Jack's umbrella tilted to one side. It was over. He knew he was mad. But it was a lovely hallucination.
“Here,” she said. She held up a sweating glass of iced tea. The ice clinked in it.
He just had to stare. He hadn't seen a woman in months, and he hadn't seen a clean one in... forever. Or ice.
“My name is Natalie.” She rattled the ice a little. “You look pretty thirsty.”
He reached for it. He knew that at the first sip he would probably wake up chewing dirt, but his imagination insisted. The glass was cold in his hand, wet, and under his nose it smelled cold and was cruelly icy down his throat. He chugged half of it down before he could stop. He dug the cap top out of his pocket and dribbled some into it and put it on the ground behind him, in his shade.
He took another look at the woman and then finished off the glass. But he held onto it for the ice.
“My name is Natalie. I live just on the other side of that hill. I have plenty of water if you'd like to stop for a little bit, wash up and have something to eat.”
“I must be dead.”
“You don't look particularly dead. You still look thirsty, though.”
He stared at her. She wore high heels. This could not be.
“Is that silk?” he asked feebly. It seemed conclusive proof that he was mad.
“I wanted to make a good impression.”
Natalie stepped nearer and put her hands on each side of his face. “Jack,” she said into his face. “You're not dying in the desert, and I am real. Probably more real than you are, at the moment. You need some help.” She slid the straps of his pack off his shoulders. He started to resist and then let it go. “Let me carry this for you. Just follow. In ten minutes you can have all the water you want. Even a shower. And there's more iced tea.”
“Ice?”
“I have ice. Not a lot.”
“Are you sure I'm not dead?”
“You're not even close.”
He followed her up the rise, away from the highway, on a path that was barely visible. Somehow, she managed to walk in loose rubbly dirt in high heels, and she did it with elegance. He had no words for how she moved inside the green silk sheath. He was mesmerized.
“I've been watching you for the last half hour. I don't usually invite travelers to my home. But I thought that anyone who traveled with a cat shouldn't be too dangerous.”
A clean woman, green silk dress, high heels, and iced tea? “Wait. I'm still not buying this. I'm going to wake up... in the middle of nowhere with a mouthful of sand.”
“You're not in the middle of nowhere. You're practically in my backyard.”
“That's what I mean. There shouldn't be a backyard out here. You're wearing a silk dress. High heels. You're clean.” He looked at the glass in his hand. “You have ice.” He slid several pieces of ice into his mouth. It hurt enough to be real.
As they walked on, she talked to him over her shoulder. “I saw you coming and thought I’d put on something nice. And one really should be clean, even if no one’s around. It gets lonely out here and I thought you might like to rest up and chat for a while. I have lunch ready. Would you like some lunch?”
“If you have other people behind this hill,” Jack said, “and you want to rob me, you can have the pack. I've already been robbed several times. You can just take it.”
“Why would I give you a drink if I were going to rob you? You would already have been robbed. Save your energy. For lunch we have iced tea, roasted rabbit, potatoes, and cold gooseberries.”
“Gooseberries? Rabbit?”
“I admit, the gooseberries are out of a can. But the rabbit is fresh. I also have wine.”
Wine? She might as well have said she had a third arm. Everything was a non sequitur.
Around a slow curve in the trail, they came into sight of her home. It was a sleek and clean dome house with a solar array across its top panels. A few leafy shrubs grew around its perimeter — unlike anything Jack had seen in the desert. Behind the house stood two modern windmills, neither turning.
Jack staggered behind her. He couldn't take his eyes off the place. It was completely hidden from anyone traveling on the highway — an oasis anyone could walk by without knowing. He could have died just a three-minute walk from this woman and her pitcher of iced tea.
“Would you like to eat soon?” she asked, opening the front door.
He heard piano music in the background... Chopin? He hadn't heard music in months, Chopin in years. But he had seen a piano in Kansas City.
And then the smell seized him... roasting meat... he could see the browned crust....
Inside the door, the house was large and open. The kitchen was separated from the living area by a counter and four stools. Near one curving section of glass wall, the dining table had a panoramic view of the vast desert and the distant Sierra Nevada.
“The view from the upstairs deck is better,” she said.
Jack found that hard to believe. He breathed in the aroma. “You have music. I haven't heard music since Colorado.”
At that moment, Jack saw what Natalie had arrayed on the dining table. White cloth napkins in brass holders, plates with an archaic design, a bowl of steaming potatoes in their skins, a salad—
“How can you have salad?”
Natalie shrugged.
—wine glasses, a bottle of wine, and a rose in a narrow-necked vase in the middle.
“I feel like dirt in an art gallery.” He became aware that he still clutched the glass of ice she had given him. He held it out to her. “Could I have more, please?”
“Of course.”
“I left Artie's water dish back at the highway. Could I use something, put some water on the front step?”
She handed him a small bowl of water which Jack took to the front step.
“Artie! Here you go.”
Artie had been under one of the bushes for shade. He belly-crept forward and began to drink.
