Panic!

What am I doing here? he thought. I deserve better than this. I fought all my life for position, for security, I made something out of myself and my dreams, and it isn’t right, it isn’t fair. Why me? Why not Phyllis, why not her, why not the bitches and the sons of bitches of this world? Why me?

Oh, goddamnit, why me?

Two

The desk clerk at the Joshua Hotel was a young man with luminous green eyes, dressed in Western garb; the eyes caressed Jana like fat, soft hands. He said, “Are you sure you want to go out into the desert alone, Miss Hennessey?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure,” she answered. She wore a thin yellow blouse and stiff new Levis and high-laced desert boots; a wide-brimmed sombrero covered her pinned-up sable hair.

“Well,” the desk clerk said, and shrugged. He took a dirt-creased map from a drawer beneath the counter and unfolded it. “Some place scenic, you said?”

Jana nodded. “I’m interested in unusual rock formations, or growths of flora, or panoramas.”

“You a painter or something?” the clerk asked curiously.

“Or something.”

“We get a lot of painters staying here. Photographers, too. Lot of unspoiled desert in this area.”

“So I understand.”

“Sure,” the clerk said. His eyes were hungry on the swell of her breasts for a moment, and then, reluctantly, they shifted to the map he had spread out on the counter. He put a forefinger on a thin snakelike line which intersected the county road connecting Cuenca Seco with Kehoe City, just to the east of town; it meandered into the desert in a southwesterly—and then southern —direction some six or seven miles, by the map scale, fading out in the middle of empty white. “This is the road you want to take, Miss Hennessey. It’s a dead end, as you can see, and not much of a road—railroad people built it back in the twenties, for a proposed water stop on the spur line to Kehoe City; but the spur was abandoned before they could finish it, and so they abandoned the road too. Still, you won’t find any finer desert country in these parts.” “It sounds fine,” Jana said.

“You want to take along some water, and make sure your car’s gassed up before you leave. Road’s not used much any more, and there’s nothing out there but desert.”

“I’ll do that, thank you.”

“Sure,” feasting on her breasts again. “Have a nice time, Miss Hennessey.”

Jana went out quickly and down the dusty steps into the bright white glare of the morning. She carried a large handbag which contained her sketch pad, a loose-leaf notebook, a tin of charcoal, and soft-lead pencils. She had finished the outline for Desert Adventure shortly past dark the night before, and when she had read it over this morning it had seemed to hold up rather decently; she was, in any case, satisfied with it. But before beginning work on the book, she had decided to make a venture into the desert early this morning. Some first-hand research and preliminary sketching would make composition simpler, and would help give the story more of an authentic flavor.

Jana was in somewhat better spirits than she had been after the call to Harold Klein the previous day, and she supposed it was because she had immersed herself so completely in the making up of the outline for Desert Adventure as to be physically exhausted by the time she had finished. When she had gone to bed and immediately to sleep, there had been no dreams, no subconscious intrusion of the affair with Don Harper and ... the other thing. For the first time in weeks she had gotten a full night’s rest.

She walked along the street to a market just opening, and bought a bottle of mineral water, some cheese and crackers for lunch. Then she returned to where she had parked the TR-6 and drove rapidly out of Cuenca Seco, to the east.

She had no difficulty locating the road the desk clerk had pointed out to her on the area map. It was unpaved, narrow, rutted, and as she turned onto it in second gear, the sports car’s tires raised thick alkali dust. As early as it was, the sun was a radiating yellow sphere that bathed the surrounding desert in hot, shimmering luster.

Nothing moved on the barren reaches, and as she drove deeper into them Jana had the brief, disquieting thought that she was traveling across a landscape void of life, of movement of any kind—an explorer set down alone on an alien world long dead. And then, on her left, she saw a small covey of Gambel’s quail scurrying into a thick clump of mesquite to take refuge from the gathering heat—and overhead, a red-tailed hawk gliding smoothly against the lush blue backdrop—and she smiled ironically, thinking: City-bred girls, not to mention professional writers, who keep having profound literary thoughts are most definitely pains in the ass. Far larger pains in the ass than publishers like Ross Phalen, to be sure.

Three