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He heard Ajax’s approach.
    â€œCaptain Montoya.”
    â€œMaestro.”
    â€œAm I too late for that drink?”
    â€œNo, no. Just in time.”
    â€œYou were sleeping?”
    â€œNo. Reading.”
    Ajax set the bottle of rum between them and Horacio saw the slight tremor in his hand.
    â€œReading in the dark?”
    â€œNo, no. By flashlight. The batteries died and I must have, I dunno, drifted off.”
    Ajax thought he was a complicated man, but Horacio knew how simple he really was. That’s why he preferred it when Ajax lied.
    â€œSo you were sleeping?”
    â€œI guess.”
    Horacio picked up the bottle. “It’s just I’d hate to intrude on your sleep. You get so little. How’s the thesaurus?”
    â€œGood. I’m on the Ms—makeshift: improvised, provisional, temporary.”
    Horacio knocked his cane over, and as Ajax bent to retrieve it the old man checked a tiny mark he’d left on the bottle to ensure it was indeed the one he’d presented to Ajax, with no small ceremony, to mark the end and the beginning.
    â€œMy new book of poems is coming out.”
    Ajax handed him his cane. “Yes, I’ve still got the manuscript in the bedroom. Just don’t have the concentration for it yet.”
    â€œGioconda’s got a new one coming out soon.”
    Ajax snatched up a glass and wiped it with his shirttail. Horacio felt the need to update him about her. Ajax carefully set the glass down. A little too carefully, Horacio thought.
    â€œReally?” Ajax wiped the other glass off with his shirttail. “Anyone in this country not publishing a book of poetry? Not penning a volume of verse? Not crushing out a little canto?” He slammed the glass down. “You can’t swing an iguana by the tail nowadays without hitting either a foreigner or a poet.”
    He checked the glasses, both now cloudy from the cleaning on his soiled shirt. Horacio smiled. Poking Ajax in the old wound was one way to check his overall well-being. Sarcasm in connection with his ex-wife’s name was a good sign.
    â€œWell, that we are a country of poets is the one national vanity we can actually afford.” Horacio tapped the two pistols on the table with his cane. “Lots of weaponry lying about this evening.”
    Ajax picked up the rum bottle and turned it in his hands. “That one,” he said of the Makarov, “belonged to the soldier who got killed today.”
    â€œFortunado Gavilan. I heard. I’m very sorry.” Horacio lifted the Makarov, held it, weighed it as he was weighing Ajax for the deepest truth he could discern. For the Makarov it was easy: “Was it unloaded then, too?”
    Horacio watched the lips turn in just slightly as Ajax’s teeth bit at their insides. “Yeah. He charged Gladys with an empty piece.”
    â€œIn America, they call that suicide-by-cop.”
    Ajax dropped his head into his hands and seemed to Horacio to try to wipe something away. “Who cares what the goddamned gringos call anything.”
    Horacio regarded Ajax for a moment. “You used to like Americans.”
    Ajax looked up. Horacio watched a wry smile wrestle with a deep fatigue.
    â€œI knew some good ones. Once. In L.A.”
    â€œYou almost were one, when I found you there. American teenager English. Perfect Nicaraguan Spanish.”
    Ajax sat back, turned his face to the cloudless night sky. “I don’t know who that kid is anymore. He’s like someone I read about. I swear, Maestro, I have no memories before that day we marched into camp and you put that .22 peashooter into my hands.”
    Horacio studied Ajax’s face. He seemed to drift back to that long-ago arrival at a pitiful camp of half-starved dreamers. But he needed him in the here and now. He used his cane to sharply rap the Python’s chrome.
    â€œAnd the snake? Still just the one bullet?”
    Ajax pulled his gaze from the stars.