THERE WAS RUIN here. The word lush was not a word you used here, you used stark. In a small motel in a beautiful stark nowhere place just shy of the badlands, a man and a woman in the afternoon winter sun had retired inside a small nondescript room. When the duende is humming, you need no luxury digs.
“Let me kill your husband,” Andy said, easy, Vivienne in his arms in bed. He could have been saying Let me drive you to my mom’s house. Johnny was still her husband, Val was still the second guy and Andy was still the promised air of springtime. Vivienne looked at her left arm: not as mottled as the right arm. She put her camera into her left hand and, with that weaker hand, she shot her right arm, forensically, the living autopsy of bomb damage. She had always wanted to go to Japan, but hey
