Strangers

He was bewildered by the urge to escape. From whom?

From what? Why? This was his own home. He had nothing to fear within these walls.

Yet he could not take his glaze from the milky window. A dreaminess had come over him. He was aware of it but unable to cast it off.

Got to get out, get away, there won't be another chance, not another chance like this, now, go now, go, go. . . .

Unwittingly, he had stepped into the tub and was directly in front of the window, which was set in the wall at facelevel. The porcelain coating of the tub was cold against his bare feet.

Slide back the latch, push up the window, stand on the rim of the tub, pull yourself up onto the sill, out and away, a threeor fourminute headstart before you're missed, not much but enough. . . .

Panic rose in him without reason. There was a fluttering in his guts, a tightness in his chest.

Without knowing why he was doing it, yet unable to stop himself, he slid the bolt from the latch on the bottom of the window. He pushed out. The window swung up.

He was not alone.

Something was at the other side of the window, out there on the roof, something with a dark, featureless, shiny face. Even as Ernie recoiled in surprise, he realized it was a man in a white helmet with a tinted visor that came all the way down over his face, so darkly tinted that it was virtually black.

A blackgloved hand reached through the window, as if to grab him, and Ernie cried out and took a step backward and fell over the edge of the tub. Toppling out of the tub, he grabbed wildly at the shower curtain, tore it loose from several of its rings, but could not arrest his fall. He hit the bathroom floor with a crash. Pain flashed through his right hip.

“Ernie!” Faye cried, and a moment later she pushed open the door. “Ernie, my God, what's wrong, what happened?”

“Stay back.” He got up painfully. “Someone's out there.”

Cold night air poured through the open window, rustling the halfwrecked, bunchedup shower curtain.

Faye shivered, for she slept in only a pajama shirt and panties.

Ernie shivered, too, though partly for different reasons. The moment the pain had throbbed through his hip, the dreaminess had left him. In the sudden rush of clearmindedness, he wondered if the helmeted figure had been imaginary, a hallucination.

“On the roof?” Faye said. “At the window? Who?”

“I don't know,” Ernie said, rubbing his sore hip as he stepped back into the tub and peered out the window again. He saw no one this time.

“What'd he look like?” Faye asked.

“I couldn't tell. He was in motorcycle gear. Helmet, gloves,” Ernie said, realizing how outlandish it sounded.

He levered himself up on the windowsill far enough to lean out and look across the full length and breadth of the utility room's roof. Shadows were deep in places, but nowhere deep enough to hide a man. The intruder was goneif indeed he had ever existed.

Abruptly Ernie became aware of the vast darkness behind the motel. It stretched across the hills, off to the distant mountains, an immense blackness relieved only by the stars. Instantly, a crippling weakness and vulnerability overwhelmed him. Gasping, he dropped off the sill, back into the tub, and started to turn away from the window.

“Close it up,” Faye said.

Squeezing his eyes shut to guard against another glimpse of the night, he turned once more to the inrushing cold air, fumbled blindly for the window, and pulled it shut so hard that he almost broke the pane. With unsteady hands he struggled to secure the latch bolt.

When he stepped out of the tub, he saw concern in Faye's eyes, which he expected. He saw surprise, which he also expected. But he saw a penetrating awareness for which he was unprepared. For a long moment they looked at each other, neither of them speaking.

Then she said, “Are you ready to tell me about it?”

“Like I said . . . I thought I saw a guy on the roof.”

"That's not what I'm talking about, Ernie. I mean, are you ready to tell me what's wrong, what's been eating at you?"

Her eyes did not waver from his. "For a couple of months now. Maybe longer."

He was stunned. He thought he had concealed it so well. She said, "Honey, you've been worried. Worried like I've never seen you before. And scared."

“No. Not scared exactly.”

“Yes. Scared,” Faye said, but there was no scorn in her, just an Iowan's forthrightness and a desire to help. "I've only ever seen you scared once before, Ernieback when Lucy was five and came down with that muscle fever, and they thought it might be muscular dystrophy."

“God, yes, I was scared shitless then.”

“But not since.”

“Oh, I was scared in Nam sometimes,” he said, his admission echoing hollowly off the bathroom walls.

