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pants. I used an ATM machine! she whispered, and raised her own eyebrows
back at him.
Mount Franklin, the mountain that spears El Paso into two parts, was visible
on the horizon hours before they actually reached it. Darcy pointed out the rest
stop where she d got a ride from Mr. Hernandez and, as they drove towards
down town, the access road down which she had run to get to the rest stop. By
Matt s odometer, it was something like twenty miles from the rest stop to the exit
to Fort Bliss, and maybe another five or ten after that to the base. Do you want
to drive through the base, for old time s sake? he joked.
No! No, thanks, she replied. There are too many people and too much traf-
fic here. Let s keep going and get through it, please!
She sank down in her seat until her eyes were at the level of the window. In
less than an hour they were through the pass and looking back at the other side of
Mount Franklin. The mountains at Las Cruces loomed fifty miles ahead.
C H A P T E R 44
To Matt s relief, Darcy seemed pleased with her little house in the corner of the
adobe-walled Méndez family compound. The main house, a rambling adobe
affair with galleries on three sides and an inner patio, sat surrounded by a number
of huge cottonwood trees which whispered in the breeze. From the back gallery,
the Rio Grande could be seen, cultivated fields stretching along it in both direc-
tions, severe desert mountains rising majestically in the distance. From the front
of the house, facing old Highway 28, desert sand hills stretched out of sight. The
sky was a deep blue, and the only noise other than the wind in the trees and birds
was from an occasional vehicle passing down the curving, two lane highway.
Darcy s house, also of thick adobe, had belonged to the foreman in the days
when the Méndez family had been a local agricultural power. It had five small
rooms which soon responded to Matt s and Darcy s efforts to spruce them up.
Matt reflected on the incongruity of the world s most sought-after person helping
to paint, dust, and sweep the venerable rooms of a humble ranch foreman s house
into shape so she could live there. She could reasonably expect to live in a man-
sion in Los Angeles with an eighteen hole golf course in the back yard, or a castle
in Monaco, if she wanted. But she seemed to enjoy what they were doing. She
was smiling more and more often, even with flecks of old paint stuck to her nose
and her arms streaked with dirt.
Abuelita Méndez accepted Darcy tentatively, especially once she knew the
newcomer would be paying a little rent for the house. At dinner the first evening,
she had told Darcy she looked more Spanish than Mexican, and Matt had
taken that opportunity to explain that Darcy was from Argentina. Normally he
never lied to his grandmother, but this was different. He figured no one would
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Al Past
181
know a thing about Argentina. If Darcy did something odd, folks would chalk it
up to that. She couldn t use the name Darcy either, but Darcy invented the name
Del Arco, Ana Del Arco. It sounded Italian to Abuelita Méndez. Ai, there are all
kinds of Italians and Germans and others down there, ¿que no? The fact that
Ana was an orphan seemed to affect her most. Pobrecita, she said. All alone in
the world.
Matt stayed three days, visiting with his grandmother and helping Darcy put
her little place in order. The afternoon of the third day, with an increasingly
severe case of separation anxiety blooming in his mind, he and Darcy went to Las
Cruces to buy a few more building supplies, a computer, and a television set.
He kept thinking of problems that might come up. Abuelita Méndez still
drove, not always very well, but what if she couldn t any longer? Darcy didn t
have a driver s license. What would they do then? A dozen other problems
crowded into his brain. He tutored her as best he could on basic plumbing and
electricity, and told her how to call Old Man Jiménez, the local handyman.
(Abuelita Méndez called him Old Man Jiménez even though he was ten years
younger than she was.)
Finally, Darcy cut him off. Don t worry about us, Matt. Your grandmother
has been doing fine by herself for years. How much worse can it be with me here
too? He glanced at her, startled out of his gloom. What I want to know is how
your article and book are coming. Have you begun thinking about them yet?
Well, yes, some, he replied. I ll drive back tomorrow and get to work on
them the day after that. Crusty is in a hurry for the newspaper feature, because he
figures he can send it out and spread the paper s name, and Alpine s, all over the
world.
That s great, Matt! You ll become a celebrity yourself!
Yeah, I guess so. I ll be able to pay off my debts, too!
The day-long drive back to Alpine made Matt more and more uneasy. It
didn t help that the talk radio stations in El Paso were still consumed with Darcy
mania and meteor madness. Clueless callers yammered ceaselessly about what
should be done about the meteors and where the little space athlete might be hid-
ing.
Both topics were invariably mentioned on the hourly network news as well, on
all the stations he tried. According to one report, musicians at one rock club in
England had projected a picture of Darcy above the stage and said that she would
be making an appearance there later that night. Pandemonium erupted and eight
people were hurt in the stampede.
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182
On another station he learned that American scientists had decided to send a
nuclear-tipped rocket against one of the meteors and European scientists would
build one to be launched against the other. The Chinese, Japanese, and Austra-
lian governments had formed a coalition to send a third rocket as insurance for
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