"Is that what it's called?"
"That's what it's called."
"I'll have one."
He pushed out his altered lips, grudgingly moved to make the drink.
Angelina watched him, saw his pinky delicately splay above the handle of the spoon, noted the mangled index finger that went its own way from the others, observed the round exquisite meetings between the bottles and the glass, the slow momentous pouring from one into the other. Watching, she felt powerful and a little bit nasty, like she was paying him to dance for her.
When he slid the drink across the polished wood between her hands, she watched the grenadine ooze downward and whispered, "So Sal, what is your name?
* * *
A couple hours later, as it was getting on toward three a.m., she whispered, "Now I get it. Ziggy. He zigs, he zags, you can't catch up with him."
The barkeep glanced over his shoulder at his few remaining customers, then looked at Angelina. He did not want to encourage conversation. Blandly, he said, "I never thought of that. I just liked the sound."
"Nice sound," said Angelina. "Takes some getting used to. Like your face."
He leaned closer to her, she saw dark stubble straining from his pores, a film of perspiration on his forehead. "I wish you hadn't come here," he said. "It's crazy that you came here."
"I have a long memory, Sal . . . Ziggy."
"And I have a strong wish to keep on living. If your father—"
"No one knows I'm here. Hardly anyone. Let's go walk on the beach. Hold hands. Talk."
He turned his back on her, washed glasses, emptied ashtrays, stalled for time. When he looked at her again, she had not moved and her expression had not changed. He sucked a big gulp of watery air, looked at his watch, and gave last call.
* * *
"And that's my fault too?" he said as they walked side by side at the edge of the ocean.
"Fault?" said Angelina. He'd come close to hurting her feelings several times, but now he finally succeeded, and she let go of the thick strong hand she'd waited so long to feel against her skin. "Who said anything about fault? I just thought you should know."
They walked. Underfoot, sand crunched over coral, the sound was improbably loud. An orange moon was slouching toward the west. Its craters were tinged with purple and the light it threw across the water was a greenish gold. Ziggy was surprised to miss the feel of Angelina's fingers surrounded by his own, and missing it, he felt remorse. But when he knew he was wrong, his impulse was to argue.
"The way you make it sound—"
"Ziggy, let it drop. It isn't blame. It isn't flattery. It's a piece of information. I haven't wanted anybody else."
He pondered this, but couldn't really get his mind around it; against the disjunct pile of names and faces and false starts and tangled limbs that his own life had consisted of, this constancy, this continuity was unimaginable. He said, "You've been scared, I bet."
"Scared?" said Angelina. "Scared of what?"
"Scared, ya know, of men. Of sex."
At this she could not hold back a laugh. "Ziggy," she said, "I've been surrounded by naked men since I hit this town. I haven't yet seen anything to be afraid of."
That slowed him down. A flash of something like jealousy, or maybe only prudishness, slipped across his face, which was mapped into bright planes and dark hollows by the moonlight.
"Besides," she continued, "you're a funny one to tell me how scared I am. Your whole life is being scared."
She expected him to deny it. He didn't. He just said, "Yeah, but I got a pretty good reason."
They walked. There was no surf, the ocean ended in the meekest lapping against the shore and made the faintest hiss as sudsy water slipped through nubs of limestone. Angelina took his hand again, remembered again the padded bulk of the heel of it, the fibrous breadth of the wrist. "Ziggy," she said, "let's not argue. I didn't come down here to argue."
They took a few steps; for a few seconds they might almost have been ordinary lovers. Then Ziggy yanked his arm away and wheeled to face her.
His features were twisted, not in anger but in cornered desperation, the fatigued confusion of a creature whose zigs and zags have failed to carry it to safety. "You didn't come to argue," he said. "You didn't come to get me killed. I keep hearing lots of reasons why you didn't come here. I still haven't got a clue why you did."
She looked at him until his face let go, until the furrows softened in his forehead and the lines released at the corners of his mouth. Then she very softly said, "You don't? You really don't?"
He stared at her. Red moonlight spilled down on her hair, traced out her ear and gleamed on one side of her neck, then trickled into her blouse and was swallowed up in shadow. His mouth was very dry.