Strangers

One other thing had helped Marcie overcome her grief: her obsession with the collection of moon pictures. Only an hour after she learned of her father's death, the child was sitting at the dining room table, eyes dry, small pink tongue poked between her teeth in total concentration, a crayon stub in one hand. She'd begun the mooncoloring project on Friday evening and pursued it through the weekend. By breakfast this morning, every one of the photographs and all but fifty of the hundreds of handdrawn moons had been transformed into fiery globes.

Marcie's obsession would have disturbed Jorja even if she had not known others shared it and that two had killed themselves. The moon was not yet the focus of the girl's every waking hour. However, Jorja required little imagination to see that, if the obsession progressed, Marcie might travel irretrievably into the land of madness.

Her anxiety about Marcie was so acute that she quickly overcame the tears that had forced her to pull to the side of the road. She put the Chevette in gear and drove to her parents' house, where Marcie waited.

The girl was at the kitchen table with the wiquitous album of moons, applying a scarlet crayon. She glanced up when Jorja arrived, smiled weakly, and returned at once to the task before her.

Pete, Jorja's father, was also at the table, frowning at Marcie. Occasionally, he thought of a stratagem to interest her in some activity less bizarre and more wholesome than the endless coloring of moons, but all his attempts to lure her away from the album failed.

In her parents' bedroom, Jorjia changed from her dress into jeans and a sweater for the trip north, while Mary Monatella badgered her. "When will you take that book away from Marcie? Or let me take it away?"

"Mother, I told you before: Dr. Coverly believes taking the book from her right now would only reinforce her obsession."

“That doesn't make any sense to me,” Jorja's mother said.

"Dr. Coverly says if we make an issue of the moon collection at this early stage, we'll be emphasizing its importance and-“ ”Nonsense. Does this Coverly have kids of his own?"

“I don't know, Mom.”

"I'll bet he doesn't have kids of his own. If he did, he wouldn't be giving you such dumb advice."

Having put her dress on a hanger, having stripped down to bra and panties, Jorja felt na*ed and vulnerable, for this situation reminded her of when her mother used to watch her dress for dates with boys who did not meet approval. No boy ever met Mary's approval. In fact, Jorja married Alan in part because Mary disapproved of him. Matrimony as rebellion. Stupid, but she had done it and paid dearly. Mary had driven her to itMary's suffocating and authoritarian brand of love. Now, Jorja grabbed the jeans that were laid out on the bed and slipped into them, dressing fast.

Mary said, “She won't even say why she's collecting those things.”

"Because she doesn't know why. It's a compulsion. An irrational obsession, and if there's a reason for it, the reason is buried down in her subconscious, where even she can't get a look at it."

Mary said, “That book should be taken away from her.”

“Eventually,” Jorja said. “One step at a time, Mom.”

“If it was up to me, I'd do it right now.”

Jorja had packed two big suitcases and had left them here earlier. Now, when it was time to go to the airport, Pete drove, and Mary went along for the opportunity to engage in more nagging.

Jorja and Marcie shared the back seat. On the way to the airport, the girl paged continuously, silently back and forth through her album.

Between Jorja and Mary, the subject of conversation had changed from the best way to deal with Marcie's obsession to the imminent trip to Elko. Mary had doubts about this expedition and did not hesitate to express them. Was the plane just a twelveseater? Wasn't it dangerous to go up in a bucket of bolts owned by a smalltime outfit that was probably short of cash and skimped on maintenance? What was the purpose of going, anyway? Even if some people in Elko were having problems like Marcie's, how could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that they'd all stayed at the same motel?

“This Corvaisis guy bothers me,” Pete said as he braked for a red traffic light. “I don't like you getting involved with his kind.”

“What do you mean? You don't even know him.”

“I know enough,” Pete said. "He's a writer, and you know what they're like. I read once that Norman Mailer hung his wife out a high window by her heels. And isn't it Hemingway who's always getting into fistfights?"

Jorja said, “Daddy, Hemingway's dead.”

"See? Always getting in fights, drunk, using drugs. Writers are a flaky bunch. I don't like you being involved with writers."

“This trip is a big mistake,” Mary said flatly.

It never ended.

At the airport, when she kissed them goodbye, they told her they loved her, and she told them the same, and the strange thing was that they were all telling the truth. Though they continuously sniped at her and though she had been deeply wounded by their sniping, they loved one another. Without love, they would have stopped speaking long ago. The parentchild relationship was sometimes even more perplexing than the mystery of what had happened at the Tranquility Motel two summers ago.