Jack turned back to Natalie. “Can he come in?”
“Certainly. If he wants.”
“C'mon, pal.” He picked up the bowl of water and placed it inside the house, just around the door corner. “Come in where it's cool. No coyotes in here. C'mon, Artie. Looks like we'll see another sunrise.”
Artie stuck his head over the threshold, saw Natalie, flattened his ears, hissed, backed off and disappeared in two leaps.
Jack looked after him, mystified, then replaced the bowl of water to the outside. “He doesn't trust strangers.”
“I'm sure he'll be fine. Would you like lunch now?”
“Could I have some more water, please?”
“All you want. I have a well.” She refilled his glass.
He slopped water out of the corner of his mouth and onto his shirt. He looked down at himself, standing in the middle of her spotless house. “I'm filthy.”
“You could wash up.”
“Like, with water?”
“All you want. Would you like to take a shower?”
He just looked at her. “You're not going to get me in there and kill me, are you?”
“In the shower? I'd get my dress wet. It's the second door behind you. I've already put towels out for you.” She wore a mona lisa smile.
“Towels?”
“When we're pretending to be civilized, we use them to dry ourselves after bathing.”
“You really have water for a shower?”
“With knobs that you can turn to make the water warmer or cooler.”
He was staring at her again. His amazement had dulled just enough that he thought he might not be dead.
....
Jack drenched himself and then let the water just pour over him. Cooler, warmer, cooler, drinking it, squirting it out of his mouth, throwing handfuls in his face, he was in heaven.
Natalie appeared on the other side of the shower door. He froze.
“Here's some shampoo for you.” She opened the door and handed it to him. “Take as long as you like. Lunch
will be ready when you are.”
“Uh, thanks.”
She snapped the door shut. “See? You're still alive.” And was gone.
Jack looked at the bottle of shampoo as though it were an alien product.
“If I'm dead,” he said to himself, “this is better.”
Later, out of the shower, he buried his face in a thick white towel. After drying off, he looked at his irregularly spiky hair and six-week beard. With one of her combs, still undressed, he combed his hair several different ways, none successful, in his estimation. “Civilization makes me look bad.”
Natalie came in behind him with a stack of folded clothes. “I heard that.”
Jack stopped moving, horribly aware of his nakedness.
“And I disagree,” she said. She was close enough behind him he felt her breath on his back. “Wear anything here that fits,” she said. “Your back's still wet.”
In the mirror, he watched her put down the stack of clothes, pick up a towel and dry his back. She was all business. When she finished, she held up a shirt from the stack and said, “Turn around.”
He thought about that for a moment. Then he turned around.
With her thumbs, she held the shoulders of the shirt against his. “This should fit.” She smiled. “I'll let you pick out your own pants.” And she was gone.
He stood there holding the shirt against his white skin and looking at the foot-high stack of men's clothes. Four other shirts and five pairs of pants. That was a lot of men's clothing for a single woman to have on hand. Men didn't usually give their clothing away.
On the other hand, he was more and more sure he wasn't going to come to his senses in a ditch with rocks in his mouth. He dressed as fast as possible.
....
The sun was on the other side of the house, now dropping toward the horizon. Through the wide windows, the shadow of the house stretched bullet-shaped across the desert floor. Before these windows, Jack and Natalie stood in front of her prepared table. Butter-sheened potatoes surrounded the golden-roasted rabbit, with tufts of parsley and cherry tomatoes adding green and red. Beside this, a platter of four ears of roasted corn.
As he looked on this, Jack felt something other than hunger, but it was complicated. He was awestruck—everything was wonderful, but everything was too strangely wonderful for him to let his guard down. He didn't know if he should weep or go blind.
“Why don't we sit?”
He sat. “Napkins. I haven't seen a cloth napkin in years. And they're clean.”
“I prefer them that way.” She gave him a knife for the rabbit. “This is for you. Roasted with garlic, lime, and green onions. Take what you'd like.”
He cut and pried a few pieces off it, took two, and then began spooning the other foods onto his plate. He tried to be modest, but when he looked at his plate and at hers, he wanted to put some of it back.
“Jack,” she said seriously, quietly, “it's important now you should just eat.”
He did. The food going down his throat was like air after being held under water. It was joy, it was what his body loved, and it meant he would live a little longer.
“How long has it been since you had a full stomach?”
“I've had something to eat every day,” he said around his food, “sometimes just bugs and peeled cactus, but a meal? Maybe a couple of months. I had a good melon a week ago. At least it had recently been a good melon. Could I give Artie some of this?”
“Of course. You like Artie a lot.”
“The most. He adopted me. We've been through it together. He's my only family.” He peeled off some meat and took it outside and laid it next to the water, which had been diminished. “Artie! Hot lunch!” He closed the door and went back to the table.
“How long have you had him?”
“I don’t exactly have him. We travel together. But I do like him a lot. Artie found me in Colorado. It was raining and I was sleeping in an old barn. Very old barn — lot of leaks. When I got dripped on, I woke up and there was Artie, watching me from about ten feet away. And about a foot in front of my face was a dead rat he’d brought me.”
