“It’s the drink or it’s the peyote,” Sylvan went on, fluttering a hand beside his head to suggest a crazy befuddlement.

“Oh”

“You know peyote? Edible cactus. Gives you visions, man.” Sylvan swaying his head and making a little crooning sound. Then grinning and putting a reassuring hand on Robin’s own, and leaving it there. “No, it’s part of their religion. Isn’t that great? Big ceremony, eat peyote, trip out…Of course the kids here are into all that now, the hippies? They go out in the desert and they’re out of their fuckin’ heads for days on end.”

Robin wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not. He’d got a kind of trance off the desert as it was, he could breathe in and feel it again now, a partly physical elation; and something else, that perhaps was religious, or at least philosophical, the inhuman peace. He pictured that burnt-out folly, which was a lesson taught to a wealthy family who presumed they could make a home in such a place and lay a claim to it. Was it $10,000 they’d spent just on drilling for water? He was watching a very camp couple smoking and bawling with laughter. He thought how he wasn’t that kind of person. He shifted his weight so that his leg pressed against Sylvan’s knee. He realised he’d had a plan for the evening involving dinner and a phone-call; but the plan was meaningless in face of the unplanned. With a little freeing twist he withdrew his fingers and then slid them back between the other man’s.

“So…” said Sylvan.

Robin looked into his long-lashed, untrustworthy eyes. “Is there a phone here?” he said. “I must just make a quick call.”

The phone was in the back by the Gents, in an area even bleaker and more functional than the bar. He dialled and stood gazing at the deadpan irony of an old enamel sign saying “NO LOITERING.” He wasn’t a loiterer.