The feeder line's bucket of bolts was more comfortable than Mary would have believed, withsix wellpadded seats on each side of a narrow aisle, free headphones providing bland but mellowing Muzak tapes, and a pilot who handled his craft as gently as a new mother carried her baby.

Thirty minutes out of Las Vegas, Marcie closed the album and, in spite of the daylight streaming through the portholes, she drifted off to sleep, lulled by the loud but hypnotic droning of the engines.

During the flight, Jorja thought about her future: the business degree toward which she was working, her hope of owning a dress shop, the hard work aheadand loneliness, which was already a problem for her. She wanted a man. Not sexually. Although that would be welcome too! She had dated a few times since the divorce but had been to bed with no one. She was no female eunuch. Sex was important to her, and she missed it. But sex was not the main reason she wanted a man, one special man, a mate. She needed someone to share her dreams, triumphs, and failures. She had Marcie, but that was not the same. The human species seemed genetically compelled to make life's journey twobytwo, and the need was particularly strong in Jorja.

As the plane droned northnortheast, Jorja listened to Mantovani on the headphones and indulged in a bit of uncharacteristic, girlish fantasizing. At the Tranquility Motel, perhaps she would meet a special man with whom she could share this new beginning. She recalled Dominick Corvaisis' gentle but confident voice, and included him in her fantasy. If Corvaisis was the one for her, imagine what her father would say when he learned she was marrying one of those flaky, drunken writers who held their wives by the heels and dangled them out high windows!

She scrapped that particular fantasy soon after the plane landed, for she quickly perceived that Corvaisis' heart was already claimed.

At fourthirty in Elko, half an hour before sunset, the sky was plated with dark clouds, and the Ruby Mountains were purpleblack on the horizon. A penetratingly cold wind, sweeping in from the west, was ample proof that they had come four hundred miles north from Las Vegas.

Corvaisis and Dr. Ginger Weiss were waiting on the tarmac beside the small terminal, and the moment that Jorja saw them, she had the odd but reassuring feeling that she was among family. That sensation was something of which Corvaisis had spoken on the phone, but Jorja had not understood what he meant until she experienced it. And it was quite separate from the feelings she had for Ginger as her roadside savior.

Even Marciebundled in coat and scarf, her eyes still puffy from the nap on the plane, the album clutched to her chest was stirred from her moody trancelike state by the sight of the writer and the physician. She smiled and answered their questions with more enthusiasm than had marked her speech in days. She offered to show them her album, and she submitted with a giggle when Corvaisis scooped her up in his arms to carry her to the parking lot.

We were right to come, Jorja thought. Thank God we did.

Carrying Marcie, Corvaisis led the way to the car, while Jorja and Ginger followed with the suitcases. As they walked, Jorja said, "Maybe you don't remember, but you provided emergency treatment for Marcie that Friday evening in July, even before we checked into the Tranquility."

The physician blinked. "In fact, I hadn't remembered. Was that you and your late husband? Was that Marcie? But of course it was!"

“We had parked along I-80, five miles west of the motel,” Jorja recalled. "The view to the south was so spectacular, such a wonderful panorama, that we wanted to use it as a backdrop for some snapshots."

Ginger nodded. "And I was driving east in your wake. I saw you up ahead, parked along the shoulder. You were focusing the camera. Your husband and Marcie had stepped over the guardrail and were standing a few feet farther out, posing at the edge of the highway embankment."

"I didn't want them standing so close to the brink. But Alan insisted it was the best position for the best picture, and when Alan insisted on something, there was no use arguing with him."

However, before Jorja had been able to click the shutter, Marcie had slipped and fallen backward, over the edge, tumbling down the thirty- or fortyfoot embankment. Jorja screamed-“Marcie!”-flung the camera aside, vaulted the guardrail, and started down toward her daughter. Fast as she was, however, Jorja had just reached Marcie when she heard someone shouting: “Don't move her! I'm a doctor!” That had been Ginger Weiss, and she had descended the slope so rapidly that she had arrived at Marcie's side simultaneously with Alan, who had started down before her. Marcie was still and silent but not unconscious, only stunned, and Ginger quickly determined that the girl had not sustained a head injury. Marcie began to cry, and because her left leg was tucked under her at a somewhat odd angle, Jorja was certain it was broken. Ginger was able to allay that fear, too. In the end, because the slope was rockfree and cushioned by bunchgrass, Marcie came through with only minor injuriesa few scrapes and bruises.

