Read Puzzle for Pilgrims for Free Online

hand went out to me and then dropped down. I knew she was trying to ask me not to let her go home with Jake. But I was confused and mad and somehow hurt that she’d sneaked the date up on me. I wanted to hurt her too.
    I said, “I guess your friend can take care of you okay. Night, Jake. See you, Marietta.”
    She turned to Jake without a word. Submissively she let him lead her toward the stairs.
    As they passed a crowded table, two of the Mexicans at it started screaming. They leaped up, tossing back their long black hair, cursing and hitting wildly at each other. One of them staggered back against the wall and whipped out a knife.
    Jake swung round, and spat Spanish at them. From nowhere, it seemed, there was a gun in his hand. He covered them both, leaned forward grinning, and flicked the knife out of the Mexican’s hand. Both men slumped sulkily into their seats. Marietta was staring blankly. Jake slipped the gun back into his coat, waved back at me, and took her arm again.
    I saw their heads as they descended the stairs, Marietta’s wonderful dark head and Jake’s cropped red hair. Then they were gone.
    Alone at the table, a sense of frustration swept over me. Marietta had gone off with a gun-toting citrus-grower she didn’t want, who might also be a hidden ally of Sally’s. I was sitting in a bar, and nothing had been done. Martin wouldn’t go back to Sally. Sally would go to the police. Martin, and maybe Marietta, would have to face some criminal charge which was neither true nor effectively cooked up.
    I should have been happy about it. If things worked out that way, Iris might come back to me. But what would be the good of that? Who wanted a wife when she was eating her heart out for another man?
    Suddenly I decided I’d spar with Sally and fight it out for Iris and Marietta and Martin. God knows, it was against my own interests, “noble” dime-store chivalry. But anything was better than this—anything.
    I thought of Martin then, beautiful, golden Martin in the field of yellow cowslips—always getting to the top of the hill and never letting Marietta get there. I thought of Iris too, in Acapulco, tormenting herself with fear of what Sally could do to Martin.
    Martin with his public-school prefect’s gravity, his charm, his so-called genius, and his dubious career, Martin whom three women wanted and who wanted only to be a pilgrim.
    They all called Sally a monster. But Sally was only fighting to keep her husband, the way I was not fighting to keep my wife.
    It seemed to me then that the real monster was Martin.
    I guess I was a little drunk.

Four
    I drove home past the Alameda, dark and faintly sinister now, and down the stately boulevard of the Paseo de la Reforma. Mexico City shuts up early at night. Except for the occasional glitter of a night club entrance, the town stretched around me emptily, not like a real town, like something two-dimensional built out of cardboard on a Hollywood set.
    At the Calle Londres, the Indian and his peanuts had gone. So had the rooster. But a car, a new scarlet convertible coupé, was parked outside my house. I drove past to the garage, left my car, and walked back. When I reached the iron gate to the patio and rang for the velador, the red coupé was still there. I didn’t bother with it until I heard its door open behind me and the patter of high heels on the cement sidewalk.
    I turned. Sally Haven was there, the yellow coat still slung over her shoulders. The nearest street light was some way off. It made the yellow coat gleam, and the heavy yellow hair, and her eyes. The rest of her was in shadow. The curious chiaroscuro exaggerated her dollish smallness.
    “I waited. I had to see you. It was cold, but I waited.”
    Her hand moved forward and touched mine. It was light as an insect against my skin with the dry hardness of an insect.
    The chain clattered off and the velador was opening the gate.
    “Come in,” I said, hating the thought of it but remembering my