Page 60 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #7

(Los Polaz continued from page 36 )
And Daniel Windslake, of course, was using the time in the way he preferred: giving some special tuition to the confessor’s daughter, upstairs in the Inner Sanctum. Fifteen years old, the officer told me. Barely graduated Middle School, just how he liked them. He’d not got all her clothes off yet, so that was something. He was probably in the midst of his speech about gratitude, letting her stroke his gun collection, perhaps, when the guys in black burst in through the fire exit.
I pick my way through to look down over the pools, but they’re empty today, only the splash
of white from the falls breaking the still green. Too early for the local boys. They’ll be here once school’s out. I sit for a while on a bench instead, blue-dyed concrete splattered with orange lichen. There’s an empty birdcage on a sawn-off column right in front of me, door sagging open on the hinges, and huge palms all around, flat leaves as big as tablecloths. Tiny, shocking-pink flowers stud the forest floor. The birds have quietened since I came close, but one, with this two-note call like a question, just keeps on singing.
Cathy is staring at me now, waiting for more, cob still hanging mid-air. The Cotija has all melted away, a creamy slick amidst the cooling char and yellow.
They’ll be wondering where I am by now. Roger will have finished his breakfast eggs, sunk his grainy coffee, and grown sick of Peter’s barbs about his table manners. Cathy will be tapping thin fingers on a glass of passion fruit juice, want- ing to get on to the next attraction: the waterfalls of Tamasopo, or Sótano de las Golondrinas. Even Heather will be tiring of the hypnotic, buzzing wings of that hummingbird, ready to get on and see more. But I won’t be joining them. I have unfinished business here. There is more for me to see.
“It’s not good to be alone,” she says, when it’s clear I’m not going to offer anything else. “I should know. I’ve been alone so long, sometimes I won- der if my reflection might leave me.”
She sinks her incisors into the corn, making but- tered juice spurt. I expect her to smile, but she doesn’t. I’ve met all kinds of loneliness, being on the run this long.
I retrace my steps and then walk around the loop, past the Bathtub Shaped Like An Eye, past a stand of fluid buttresses that hold up nothing at all,
and past a gaggle of schoolgirls on the steps of The House Of The Flamingos. More folk appear
The jungle is full of birds, and the light is different from yesterday, cushioned by a mist that still hangs greedily around the treetops. Once wasn’t enough: the garden’s pulled me back. By now,
the others will be at breakfast at the Xilitla bunk- house , out on that terrace again; Roger tipping down huevos rancheros like he’s run a marathon since his last meal, not slumped eight hours in a dead-springed bed.
as I get closer to the entrance, bemused by their first taste of the garden. I back away, not ready to share it yet, all the way back for one last look at the dizzying steps of The House With Three Sto- ries That Might Be Five.
The gates of Las Pozas are only just opening, so I should have the run of the place a while before the first dazzled tourists wander in. I’m over the Fleur de Lys Bridge–concrete grainy with verdant moss–and half way down to the waterfalls be- fore the sunlight starts to break through. It plays around the steps and arches of the Gate Of St Peter & St Paul.
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And then, from nowhere, there he is. On the cen- tral platform, looking out over the forest. Joe. My Joe, in a sandy-coloured linen coat I don’t rec- ognise, creased around the hem as if he’s driven through the night.
“Come and see,” he calls. Sound travels strangely in this place, so his voice is clear across the space,