![]() ![]() Smithback's face broke into an immensely gratified smile. ![]() "Didn't you also write that book on the museum murders in New York City?" Black was asking. Before dinner, the writer had made some cracks about camp cooking and varmint stew, but the arrival of the meal changed his tone to one approaching veneration. ![]() Smithback, who had dined very well and consumed an alarming quantity of wine, was sitting with Black. Now the group was arranged around the barge in lethargic contemplation of the meal, awaiting landfall at the trailhead. They had dined around the aluminum table, toasting the meal with a crisp Orvieto. This remarkable accomplishment, achieved somehow on the shabby gas grill, had silenced even Black's undertone of complaints. Thirty minutes before, Luigi Bonarotti had served a meal of cognac-braised, applewood-smoked quail with grapefruit and wilted arugula leaves. The sun hung low over the Grand Bench, with Neanderthal Cove appearing on the right, and the distant opening of Last Chance Bay to the left. Now they were alone on the green expanse of lake, walled in by thousand-foot bluffs and slickrock desert. The expedition had entered into a great mystical world of stone, and a cathedral silence closed around them. Gradually, the powerboats, the shrieking jetskis, the garish houseboats had all dropped away. The wide prow of the barge cut easily through the turquoise surface of Lake Powell, engines throbbing slightly, the water hissing along the pontoons. ![]() T HREE HOURS LATER, THE L ANDLOCKED Laura had left the chaos of Wahweap Marina fifty miles behind. ![]()
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