“I was so impressed by you,” Jorja said.

“Me?” Ginger looked surprised. She waited for an incoming singleengine plane to pass overhead. Then: "I did nothing special, you know. I only examined Marcie. She didn't need heroic care, just BandAids."

As they put the suitcases in the trunk of Dom's car, Jorja said, "Well, I was impressed. You were young, pretty, feminine, yet you were a doctorefficient, quickthinking. I'd always thought of myself as a born cocktail waitress, nothing more, but that encounter with you started a fire in me. Later, when Alan walked out on us, I didn't fall apart. I remembered you, and I decided to make more of myself than I'd ever thought I could. In a way, you changed my life."

Closing the trunk lid, locking it, handing the keys to Dom (who had already put Marcie in the car), Ginger said, "Jorja, I'm flattered. But you're giving me much too much credit. You changed your own life."

“It wasn't what you did that day,” Jorja said. "It's what you were. You were exactly the role model I needed."

Embarrassed, the physician said, "Good God! No one's ever called me a role model before! Oh, honey, you're definitely unbalanced!"

“Ignore her,” Dom told Jorja. "She's the best role model I've ever seen. Her humble mutterings are pure shmontses.

Ginger Weiss whirled on him, laughing. “Shmontses?”

Dom grinned. "I'm a writer, so it's my job to listen and absorb. I hear a good expression, I use it. Can't fault me for doing my job."

“Shmontses, huh?” Ginger Weiss said, pretending anger.

Still grinning, the writer said, “If the Yiddish fits, wear it.”

That was the moment when Jorja knew Dominick Corvaisis' heart was already claimed and that she would have to exclude him from any romantic fantasies she might cook up in the future. The spark of desire and glimmer of deep affection shone brightly in his eyes when he looked at Ginger Weiss. The same heat warmed the physician's gaze. The funny thing was, neither Dom nor Ginger appeared quite to realize the true power of their feelings for each other. Not quite yet, butsoon.

They drove out of Elko, toward the Tranquility, thirty miles to the west. As twilight faded toward night in the east, Dom and Ginger told Jorja what had happened prior to her and Marcie's arrival. Jorja found it increasingly difficult to hold the good mood she'd been in since stepping off the plane. As they sped through the gloommantled barrens, with craggy and threatening black mountains thrusting up at the horizon under a blooddark sky, Jorja wondered if this place was, as she had thought, the threshold of a new beginning . . . or a doorway to the grave.

After the Lear landed in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jack Twist quickly transferred to a chartered Cessna Turbo Skylane RG piloted by a polite but tightlipped man with a huge handlebar mustache. They arrived in Elko, Nevada, at fourfiftythree, in the last light of day.

The airport was too small to have Hertz and Avis counters, but a local entrepreneur operated a modest little taxi company. Jack had the cab take himand his three big suitcasesto a local Jeep dealership, where they were getting ready to close, and where he startled the salesman by paying cash for a fourwheeldrive Cherokee wagon.

To this point, Jack, took no evasive action to shake off a tail or even to determine if he had one. His adversaries clearly possessed great power and resources, and regardless of how frantically he tried to elude them, they would have sufficient manpower to keep tabs on a lone target trying to escape on foot or by taxi in a town as small as Elko.

Once the Cherokee was his, Jack drove away from the dealership, and for the first time he looked for a tail. He glanced repeatedly at the rearview and side mirrors, but he spotted no suspicious vehicles.

He went directly to an Arco MiniMart that he had noticed during the taxi ride from the airport. He parked at the dark end of the lot, beyond the reach of the are lamps, got out of the wagon, and surveyed the shadowy street behind for an indication of a pursuer.

He saw no one.

That didn't mean they weren't out there.

In the MiniMart, the blindingly excessive fluorescent lighting and chrome display fixtures made him long for the good old days of quaint corner groceries operated by immigrant couples who spoke with appealing accents, where the air would have been redolent of Mama's homemade baked goods and Papa's madetoorder deli sandwiches. Here, the only aromas were a vague trace of disinfectant and the thin odor of ozone coming off the motors of refrigerated display cases. Squinting in the glare, Jack bought a map of the county, a flashlight, a quart of milk, two packages of dried beef, a little box of small chocolate doughnutsand, on a morbid impulse, something called a “Hamwich,” which was "a guaranteed delicious onepiece sandwich of pulverized, blended, remolded ham paste, bread, and spices,“ and which was claimed to be especially ”convenient for hikers, campers, and sportsmen." Ham paste?