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Show 91 he's ever made: packing two suitcases, vanishing. Somehow, he knows, he has done a terrible thing, betrayed Jewel. Or has a terrible thing been done to him? His head is splitting. He can barely stand. Something, frighteningly, has shifted. On the bus, Hall remembers saying to a fifteen-year-old girl once, in Florida, when the image of her halter, slipped nearly from her shoulders had shaken him: "I lost my balance." So Hall leaves Toledo on a bus. He gets off the bus in Denver, buys a Lotus, totals the Lotus in Grand Junction, Colorado, rents a Citation and drives it to Las Vegas. Jewel has no idea where Hall has gone. He may be in Toledo. It is all, Hall feels, like some sort of structural accident: a loose thread in the industrial carpet triggering a fall down stairs. Hunt leans against the headboard of his Benton Harbor motel bed. History, he thinks. In the lot quadrangle, outside, everything is quiet, except the light. It seems to move as it enters, though Hunt knows, in fact, it doesn't. Leah no longer holds Hunt's knee. She has shifted onto her side, curled slightly. Why is Hunt awake? You make The World up half the time in your head, Leah has said. More than once. So is Hunt making himself up by imagining Hall? He smiles. And what about Jewel? What happens to Hall and Jewel in Las Vegas? Hunt imagines Hall loving the glass! He imagines Hall's migrains fading and Hall back in equilibrium. Hunt imagines Hall feeling separation from Jewel. Still, what can he do? Hall has taken a job as a specialized security person, working the monitor room high above a strip casino's chandeliers and |
