“I never thought—not like a lizard shedding its scales, no. I wouldn’t have expected anything that repellent.” The Colonel took a halfhearted spoonful of the hash. “And the Helper?”

“Nearly assembled.”

“I would prefer not to linger in this town, Mr. Murdoch.”

“Sir, the weather—”

“You were never scared of rain before we came to Loftus.”

“It’s a cold, dirty rain. Some of these mountain roads could wash out.”

“We can deal with that.”

“Yes, sir. I’d just prefer to deal with it when it isn’t storming.” Tyler showed him a baleful look. “Something in this town attracts you?”

“Shit, no, sir.” But Murdoch felt himself begin to sweat. “Community,” Tyler said. “A human presence.”

“Sir?” Was the son of a bitch psychic?

“We need a radio for the sake of community, Mr. Murdoch. Maybe we can be more effective in numbers than we are individually. Between the two of us, frankly, there isn’t much in the way of discipline. We say the words, but it’s reflex. You don’t respect me as a superior officer.”

Murdoch was startled. “That isn’t—”

“It’s not your fault. On the road, we’re simply two men. All the structure has fallen away. I should have understood that when I talked to the President.

He was in Lafayette Park, Mr. Murdoch, with his shirt undone at the collar. The center cannot hold—isn’t that what the poet said? Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Anarchy is without structure; it flows like water. Mr. Murdoch, do you suppose we’ve lost structure entirely? Has it gone that far?”

“I—wouldn’t know.”

“If there were more of us,” Tyler said.

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s as if we left our own skins behind. Our skins of propriety. Our skins of good conduct. Suddenly we’re raw; our nerves are exposed. We’re naked. With the right provocation, we could say or do anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Murdoch said, realizing as he spoke that his friendship with Colonel Tyler had also peeled away; that the skin of amicability had been shed in this room and the thing beneath exposed: a queasy mutual fear.

After dinner, he left the Colonel and hurried into the dark street. He was meeting Soo at the Roxy, and he was already late, according to the digital watch on his wrist. Since Contact, Murdoch had kept two watches, one on his wrist, one in his pocket, so when he replaced the battery in one watch he could set it by the other.

The Roxy was easy to find. It was one more peeling Main Street movie theater, its blank marquee shedding rainwater in cold sheets. Murdoch hurried past the empty ticket box, inside to the lobby where Soo had turned on the lights.

She was waiting for him, still wearing her yellow T-shirt, one hand cocked on her hip, standing in the doorway of the auditorium. Murdoch looked at her and felt weak all over.

Probably it was only the effect of a long separation from female company. What it felt like was high-octane, knee-buckling, adolescent lust. She was a compact package of curves and smiles and he wanted to pick her up in his arms and feel her weight. Soo, he thought. Some kind of weird southern name for a young girl. He said it twice to himself. Lord, Murdoch thought, take pity on a soldier.

“You shaved,” she said.

He nodded, blushing.

“There’s no more candy at the popcorn stand,” she said. “But I got some Cokes in a cooler. The movie’s ready to go. It’s 42nd Street.We can watch it from the projection room. Come on, A.W.!”

Speechless, he followed her upstairs.

Between reels she talked about herself; while Murdoch, listening, writhed in a fever of hormonal suspense.

He watched the words come out of her mouth—the way her lips moved when she talked.

“I wasn’t born here. I was born in a town two counties east. Town of Tucum Wash, if you call it a town, really a gas station and a post office. They bused us thirty-five miles to school every day. Well, I hated that place. It’s a common story, I guess. Everybody hates their hometown—especially if they come from a little wide-place-in-the-road like Tucum Wash. So when I graduated high school I came here looking for work. To Loftus, yeah, I see you smiling. Bright lights, big city, right? I guess you must have seen all kinds of places. But I’ll tell you, A.W., I never wanted much more than Loftus. Loftus isn’t bad. I worked at the K mart checkout and two nights a week at the Sandwich Castle in the mall. It’s actually an okay kind of life. I kept myself in TV dinners and I had some fun. Had a boyfriend. Dean Earl was his name. Oh, he’s gone—you don’t have to look so long in the face. Dean didn’t mean that much to me. Except every Friday night or sometimes Saturday we’d come here to the Roxy. I love movies. I won’t watch ’em on video. Like watching a postage stamp. Plus it don’t smell right. You know what I mean? You ever smell a theater? People think, oh, popcorn, but it isn’t the popcorn. In summer it’s that air-conditioning down the back of your neck, smells like cold metal, and the smell of sweaty people comin’ in with their jackets over their shoulders and mopping their faces with handkerchiefs, waitin’ for that chill to shiver up their spine. And when everybody’s cool, the lights go off and the movie starts. Course I can’t make it be like that. But when folks started leaving, you know, leaving, I couldn’t help but think of the Roxy and how nice it would be to come here all by myself. And I did. Maybe you think I’m crazy. But it’s nice here. It’s not the same, but it reminds me of the old days. Well, maybe I am crazy. A.W., let me work this machine! Your hands are cold. You’re still wet from the rain, aren’t you? Shivering like a pup. You want dry clothes? You know, I thought you might get wet. I picked up some clothes at the K mart after we met this morning. Clothes about your size. Bet that A.W. comes out in the rain, I thought. He looks like he’d come out in the rain. Take that shirt off. Your shirt! Well—mine, too, if you like.”

Later, Murdoch felt obliged to tell her about himself.

They shared a mattress on the floor of what used to be the office of the manager of the Roxy Theater. She was naked in the faint light, sitting cross-legged in a curl of woolen blankets. Murdoch was full of quiet wonder at the sight of her. Five minutes ago, they’d been joined in a passion so intense that Murdoch thought they might penetrate each other’s skins, occupy each other’s space. Now she was sitting apart from him, a little aloof, but smiling, in a blur of light from a high window where the rain washed the dusty glass. It was after midnight by the watch on Murdoch’s wrist. He felt a need to justify himself.

So he told her about growing up in Ukiah, leaving home, enlisting, discovering his aptitude for machines. How he had learned the tolerances and mannerisms of small arms, their maintenance and renewal, their weaknesses and strengths. A weapon was a complex environment in which a small event—the squeezing of a trigger, say—led to vastly larger consequences: the discharge of a bullet, the death of a man, the winning or the losing of a war. But only if everything was in balance; only if the weapon was correctly toleranced, unworn, clean and dry here, oiled there. It captured his imagination. In a world Murdoch often found confusing, here was a map he knew how to read.

Soo listened attentively but began to frown, and he hurried to change the subject: “Then came Contact, you know, and then I met Colonel Tyler and we started this little cross-country turkey shoot.”

“ Turkey shoot?”

“Well, you saw the Helper—what happened to it.”