Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet Page A

flowers here had been shipped in from far away—Tahiti and Australia.
    The peninsula was a glorified sandbar, he thought, waiting to be washed away by a towering swell.
    As the jeep jerked along in the ruts he saw debris collected against the base of palms, clustered along hedges—food trash mostly, cardboard and plastic, but also netting and newspaper and old shoes and wrinkled pieces of mildewed rug or fabric. They turned left at what seemed like a construction site, many small shacks going up all over the place on the slick, muddy ground.
    It was like a minefield of outhouses, he thought.
    “Seine Bight,” said the driver.
    “This?” asked Hal, before he could stop himself.
    “Rebuilding,” said the driver, nodding. “You know: it was all knocked down. In the big storm last month.”
    They drove between the shacks, not on a road at all as far as Hal could tell—bumping over the corrugated curves of culvert pipes, weaving and tipping sideways. A white bird, duck or goose maybe, flapped out of the way and children ran alongside the car. He was enraptured by this, stared out the window at the flashes of light on skin, the kids’ stretched and laughing faces. Then quickly the field of shacks was behind them again, the beach and ocean not so far ahead, and on their right in a grove of palms was a colorful small house with a nice garden.
    “Here you go,” said the driver.
    “Please wait,” said Hal, even though they had it all prearranged. “I won’t be long. Maybe fifteen minutes.” He recalled the driver from the airport, how he had randomly stopped at service stations and once leaned against a wall, doing nothing but gazing at the ground. The driver had kept up the pose so long that it seemed he was dutifully observing an officially appointed function.
    The contract between driver and passenger here was a loose one.
    He walked up to the house and knocked on the door, thinking he wished they had a telephone so that he could have called to warn them, but god dammit , while he was standing there waiting he heard engine noise and turned and sure enough there was the taxi pulling away again. He had the urge to run after it screaming—half-turned from the front door to do this, even—but then figured maybe the driver needed to use the toilet or some other mild embarrassment. Surely he would be back in fifteen.
    Still. Couldn’t he have said something? What was it with these people?
    Impatient and a little anxious, Hal waited until the door opened. It was a short woman, her black hair tied back with a red ribbon. She was dull-eyed and barely looked up at him.
    “Excuse the interruption,” he said. “I’m looking for Marlo?”
    “He is out working,” said the woman.
    “Can you tell me where I can find him, then? It’s about Thomas Stern. His disappearance.”
    The woman nodded vaguely. “He’s at the big hotel. The Grove.”
    “Oh you’re kidding , ” he said, exasperated. “I just came from there. It’s where I’m staying.”
    She nodded again, unsmiling.
    “All right,” he said lamely, and turned to go. Then turned back. She was already shutting the door. “Listen, could you tell him I’m looking for him? If we miss each other again? My name is Hal Lindley. Here, here’s my card. Wait, let me write my room number on it. He can stop by whenever. Room 202.” She had to open it wider again for him to stick the card into her fingers. “Thank you.”
    After she closed the door on him he stood there for a long moment letting the foreignness absorb him. He had an impression of being out of place: that was what it was, ever since he got here. Even more now, near the village that was in ruins, than at the hotel, of course, since the resort was populated by people he could just as easily have run into on the streets of Westwood.
    He looked down at the details of the doorknob—a cheap brassy color—and the frame, which was painted purple. Marlo’s house was not an American house: nowhere in