Panic!

She wonders what kind of man this Delaney, this drifter, is. She wonders why he asked her about herself last night. She wonders why she was unable to control the violent reaction to his touch, to his offer of warmth, when it was so obviously genuine. She had almost frozen, lying there with the wind chilling her, wanting to go to him and the warmth of him and yet afraid, afraid of the maleness of him, afraid of her own actions—immediate and ultimate. Her loneliness, magnified by the coldly brittle stars, the fat white moon, the velvet blackness, had been immense; and yet, the other thing, the fear of herself, had been stronger. Even with death so apparently imminent, she could not and cannot bring herself to face the question which has been in her mind for the past few weeks, the root of her flight from New York. She would rather die with the question unanswered; it would be better that way.

More thoughts come and go, fleetingly, like subliminal messages on the surface of her brain. Some of them make little sense.

Listen, it’s too bad they took the cigarette commercials off television. You could, do one where these two beautiful people are running in slow motion through the desert instead of through a grassy meadow. They stop beside a dry stream bed and light up, holding hands, laughing, and two men jump out with guns and shoot them. Very symbolic, you see. The American Cancer Society would love it.

Do you know what happens when you drink too much water? Well, what happens is, you keep having to pee. And if you have to stop to pee, how can you keep on running? Ergo, not drinking any water allows you to keep on running, and not eating any food—well now, let’s not get vulgar, remember that writers of children’s books must never be vulgar. That’s what Ross Phalen says and I wonder what Ross Phalen would say if he knew just how vulgar writers of children’s books could get. He would crap, excuse me, Ross, he would have a bowel movement or would you prefer defecate, he would crap in his pants and I’m so tired, oh God, I’m so tired. And thirsty, I’m so thirsty my tongue has dried up and fallen out of my mouth like, like, come on, Jana, what’s a writer without his similes and metaphors, like a pistil from a withered flower, there now I knew you could do it ...

Delaney—somehow, Jana feels that is simply not his real name—stops abruptly and bends into the shadow of a cactus. When he straightens again, he holds in his hand a long, slender piece of granite, smooth and rounded on one end, flared and sharply pointed on the other. It resembles a hunting knife, and it shines wickedly in the sun.

Jana finds words. “What good is that thing?”

“I don’t know,” he answers. “It’s something, at least.”

“I have to rest pretty soon, I can’t go much further without some rest.”

“When we get around that hill.” He puts the granite knife into his belt on the left side.

She tries to compose her thoughts as they run again, but the heat and the malevolent cactus thorns and the hunger and the thirst are anathema to coherent reasoning. The disjointed images come and go as the butte, promising momentary respite, looms larger ahead of them.