Mr. Clarinet

Chantale walked over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.

"That was for my mother," she explained. "It's a thing we do for the sick."

"How come they get rid of their clothes?" Max asked, nodding at the worshippers.

"It's part of the ritual. First they shed the burden of their past bad luck—symbolized by the clothes—then they wash themselves clean in the waterfall. Like a kind of baptism. Only they're making a great sacrifice getting rid of their clothes, because all of these people you see here have very little."

Chantale started walking down the bank toward the water, an empty bottle in her hand.

"You going in?" Max asked incredulously.

"Aren't you?" she replied, smiling, her eyes full of suggestion.

Max was tempted as hell, but he held back.

"Maybe next time," he said.

She bought a bar of soap and a handful of leaves from the boys with the baskets and then she waded in and began to cross the stream toward the dark rocks and the brilliant white deluge pummeling them.

Before she reached the falls, she took off her shirt and dropped it in the water. She soaped her face and her bare torso and then pulled herself up on the rocks. She stripped down to a black thong and tossed away her jeans after her shoes.

Max couldn't take his eyes off her. She looked completely different from the way he'd imagined her without her clothes on. He'd assumed she'd have a typical white-collar body, going to pieces with inattention and a sedentary life, no time or energy to look after herself; hips running away at the sides, ass and thighs mottled with cellulite, middle going soft. But Chantale had a firm, athletic build. Her legs were long and strong, her shoulders and arms toned, her breasts small and firm: a sprinter's body. Maybe she'd run track in college. She looked like she still worked out.

She saw him looking at her and she smiled and waved. He waved back, automatically, inanely, suddenly back down to earth, embarrassed that she'd caught him looking at her.

Chantale stepped back and forced herself into the middle of the torrent, right under the innermost edge of the rainbow, where the water fell hardest and heaviest. Max lost sight of her completely, confusing her again and again with a variety of other bathers and their shadows, outlines blurred or invented by mist and motion. At times there seemed to be many people there with her, cleansing themselves, and then, suddenly, the waterfalls would appear completely empty, as if the pilgrims had been dissolved like so much dirt and washed into the stream with the banks of discarded clothes.

As he was looking for Chantale, he felt his attention being pulled away from his search and off to his left, where he sensed someone observing him. He wasn't being watched out of curiosity or wonder, the way some of the people on their way to the stream had looked at him; he was being assessed and evaluated by a trained eye. He knew the feeling, because he'd been taught to recognize it as a cop. Most criminals were paranoid as hell and had a naturally heightened sense of suspicion, same as the blind with their better-developed senses of smell and sound. They'd know if they were being watched; they'd actually feel the person's presence, dogging their every breath, tracking their every thought. This was why cops were taught the "Sun Rule of Observation": never look directly at a target but focus on the space five degrees to its left or right, keeping the main attraction well within sight.

The person who was watching him hadn't learned this. He also hadn't learned the other important rule—always stay out of sight; if you're going to see, don't be seen.

He was standing on the rocks, away from the crashing water, part obscured in the mist; a tall, thin man in ragged blue trousers and a long-sleeved Rolling Stones T-shirt that was torn and frayed around the hem. He was looking right at Max without a trace of an expression on the little that could be seen of his face under the thick mop of shoulder-length dreadlocks hanging from his scalp like the legs of a dead mutant tarantula.

Chantale reappeared on the rocks, shaking the loose water out of her ears and slicking her hair back with her fingers. She stepped down into the stream and started walking back toward Max.

At the same time, Dreadlocks stepped into the water and also began to head his way. There was something in his hands, something he didn't want to get wet, because he was holding it high up above the stream. The worshippers who weren't in some other mental space got out of his way, exchanging worried looks, some hurrying for the bank. A possessed woman made a wild grab at what he was holding. He smashed his elbow into her face, sending her flying back into the water. The spirits fled her body as she splashed back to land, blood running down her face.