“Artie's a good predator. He knows to enough befriend the bigger predator.”
“It was a peace offering, I guess. I let him have the rat that time. There’ve been other times though.... I’m talking too much. When you’ve been traveling, it's best people don't know about all you did.”
“Tell me anything you like. I want to listen. I haven't talked with anyone in weeks. Where have you come from?”
“Indiana, Illinois, Iowa. No place in particular. I lived in Missouri for a while, but the people were too strange. I'm on my way to California. I've heard there may be a few settlements getting organized out there, maybe someplace where the guy next to you isn't going to rob you down to your skin.”
Jack had finished his first heaping plate of food. He spooned more potatoes and onions onto his plate.
“I don't believe this,” he said. After swallowing a few bites, he asked her, “Do you have any pets, a dog, a cat?”
“No. No pets. At the moment I have several rabbits, outside in cages, but they're not pets. I keep them for food and to trade.”
“Guy I was traveling with wanted to eat Artie. Probably would have eaten me if Artie didn't fill him up. Every place between here and Missouri, it seems, everybody's killing everything, sometimes to eat it, sometimes just because it's not dead yet. I used to think if I made the right moves, life would turn out to be on my side, but somewhere along the line, I got over that. I don't want to add to the problem, like my mom said.”
“Which was—?”
“Something like 'There'll be plenty of times you won't be able to be a nice guy, so when you get the chance, be one.' So one way I try to be a nice guy is to not have something dead for every meal, when I have the choice.”
“These days don't seem to be good times for selective eating.”
“They're not. It could kill me. Last year I helped a couple of guys corner a calf and cut its throat. That did it for me. I felt like I was killing a child. It was the wild eyes looking at us, like it wondered why we would ever do this. And the way it called or cried or begged or whatever. It was a bad deal, even after the other stuff we've all seen.”
“Have you ever tried to feed Artie carrots?”
“I know he's part of the system. Since he's my friend, I try to overlook his carnivorous tastes.”
“They're built into his design, just like they're built into yours. We're all predators.”
“The rabbit was exquisite. I loved every bite, as you could see. But if there's any kind of choice, I prefer to predate peas. You said you watched me for half an hour? Were you on the roof? With binoculars?”
“No binoculars. I watched you from here.”
“From where here?” A row of rolling hills separated the house from the highway.
She pointed to a chair. “Actually, from right over there.”
“All I see out the windows is hillsides.”
“My bones told me you would be coming, that you had a cat, and that you would be a man whose company I would enjoy.” She seemed to be relishing the mystery. “But I didn't know Artie's name.”
“Your bones told you that.”
“Yes they did.”
“Did they tell you in English or in Morse code or wiggle around inside you a little bit?”
“Not my interior bones. Bones I own. Over there.” She pointed to a small table off to the side.
Jack craned his neck. On a leather disk a foot or so in diameter lay what could have been half a dozen brown twigs. Or small bones.
“Those are my finger bones. Sometimes they tell me what's going to happen.”
Jack looked at her, the finger bones, and back at her. “Finger bones. Not yours.”
“Correct, yes. Finger bones as found in the human hand. Not mine.” She held up her hands. They were clean and perfect.
Jack wiped his mouth and hands with the cloth
napkin. He took his time.
“I guess it's my move,” he said.
“Correct. You can say goodbye — I'll pack you extra food and water and I have a better coat for you. Or you can ask what we're having for dessert.”
Jack wanted to take a closer look at the alleged finger bones. Maybe they were sticks. Maybe they weren't. Maybe she was just another psychopath.
“You feed me, give me shelter — what do you want from me?”
“Your company — until you decide to leave.”
“Did your bones tell you I'd stay for dessert?”
“I didn't ask. I didn't think it would be polite.”
“Can I think about this for a minute?”
“Sure.” She put her elbows on the table, laced her fingers, and rested her chin on them. The look she gave him, an open innocent smile, almost made the decision. This woman was not standard issue. She oozed charm. And very likely she had someone's finger bones. On the other hand, he was clean and well-fed for the first time in a year. And her face....
“What's for dessert?”
“All I have is iced gooseberries and a very small cake. I made it.”
“Iced gooseberries,” he said. “That just happens to be my absolute favorite of all desserts, and the last cake I had, I was turning thirteen. Fond memory.”
When she spooned the berries over the slice of cake, he watched the casually precise movements of her hands. They were as perfectly beautiful as her face.
....
On the upstairs deck, Natalie had two chairs facing west. In front of them, the sun had just set behind the Sierra and burned the mountain edges white hot. Piano music, Chopin again, he thought, drifted out through the opened doors.
When they talked, Jack felt more at ease, but in the conversation's pauses, he would startle himself by looking anew at this woman out of nowhere and thinking, “This can't be...” or he'd feel the fullness of his belly and think, “No....” Then the conversation would resume and everything would feel completely normal.
The air had started to cool and there was a good moon out — it was traveling time.
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