Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

  "Yeah," Ned agreed. "You made it sound . . . wonderful."

  "It is," Brendan said. "Partly, it is. But when it turns red . . .

  well, then it scares the hell out of me. But when it first starts . .

  . oh, it uplifts me and fills me with the strangest joy."

  The ominous scarlet light and the frightening three-part hammering had

  generated such terror in Ginger that she had temporarily forgotten the

  exhilarating moon-white glow that had preceded it and that had filled

  her with wonder.

  Wiping his palms on his shirt, as if the vanished rings had left an

  unwanted residue upon his hands, Dom said, "There was both a good and

  evil aspect to the events of that night. We long to relive a part of

  what happened to us, yet at the same time it scares us . . . scares

  us .

  "Scares us shitless," Ernie said.

  Ginger noticed that even Sandy Sarver, who heretofore had perceived only

  a benign shape to the mystery, was frowning.

  When Jorja Monatella buried her ex-husband, Alan Rykoff, at eleven

  o'clock Monday morning, the Las Vegas sun beamed down between scattered

  iron-gray clouds. A hundred shafts of golden sunshine, some half a mile

  across, some only a few yards wide, like cosmic spotlights, left many

  buildings in winter shadows while highlighting others. Several shafts

  of sunshine moved across the cemetery, harried by the rushing clouds,

  sweeping eastward across the barren floor of the desert. As the portly

  funeral director concluded a nondenominational prayer, as the casket was

  lowered into the waiting grave, a particularly bright beam illuminated

  the scene, and color burst from the flowers.

  In addition to Jorja and Paul Rykoff-Alan's father, who had flown in

  from Florida-only five people had shown up. Even Jorja's parents had not

  come. By his selfishness, Alan had assured an exit from life

  accompanied by a minimum of grieving. Paul Rykoff, too like his son in

  some respects, blamed Jorja for everything. He had been barely civil

  since his arrival yesterday. Now that his only child was in the ground,

  he turned from Jorja, stone-faced, and she knew she would meet him again

  only if his stubbornness and anger eventually were outweighed by a

  desire to see his grandchild.

  She drove only a mile before she pulled to the side of the road,

  stopped, and finally wept. She wept neither for Alan's suffering nor

  for the loss of him, but for the final destruction of all the hope with

  which their relationship had begun, the burnt-out hopes for love,

  family, friendship, mutual goals, and shared lives. She had not wished

  Alan dead. But now that he was dead, she knew it would be easier to

  make the new beginning toward which she had been planning and working,

  and that realization made her feel neither guilty nor cruel; it was just

  sad.

  Last night, Jorja told Marcie her father was dead, though not that he'd

  committed suicide. Initially, Jorja had not intended to tell her until

  this afternoon, in the presence of Dr. Coverly, the psychologist. But

  the appointment with Coverly had to be canceled because, later today,

  Jorja and Marcie were flying to Elko to join Dominick Corvaisis, Ginger

  Weiss, and the others. Marcie took the news of Alan's death

  surprisingly well. She cried, but not hard or long. At seven, she was

  old enough to understand death, but still too young to grasp the cruel

  finality of it. Besides, by his abandonment of Marcie, Alan unwittingly

  had done the girl a favor; in a sense, for her, he had died more than a

  year ago, and her mourning had already been done.

  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 moon-coloring 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 hand-drawn 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 naked 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 it-Mary'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 twelve-seater? Wasn't it dangerous to go up

  in a bucket of bolts owned by a small-time 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

  fist-fights?"

  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

  parent-child 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 well-padded 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 ahead-and 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 two-by-two, and the need

  was particularly strong in Jorja.

  As the plane droned north-northeast, 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 four-thirty in Elko, half an hour before sunset, the sky was plated

  with dark clouds, and the Ruby Mountains were purple-black 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 Marcie-bundled 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

  forty-foot 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 rock-free and

  cushioned by bunchgrass, Marcie came through with only minor i
njuries-a

  few scrapes and bruises.

  "I was so impressed by you," Jorja said.

  "Me?" Ginger looked surprised. She waited for an incoming single-engine

  plane to pass overhead. Then: "I did nothing special, you know. I only

  examined Marcie. She didn't need heroic care, just Band-Aids."

  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

  doctor-efficient, quick-thinking. 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."