“I’d like to get a look in that purse. I bet she’s on drugs.”

“Makeup,” Alice says confidently.

“Could be,” Taylor concedes. “She has to fix herself up so much from crying. She seems nervous ever since we left Las Vegas. Maybe she’s depressed that things didn’t pan out at the Delta Queen.”

“Well, she can’t be that depressed,” Alice points out. “She hasn’t quit using hair spray yet.”

“No, she hasn’t. I think we’ve got our own personal Eco-Barbie hole in the ozone following us across Nevada. We’d better look out where we park it.”

Behind Gundi’s bed are tall windows standing open to let in the clear yellow scent of creosote bushes and whatever bird or long-legged animal might be passing by. Gundi props her head on one elbow. Lit from behind, her hair is like golden mosquito netting. To distract himself, Jax imagines a country where people sleep under such a thing, to protect themselves from tiny golden mosquitoes carrying a blissful golden strain of malaria. He sings with his eyes closed.

She strokes the center of his chest. “You have a problem, don’t you?”

“I do.” Jax opens his eyes briefly, then closes them again.

“Tell me.”

“Do you want to know everybody’s problems as much as you want to know mine?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “I’m selective. You have interesting problems. Bill the mailman has hives.” She waits. “Well?”

“My situation here is something like being Catholic, which I was at one time. It takes a lot of the fun out of the moment of sin when you know you’re going to have to confess it later.”

Gundi stares. “What we have been doing all week you have to confess to a priest?”

“No. To Taylor.”

Gundi draws the sheet up to her shoulders. “Why?”

“Because I can’t lie to her.”

“You think she tells you everything?”

“She tells me everything. Believe me.”

Gundi’s eyes grow wider still. “You have to tell her the whole thing? Details?”

“Just the general plot line, I think. Boy meets girl in Japanese tub, et cetera.”

Gundi sits up to light a cigarette. She shakes out the match with annoyance, inhales, and crosses her arms over her sarong of white sheet. “Well, maybe she won’t ask.”

“Yes, by George, that’s it. Next time she asks me what I’ve been up to, this will be one of the tiny little boring things I’ll just leave out: Rucker broke his E string during rehearsal, naturally she doesn’t want to hear about that, and I mopped the bathroom floor, I had blistering sex with Gundi, I mopped the bathroom floor again.”

“A lot of mopping you have been doing.”

“Jax mops till he drops.” Flat on his back, arms at his sides, he looks as if he may not float even on a mattress.

“Who does it hurt if you don’t tell her?”

He sits up, facing Gundi. “Then I know something she doesn’t. I’ve got this robin’s egg in my hand. Sky blue, you see it?” He cups his hand and they both look at it and Gundi can see the blue egg plainly.

“Do I give it to her, or do I not?” Jax asks, watching his hand. “Maybe she’ll cook it, maybe she will throw it at me, who knows?” He moves his hand carefully behind his back, palm upward, so slowly she can see the ropes of tendon in his wrist roll over one another.

“So I keep it in my hand, right here. And every day when I talk to Taylor, and when I lie in bed with Taylor, it’s here in my hand, and I’m thinking, If I forget for one minute then we’ll roll over on this thing, uh-oh, big mess. Until that happens, I’m holding it and I can feel the shell of it as thin as the shell on your teeth. I’m choosing what Taylor knows and what she doesn’t. I have the power. I will be the nervous yet powerful guy in the know, and she will be the fool.”

They both watch the trail of smoke from Gundi’s cigarette.

It broadens into the room like a genie.

“And if she’s a fool,” Jax says, “then how can I worship the ground she walks on?”

“Which at the moment you are doing?”

“Which at the moment I am doing. I’m being a bad boy, but bad boys can still confess and beg for penance.”

Gundi blows smoke, dispersing the apparition. “You talk about Taylor as if she is the Notre Dame Cathedral.”

“She is. And the Statue of Liberty and Abbey Road and the best burrito of your life. Didn’t you know?”