The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

the sink. Two broke and she swore to herself, then turned to Catfish, who was sitting on the bed picking out a soft version of "Walkin' Man's Blues" on the National steel guitar.
    "You could have helped them," Estelle said.
    Catfish looked at the guitar and sang, "Got a mean old woman, Lawd, stay angry all the time."
    "There's nothing noble in using your art to escape life. You should have helped them."
    "Got a mean old woman, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd.She juststay angry all the time."
    "Don't you ignore me, CatfishJefferson. I'm talking to you. People in this town have been good to you.
    You should help them."
    Catfish threw back his head and sang to the ceiling, "She gots no idea, Lawd, what's hers and what's mine."
    Estelle snagged a skillet out of the dish rack, crossed the room, and raised it for a rocketing forehand shot to Catfish's head. "Goahead, sing another verse about your 'mean old woman,' Catfish. I'm curious, what rhymes with 'clobbered'?"
    Catfish put the guitar aside and slipped on his sunglasses. "You know, they say a woman was the one poisoned Robert Johnson?"
    "Do you know what she used?" Estelle wasn't smiling. "I'm making my shopping list."
    "Dang, woman, why you talk like that?I ain't been nothin but good to you."
    "And me to you. That's why you keep singing that mean old woman song, right?"
    "Don't sound right singin 'sweet old woman.'"
    Estelle lowered the pan. Tears welled up in her eyes.
    "You can help them and when it's over you can stay here. You can play your music, I can paint.
    People in Pine Cove love your music."
    "People here sayin hello to me on the street, puttin too much money in the tip jar, buying me drinks – I ain't got the Blues on me no more."
    "So you have to go wreck your car, or pick cotton, or shoot a man inMemphis, or whatever it is that you have to do to put the Blues on you?For what?"
    "It's what I do. I don't know nothin else."
    "You've never tried anything else. I'm here, I'm real. Is it so bad to know that you have a warm bed to sleep in with someone who loves you? There's nothing out there, Catfish."
    "That dragon out there.He alwaysbe out there."
    "So face it. You got away from it before."
    "Why you care?"
    "Because it took a lot for me to open my heart to you after what I've been through, and I don't have much tolerance for cowards anymore."
    "Call it like yousees it, Mama."
    Estelle turned and went back to the kitchen. "Then maybe you better go."
    "I'll get my hat," Catfish said. He snapped the National back into its case, grabbed his hat from the table, and in a moment he was gone.
    Estelle turned and stared at the door. When she heard his station wagon start, she fell to the floor and felt a once warm future bleed a black stain around her.
    Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch The cave lay under a hillside, less than a mile from the ranch road at Theo's cabin. The narrow mouth looked down over a wide, grassy marine terrace to the Pacific, and the interior, which opened into a huge cathedral chamber, echoed with the sound of crashing waves. Fossilized starfish and trilobites peppered the walls and the rocky floor was covered with a patina of bat guano and crystallized sea salt.
    The last time Steve had visited the cave it had been underwater, and he had spent a pleasant autumn there feeding on the gray whales that migrated down the coast to Baja to bear their young. He didn't remember the cave consciously, of course, but when he sensed that Molly was searching for a hiding place, the map in his mind that had long ago gone to instinct led them there.
    Since they'd arrived at the cave, a dark mood had fallen on Steve and, in turn, over Molly. She'd used the weed-whacker on the Sea Beast several times to try to cheer him up, but now the sex machine was out of gas and Molly was developing a heat rash on the inside of her thighs from repeated tongue lashings. It had been two days since she had eaten, and even Steve refused to touch his cows (Black Angus steers, now that Molly knew he couldn't tolerate dairy).
    Since the coming of the Sea Beast Molly had been in a state of controlled euphoria. Worries about her sanity had melted away and she had joined him in the Zen moment that is the life of an animal, but since the dream and the horrible self-consciousness that had descended on Steve, the notion of their incompatibility had begun to rise in Molly's mind like a trout to a fly.
    "Steve," she said, leaning on her broadsword and staring him squarely in one of his basketball