He heard Anne say, "Are you worried about me?"

Robert turned to see her in the bedroom doorway in her little bra and panties. He said, "Not with all you have at stake. There ain't any way you'll blow it. But you know John Rau could come at you again, pull that Columbo shit. You think you're off the hook, he comes back and says, `Oh, by the way, you not sleeping with that colored fella, are you?' "

She came toward Robert in her undies. "I'll tell him oh, once in a while, to change my luck. Shall we?"

"Baby, just another few minutes. Dennis is out there finishing his act."

"I thought you two broke up."

"I haven't seen him except on TV, but we talked on the phone. Gonna get together tomorrow. Baby, come on watch this with me, Dennis gonna light himself on fire and dive off the ladder." He looked out at the show again and said, "He's doing it, climbing up the ladder with his cape on." Anne came to him and he put his arm around her shoulders and felt her skin. He said, "You gonna miss me, you know it? Gonna miss the fun." He said, "Look, see him up there? The cape's been soaked in high-test gasoline. He wears two pair of black cotton warm-ups underneath, a hood on the sweatshirt he pulls closed with the string. He went in the pool a minute ago to get the warm-ups soppin', wet as they can get. I think it's his only protection."

"He lights himself?"

"Charlie lights him. They run a line from a battery up there to a squib, a baggie with black powder in it. Charlie pushes the switch and Dennis lights up, becomes a human torch. I said to Charlie, `Is this symbolic? He's the fiery cross of the Klan, he hits the water and puts it out, extinguishes racism?' Charlie says, `He just calls it the fire dive.' " Robert smiled with his white teeth.

They watched Dennis, at the forty-foot level, become a ball of fire and he stood there on the perch not moving, not even seen but he was there, inside the flames, and Robert yelled from the balcony,

"Jump!" And Dennis did a straight dive into the pool.

Robert said, "Man."

Anne said, "Big fucking deal."

Dennis walked around the rim of the tank in sixty pounds of wet clothes looking for Loretta in the crowd, the young girls screaming, but didn't see her. Loretta hadn't been here last night, either.

Billy Darwin, bent over and walking with a cane, Carla helping him, came around behind the tank where Dennis was getting out of the wet warm-ups and the wet suit he wore underneath. Darwin didn't mention his injury. He told Dennis that fire dive was a show-stopper and asked if he could do it from the top perch. Dennis said he wouldn't want to go in headfirst from eighty feet with all that weight on him, it was too steep. He said he'd jump lit up, "But how would you announce it, as the death-defying fire jump?" Billy Darwin said, "Going off the top's tricky, but you sure get a rush, don't you?" Carla didn't say anything about the fire dive. She said, "You looked cute on TV, in your uniform." Meaning when Diane and her crew caught him in the Union camp Sunday.

It was right after the shooting and he had come back through the woods with Robert, Dennis trying to decide if he should go tell Loretta what happened or wait till she heard about it, and there was the video camera in his face. All Diane asked him about was the reenactment: if he had fun, if he took it seriously, if he thought he'd ever do it again. Robert stood watching and John Rau, coming into the camp, had looked over at them. Dennis answered yes to all the questions, not having time to think with all he had on his mind. After the interview Diane said, "Are you ready to talk to me yet?" Meaning the Floyd Showers business. "Remember you said you would." He remembered it wishing he'd never told her he was on the ladder that night-Diane using her soft eyes on him, asking if he wanted to go to Memphis. Once she found out Arlen was dead… Robert saved him, Robert saying, "Come on, man, we gotta go," and Dennis told her he'd be in touch. In the car Robert said, "You notice John Rau was let out of their prison? He saw us, too, knows we weren't someplace else." That was Sunday, the business with Diane.

Billy Darwin and Carla left and Charlie said the TV lady was here tonight, without her crew. "I imagine you'd like to see her. She said to tell you she's in the bar. But let me mention, Vernice's fixing a late supper for you. She's hoping you come right home after this. You don't, you'll miss a fine spread and Vernice'll be hurt, but what do you care?"

Dennis was dressed now in his jeans and a work shirt. He said, "Wait for me. I have to go up and unhook the squib wire." Charlie said he'd be in the bar and Dennis said, "But Diane's in there."

"You're a big boy," Charlie said. "You don't want to talk to her, you say you have to go home and eat."

Dennis went up the ladder to the forty-foot perch, unhooked the wire and dropped it. He stepped around to the other side of the ladder to go down, and saw the figure standing out on the lawn watching him. No one else around. He knew without seeing her face it was Loretta.

In a short black skirt and some kind of lightcolored blouse. She said, "I couldn't come yesterday, I was at the funeral parlor."

"I looked for you."

"I wanted to but-you know, there things have to be done."

He said, "Do you have a car?" and saw her smile because she had asked him that.

"I do now. I have two, but don't know where one of 'em is."

"Can we go somewhere?"

"I won't take you home. There's still too much of Arlen in the house." She said, "Did you want to get something to eat," her voice slowing down, "or go to a bar, or a motel?"

"I know where we can go," Dennis said, took Loretta into the hotel where they got a suite for one night and had a wonderful time.

They did. They turned on music and took their clothes off and just let loose being a man and a woman who couldn't keep their hands off each other. They made love and had vodka drinks and calamari. Loretta said, "Sunday was the best day of my life. I don't mean-you know, Arlen dying. I mean from the time you came in the tent to wash my back. I'm amazed I asked you to do it, but I'm so glad I did. I can live offa that one the rest of my life. Even with it being so hot in there. Now I have another one-whatever this day is, Wednesday? I'm gonna think of them both together."

Dennis said, "We're just getting started."

She said, "Oh, God, I hope so. Did you burn yourself out there?"

"I never do."

"God, you're a daredevil and you're fun. You aren't the least bit stuck on yourself."

He said, "I saw you standing in that black skirt and I knew it was you."

She said, "It's old."

"I love your legs. I love your body."

"How about my head?"

"I love your head. Are you hungry?"

They had room-service crawfish etouffee Dennis said was as good as you got in New Orleans. He told her about a guy named Tonto Rey who said the best he ever had was in Tucson, Arizona. How about that. Loretta said she'd never had it before but it was good. They watched each other as they ate and would touch each other's hands. They didn't talk about Sunday. She didn't mention Arlen. She didn't ask Dennis what he did after he left the tent. He asked if she watched the battle reenactment. She said no, "I sat outside in that dumb skirt and thought of you, and smelled you, and could feel my hands in your hair. You have nice hair." She said, "Are we spending the night?"

"I was planning on it."

"Tomorrow's the funeral. I have to leave here early." She said, "I hate to come right out and ask, but am I gonna see you again?"

She fascinated him. He said, "Of course."

"You're not running off right away?"

"This is my last week, but I'm pretty sure I'll be here the rest of the summer. My boss has come to respect what I do."