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Show 100 They go back inside, to the Mediterranean Piazza, for lunch. Jewel has mixed fruit; Hall has a crabmeat salad. Hunt remembers the spectral lady, Victoria Speer, Jris_ one trip to Las Vegas, decimating her shrimp. Hall tells Jewel about his work in the computer room, though he doesn't describe, specifically, his tasks. "I like your hair that way," he tells her. "It's simple. Natural." "Did you intend to come here?" Jewel asks. "When you left?" "I could rent a car," Hall says. "Ever seen Lake Mead?" "Is it 'self-contained' too?" Jewel laughs. "I'd like to see something that wasn't bloody 'self-contained.'" Hunt's skin, against the headboard of the motel bed, feels itchy. Hall sees Jewel's amazing eyes. They drive to Lake Mead, to a marina, and Hall rents a boat. Along their route, on the Henderson highway, Jewel tells Hunt ab.out the recent months at her flower shop. "I can't keep the mums!" she says. All the white and yellow and even copper-colored mums have been dying on her. And in the sixteen-foot sailboat, now, heading out to the center of the bay, she throws her head back, amber hair furling around the mast, seizes the cloudless sky in a single vision and says, "Shit!" "Coming about," Hall warns her. He feels badly about his own intrusion, but he needs to tack. "Are you planning to drown me?" Jewel asks. "Is this An American Tragedy? Does this come with the champaign? And the orchids? And the chips?" Hall takes a breath, equal to the horizon, and tells her, "This entire lake is a construction." / Jewel smiles. Somewhere, she's found a humor in Hall, and she seems to |