“But I never saw it.” She hugged herself. "It's rare that I see you like this, Ernie, so when you're scared I'm scared. Can't help it. I'm even more scared because I don't know what's wrong. You understand? Being in the dark like I am . . . that's worse than any secret you're withholding from me."

Tears came to her eyes, and Ernie said, "Oh, hey, don't cry. It's going to be all right, Faye. Really it is."

“Tell me!” she said.

“Okay.”

“Now. Everything.”

He had woefully underestimated her, and he felt thickheaded. She was a Corps wife, after all, and a good one. She had followed him from Quantico to Singapore to Pendleton in California, even to Alaska, almost everywhere but Nam and, later, Beirut. She had made a home for them wherever the Corps allowed dependents to follow, had weathered the bad times with admirable aplomb, had never complained, and had never failed him. She was tough. He could not imagine how he had forgotten that.

“Everything,” he agreed, relieved to be able to share the burden.

Faye made coffee, and they sat in their robes and slippers at the kitchen table while he told her everything. She could see that he was embarrassed. He was slow to reveal details, but she sipped her coffee, remained patient, and gave him a chance to tell it in his own way.

Ernie was about the best husband a woman could want, but now and then his Blockfamily stubbornness reared its head, and Faye wanted to shake some sense into him. Everyone in his family suffered from it, especially the men. Blocks did things this way, never that way, and you better never question why. Block men liked their undershirts ironed but never their underpants. Block women always wore a bra, even at home in the worst summer heat. Blocks, both men and women, always ate lunch at precisely twelvethirty, always had dinner at sixthirty sharp, and God forbid if the food was put on the table two minutes late: The subsequent complaining would burst eardrums. Blocks drove only General Motors vehicles. Not because GM products were notably better than others, but because Blocks had always driven only General Motors vehicles.

Thank God, Ernie was not a tenth as bad as his father or brothers. He had been wise enough to get out of Pittsburgh, where the Block clan had lived for generations in the same neighborhood. Out in the real world, away from the Kingdom of the Blocks, Ernie had loosened up. In the Marine Corps he could not expect every meal at precisely the time that Block tradition demanded. And soon after their marriage, Faye had made it clear that she would make a firstrate home for him but would not be bound by senseless traditions. Ernie adapted, though not always easily, and now he was a black sheep among his people, guilty of such sins as driving a variety of vehicles not made by General Motors.

Actually, the only area where the Block family stubbornness still had a hold on Ernie was in some manwoman matters. He believed that a husband had to protect his wife from a variety of unpleasantnesses that she was just too fragile to handle. He believed that a husband should never allow his wife to see him in a moment of weakness. Although their marriage had never been conducted according to those rules, Ernie did not always seem to realize they had abandoned the Block traditions more than a quarter of a century ago.

For months, she had been aware something was seriously wrong. But Ernie continued to stonewall it, straining to prove he was a happy retired Marine blissfully launched on a second career in motels. She had watched an unknown fire consuming him from within, and her subtle and patient attempts to get him to open up hadgone right over his head.

During the past few weeks, ever since returning from Wisconsin after Thanksgiving, she had been increasingly aware of his reluctanceeven inabilityto go out at night. He could not seem to make himself comfortable in a room where even one lamp was left unlit.

Now, as they sat in the kitchen with cups of steaming coffee, the blinds tightly closed and all the lights on, Faye listened intently to Ernie, interrupting only when he seemed to need a word of encouragement to keep him going, and nothing he told her was more than she could cope with. Indeed, her spirits rose, for she was increasingly certain that she knew what was wrong with him and how he might be helped.

He finished, his voice low and thin. "So . . . is that the reward for all the years of hard work and careful financial planning? Premature senility? Now, when we can really start enjoying what we've earned, am I going to wind up with my brains all scrambled, drooling, pissing my pants, useless to myself and a burden on you? Twenty years before my time?

Christ, Faye, I've always realized that life isn't fair, but I never thought the deck was stacked against me this bad."

“It won't be like that.” She reached across the table and took his hand. "Sure, Alzheimer's can strike people even younger than you, but this isn't Alzheimer's. From what I've read, from the way it was with my father, I don't think the onset of senilitypremature or otherwiseis ever like this. What it sounds like is a simple phobia. Phobia. Some people have an irrational fear of flying or heights. For some reason, you've developed a fear of the dark. It can be overcome."

