Wednesday night, Todd was dreaming. The presses were running, newspapers shooting out like disks from toy guns, flying out randomly, falling in heaps here, there, everywhere. When she tried to catch one, it eluded her, and she ran around a cavernous room pulling switches, jabbing buttons, trying to stop the press gone wild. An arctic wind stirred the papers, blew them around in a blizzard that blinded her, threatened to smother her.
Abruptly she woke up, shivering uncontrollably, struggling with the sheet and thin coverlet on her bed. The room was freezing. Groping for the light switch, she sat up amid the tangle of bedding. She had turned off the air conditioner earlier and opened a window; now she wrapped the coverlet around her shoulders and crossed the room to close the window. She didn’t even have a heavy robe, not in August, she thought in disgust. The air-conditioner control was set to Off; she turned it to Heat, but the cold was penetrating, unrelenting. She went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the tub. When she looked in the mirror, she saw that her lips were pale, not quite blue, but close, and she couldn’t stop shaking. In the tub of hot water, gradually warming up, she decided she had to get out of this creepy hotel, go to the house that was to be her home for the next two years.
At first, she had been charmed by the hotel lobby, its vaulted ceiling, the intricate pattern of inlaid wood flooring, the marble counter at the registration desk, all turn-of-the-century elegance. But the suite she was in was not charming. Two small rooms that had seemed quaint, cozy and inviting had changed, become oppressive. Now this. Air-conditioning gone crazy, and no one to call at two-thirty in the morning.
She closed her eyes as the steam rose from the hot water. She wanted to be home with Barney, feel his warmth next to her, feel his arm over her, his legs pressing against hers. Realizing how close she was to tears, she shook her head angrily. Not her style. She missed him, and she was tired. That was all it amounted to, fatigue and loneliness.
Ruth Ann shivered and pulled the cover up higher, vaguely aware of Maria, who had entered her bedroom. Maria put an electric blanket over her and plugged it in, then sat in a nearby chair, wrapped in her own woolen blanket. Ruth Ann slid back into a dream-laden sleep. She was examining the newspaper with a screaming banner headline: Murder. She looked at the text, but it dissolved into a blank white space before she could focus on it. She turned the page; again the text melted into whiteness when she tried to read it. She could see pages of dense, crisp black text on white, but wherever she paused and tried to read, the text vanished. “I can’t see it, Dad,” she said plaintively.
“I didn’t have time to write it,” he said from somewhere behind her. When she turned to look at him, he vanished just as the print had done.
“Hush, Ruth Ann. Hush,” Maria whispered. “Go back to sleep now.”
Gradually the warmth of the blanket stilled her shaking, and she slipped deeper into sleep. When she woke up again, the electric blanket was gone and her room was pleasantly warm. She tried without success to recall her dreams, gave it up, and reflected instead on the miracle Todd had wrought. This week’s newspaper was fine, perfect, the way it should be, and she had told Todd to take the day off, to relax and get some rest, exactly what she herself intended to do. She felt as if she had run a marathon, which in a sense was what they had done over the past three days.
Todd checked out that morning, loaded her bags into the Acura, and then went to the newspaper to look over the computer programs. Once there, she stopped by Johnny’s office. His door was open and she tapped lightly and entered. He beamed at her.
“I thought you were taking the day off,” he said. “You deserve it.”
“I am. I just wanted to get an idea of what all was installed on the computer. It’s a real mess, jumbled with stuff you don’t need, and missing a few things that you do. You really should have a firewall and a better utilities program. I’m going to have to uninstall just about everything down to the operating system and then reinstall things. It would be best if I do that after office hours. If you have no objection I’ll network my laptop into the system, back up everything onto it, and do a lot of the work at home and try not to disrupt things here while I’m at it.”
He spread his hands. “Say no more. Todd, whatever it needs, do it. Blanket permission, no questions asked. Good enough?” He grinned at her. “Just don’t tell me about it.”
She laughed and turned away from the door, paused and said, “Good enough. Is this place locked up tight after hours?”
“I’ll get another key and drop it off at the hotel for you.”
She shook her head. “I’m moving into the Tilden house today. I have to see to the electricity and phone, transfer them to our name, things like that. I’ll drop by here later and pick up the key.”
Mildred, the round-faced woman who handled the classifieds, smiled broadly at Todd when she left Johnny’s doorway. “You’ve put him in the best mood he’s had in months,” Mildred said in a low voice. “Good job.”
Toni, the accountant, nodded and mouthed the same words: “Good job.”
Todd felt buoyed when she left the building and looked around. “Good job,” she repeated to herself, pleased with the praise, with her acceptance. “It really is going to work,” she said under her breath.
She took her time getting to her new home, winding in and out of the streets slowly. Back here, away from the highway, it was a pretty little town, with neat houses and yards, not a lot of greenery, but not desert, either. That changed as she drove north on one of the streets, where the houses ended and the desert took over. It was about another half mile to North Crest Loop; although the street had been finished all the way to it, building had stopped, and the continuation of the street was in poor repair. Scattered pine trees had achieved mature growth, and there was a lot of sage and rank grasses. It was like that on Juniper, her street, and apparently that way on all of them, as if the planners had anticipated development to continue north. Instead, it had moved south, on the other side of Brindle Creek, and east on the other side of the highway, leaving this end of town barren. There was a park along the creek front, a block wide, several blocks long with shade trees, picnic tables, a playground. Children were playing there now, a few women were on benches chatting.
Brindle, she had learned, had been named after the small stream that bisected the town. Joe Warden had ridden this far and stopped when his horse, a brindled mare, went lame. The stream, no more than ten feet across and shallow, flashed silver against black and brown lava, colored like his horse. He called it Brindle Creek, and years later, when the town was incorporated, the name stuck. There was a footbridge at the park, and she had heard there was another one up farther. She had not seen it yet.
It didn’t take long to explore the town. She headed for her house, repeated it under her breath, “Her house.” She loved it—the juniper paneling, polished plank floors, bay windows, fireplaces in two rooms…. But she had to buy opaque shades for the bedroom—Barney woke up if any light hit his eyes—and dishes, a few at least until their stuff was delivered, sheets to last until they got their own, a towel or two…. Wandering through the house, she made a list, and then headed for Bend, a discount store, the utility company, telephone company….
It was nearly five when she returned to the office, and very hot again. She was not sweating, to her surprise, and realized that the air was so arid that perspiration must evaporate as fast as it formed. She felt parched.
Johnny was chatting with another man in the outer office when she entered. “Todd,” Johnny said, smiling, “I was beginning
