She looked tired and not as young as he had thought. Her profile against the hurtling lilac desert showed a double chin, and a ripple of collagen around the cheekbone.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “You excite me.”

“I’ll say. You should get a wife.”

“I have one, thanks.”

He was getting a headache, where the transformative, clarifying icicle had entered. When they came to the beautiful sight Mirabella had promised—a huge blue lake, there in the middle of the desert, created by a federally financed dam—it seemed part of his headache, another unnatural intervention, with speedboats and a tacky marina. Owen later wondered if she in fact was a hooker who had been primed by pals of his at the conference to say she was a childhood fan of DigitEyes. But he couldn’t believe it, she seemed too computer-savvy, and she charged nothing for the sexual services, though she did say he owed her six hundred dollars for the cocaine.

xii. Village Sex—VI