Either advancing or retreating, the soldier must be steadfast, and all is well... In hiding, he employs wizards and diviners, and all is well... “POOR BLAKE.” CHRISTINE turned her face from the daffodil lights visible through the dark trees and the occasional mosquelike turrets, medieval towers, and ornate Chinese rooflines against the clear, darkening lapis of the sky as they wound their way back down from Beverly Hills. Sunset in Oz, thought Norah. “He never really meant any harm, you know,” she went on. “No,” Norah agreed. Neither, she supposed, had Lawrence Pendergast the night he’d come in drunk from a party and tried to rape her in her attic room. She still remembered his voice muttering thickly in her ear: Be a sport. She hadn’t dared tell his mother; she had had nowhere else to go. In some ways Fallon reminded her a good deal of Lawrence Pendergast. Above them the lights of Beverly Hills twinkled like stars through the oak and pepper trees. Beyond the edge of those scattered shoals of spangles the sinister towers of the oil fields lifted under a pall of smoke from one still-burning rig.
