I wondered how Limpopo was this time of year. It had to be better than the Valley, which was suffocating. It couldn’t have been hotter if the sky had been a big brown electric blanket set to high—brown because the inversion layer, which I understand intermittently, had slammed its lid on top of the mountains, sealing in the hydrocarbons and the stench and the little quick-shimmy cough-ticklers that smog plants in the back of your throat. It wasn’t that long ago that the Valley was all blue skies and orange trees and red tomato plants, but progress had had its way with us, and now for consolation we had a lot of pavement and a system of alerts to reassure us that suffocation was safely months away. Louie had replaced the gunperson on Kathy’s street with another one, who would be replaced after six hours by yet another. They would park within fifty or seventy-five yards of the house, facing it, with the gun no more than a few inches from their preferred hand. “Got you a bargain,”
