Alexander Death(56)

“I just feel so good.” She took the smoldering roach of a joint back from him and puffed it. “It's like I want to do everything, right now. I wish we had our horses so we could ride them as fast as they can go down the beach. They're always clomping through the woods. I bet they'd love to just run out here. That would be fun. How long would it take to get the horses? It has to be before the coke wears off. This isn't wearing off already, is it?”

“You've got some time, Jenny.” He smiled, looking her over. “It's way too late to bother with the horses, though.”

“But what are we going to do?” Jenny jumped to her feet. Her long black hair streamed across her face in the salty breeze. “We have to do something. We can't just sit here.”

“Then let's explore.” Alexander jumped to his feet. “There's an old lighthouse down the beach. No light left, but we can go look at the ruins.”

“Okay.” Jenny let him take her hand as they walked down the beach. She could hear the cheerful buzz of a trillion insects singing in the night.

The beach became a volcanic maze, with jagged rock formations jutting up around them, between pits of soft, gray sand. Jenny heard her mouth rattling on, telling Alexander about how she liked to work in clay and how many great ideas she'd gotten from the pottery at the open-air market in Comitán.

“There it is.” Alexander lay an arm around her and pointed. Following his index finger, Jenny saw a square clay tower, no more than three stories high, perched on the cliff overhead. In the moonlight, she could see the empty holes of its windows. “That's my property, now, too. I'm calling it the great lighthouse of Alexander. It used to warn sailors not to come crash on my beach.”

“And who warns them now?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe word just got around.” He led her toward a heap of boulders. “There are stairs up to it. They aren't much steeper than what you'd find on a Mayan temple.”

Jenny stared at the shell of the lighthouse, outlined against the stars. It looked scary to her, or maybe just depressing, darkness and emptiness where there had once been a source of light.

“I don't want to,” Jenny said. She pulled away from him, then took off her sandals and walked through the rocks on the edge of the surf. “Let's go swimming instead.”

“Not here. It's too rocky.”

“Are you scared?” Jenny asked. She pulled her bright, long-sleeved Mayan blouse over her head and lay it on the boulder next to her sandals. “Do you think we could go skinny dipping without you turning it into some kind of sexual thing?”

“I doubt it,” he said.

“Try your best.” Jenny tossed her jeans on the boulder. “Remember, I've killed bigger men than you.”

“I know you have.” Alexander began to undress. “Just keep your hands off me and we'll be fine.”

“Ha.” Jenny slipped out of her underwear and walked out into the water, until it was deep enough for her to dive in. She turned around and saw Alexander on the beach, his tall, muscular body bare in the moonlight. He strolled into the water and swam out to her.

“You're having a good time,” he said.

“It's nice.” She looked up at the stars. “Alexander, what are your real plans for this life? Build more pyramids? Conquer more empires?”

“No, the world's too old for that.” He tread water a couple of feet in front of her. He gave a smile that, for a moment, made him look very old, too. “All I want is to carve a nice, comfortable little kingdom out of southern Mexico. Nobody else is doing anything useful with it. I could modernize, beautify, carve my initials here.”

“And you think these people will let you rule them?”

“There are many ways to rule, both out front and behind the curtain.”

“Tell me about some things we did in our past lives,” Jenny said.

“Where do I start?”

“The beginning, maybe,” Jenny said.

“You really want to hear about five hundred lifetimes of mastodon hunts?”

“Skip to when it gets interesting, then.”

“The city of Megiddo,” he said. “Though it wasn't called that nine thousand years ago. You were born to a family of potters and craftsmen, me to a family of shepherds and raiders.” His eyes looked deep into her, and his smile was warm. “I can remember the first time I saw you in that life. Neither of us had our full memories, but I knew there was something about you. The intelligence and fearlessness in your eyes. Watching your bare hands covered in wet clay, shaping the most beautiful things out of mud.” He shook his head. “I feel that way every time we meet, every life. Life doesn't really begin until we meet each other.”