Chapter 22: The Lady in Red

Yes, that lady. Also: a suck-o-matic milk tether, San Quentin, snow angels, downed biplanes, naked people, walking backwards, the rain in Spain, and three-legged dogs. Which of these does not belong?

The whole town is Sergio Leone quiet, by which I mean that anybody who’s ever seen a movie can tell you this entire village, at any moment, every last hen house door, is going to erupt in red-pepper gunfire and exploding roof tile. A thousand Mexican bandits and villagers in ponchos will flood out of old wooden doors and slide down roofs on one hip, firing in random directions. Injured men will cartwheel into water barrels. This town is Spain imagined by Quentin Tarentino, the whole place piñata pregnant, ready to blow apart.

But not yet…

Not for a moment…

Because we are still in the opening credits, just coming into town, and everything is rolling in at long, languid intervals. Every time you think the credits must surely be over, there’s a new title fading in again. It is like the director is nodding off in the afternoon heat, or he’s on a very long drive, veering into the breakdown lane, bumping every now and again and struggling to stay awake.

There is just nobody in this town anywher…