“But phobias just don't develop overnight, do they?”

Their right hands were still clasped. She squeezed his as she said, "Do you remember Helen Dorfman? Almost twentyfour years ago. Our landlady when you were first assigned to Camp Pendleton."

"Oh, yeah! The building on Vine Street, lived in number one, first floor front. We lived in number six." He seemed to take heart from his ability to recall those details. "She had a cat . . . Sable. Remember how the damn cat took a liking to us, left little gifts on our doorstep?"

“Dead mice.”

“Yeah. Right there beside the morning paper and the milk,”

He laughed, blinked, and said, "Hey, I see what you mean by bringing up Helen Dorfinan! She was afraid to go out of her apartment. Couldn't even walk out on her own lawn."

“The poor woman had agoraphobia,” Faye said. "An irrational fear of open spaces. She was a prisoner in her own home. Outside, she was overwhelmed with fear. Doctors call it a 'panic attack,' I think."

“Panic attack,” Ernie said softly. “Yeah, that's it, all right.”

"And Helen didn't develop her agoraphobia till she was thirtyfive, after her husband died. Phobias can spring up suddenly, later in life."

"Well, whatever the hell a phobia is, wherever it comes from ... I guess it's a lot better than senility. But good God, I don't want to spend the rest of my life being afraid of the dark."

“You won't have to,” Faye said. "Twentyfour years ago, nobody understood phobias. There hadn't been much study done. No effective treatments. But it's not like that now. I'm sure it's not."

He was silent a moment. “I'm not crazy, Faye.”

“I know that, you big jerk.”

He mulled over the word "phobia, and he plainly wanted to believe her answer. In his blue eyes, she saw a rebirth of hope.

He said, "But the weird experience I had on the interstate on Tuesday.... And the hallucinationI'm sure it must've been a hallucinationof the motorcyclist on the roof.... How does stuff like that fit this explanation? How could that be a part of my phobia?"

"I don't know. But an expert in the field could explain it all and tie it together. I'm sure it's not as unusual as it seems, Ernie."

He pondered for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. But how do we begin? Where do we go for help? How do I beat this damn thing?"

“I already have it figured out,” she said. "No doctor in Elko is going to know how to treat a case like this. We need a specialist, someone who deals with phobic patients every day. Probably isn't anyone like that in Reno, either. We'll have to go to a bigger city. Now, I suspect Milwaukee's big enough to have a doctor with experience in these things, and we could stay with Lucy and Frank-"

“And at the same time get to see a lot of Frank, Jr., and Dorie,” Ernie said, smiling at the thought of his grandchildren.

"Right. We'll go there for Christmas a week sooner than planned, this Sunday instead of next. Which is tomorrow, in fact. It's already Saturday. When we get to Milwaukee, we'll look up a doctor. If, by New Year's, it looks like we'll have to stay there awhile, then I'll fly back here, find a fulltime couple to manage the place, and rejoin you. We were planning to hire somebody this spring, anyway."

"If we close the motel a week early, Sandy and Ned will lose out on some money over at the Grille."

"Ned will still get the truckers off the interstate. And if he doesn't do as well as usual, we'll make it up to him."

Ernie shook his head and smiled. "You've got it all worked out. You're something, Faye. You sure are. You're an absolute wonder."

“Well, I will admit I can be dazzling sometimes.”

“I thank God every day that I found you,” he said. "I don't have any regrets either, Ernie, and I know I never will."

"You know, I feel a thousand percent better than when we first sat down here. Why'd it take me so damn long to ask you for help?"

“Why? Because you're a Block,” she said.

He grinned and finished the old joke: "Which is only one step removed from a blockhead."

They laughed. He grabbed her hand again and kissed it. "That's the first real laugh I've had in weeks. We're a terrific team, Faye. We can face anything together, can't we?"

“Anything,” she agreed.

It was Saturday, December 14, near dawn, and Faye Block was sure they would come out on top of their current problem, just as they had always come out on top before when they worked together, side by side.

She, like Ernie, had already forgotten the unidentified Polaroid photograph that they had received in a plain envelope last Tuesday.