The Mayan Codex

21

Sabir dropped his carryall out of the window, and eased himself through after it. Then he waited for Lamia to do the same thing. He was tempted to reach forward and help her as she struggled out of the window, but something prevented him. He still felt raw about his initial blunder about her face, and he sensed that she was, unsurprisingly, not entirely comfortable with him yet.

‘Please. Can you help me?’

Sabir hurried forward. He put one hand on the small of Lamia’s back to steady her, and then half lifted, half carried her, away from the window. She touched the ground very lightly, almost as if she had flown out of his arms.

He glanced down at the ground, disturbed at the effect the close physical proximity to a woman was having on him. For the split second that he been carrying her, he had become more than a little aware of the swell of Lamia’s hips, and the ultra-feminine contour of her buttocks beneath her thin cotton slacks. Now his eyes made their automatic tomcat journey back to her breasts. He could feel himself beginning to salivate. Jesus Christ. Who’d be a man? It was like being harnessed to an out-of-control lawnmower.

Lamia straightened up and smiled at him.

He felt the smile somewhere in the region of his back pocket. Women, he thought to himself. They always know just how to turn it on. It’s a sort of inbuilt instinct. A ‘look at me, I’m here’ sort of instinct. He smiled back despite himself, more susceptible to the feminine than he cared to admit. ‘Come on, we’d better get out of here before they cotton on to what we are doing.’

Sabir grabbed Lamia’s bag alongside his own, and started to edge around the parked cars. Now I’m even carrying her bag, he said to himself. Fantastic. Like an on-the-make schoolboy carrying his girlfriend’s schoolbooks.

They made their way to the outskirts of a nearby motor court, and ducked in between the parked cars.

‘We’ll cut through here, and then down a block, so that there’s no chance at all of them seeing us. Then we cross three blocks over and up a block – Calque ought to be waiting for us.’

‘My brothers aren’t as stupid as you seem to think they are, Monsieur Sabir.’

‘Adam. Please.’

‘Adam.’

‘I’m sure they’re not, Lamia. But what are they going to do? If they haven’t followed Calque, it means they’re stuck waiting in front of the motel. If they’ve followed Calque, we aren’t any the worse off than we were before. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I know so.’