I'm amazed at how you can get irriga-"
"What do you want?"
"Want?" Marilyn echoed with a hint of anger.
"What about someone to talk to who isn't pointing a gun at us?"
The man lowered the shotgun a fraction.
"And then we could use a place to stay and some help with our Jeep.
Isn't there anybody in this town who does cars?"
"This ain't no town," the man said, spitting through a gap between his front teeth.
"Town?"
"I said, this ain't no town." He spat again, then added matter-of-factly, "It's a hospital… a mental hospital.
"Richard?"
"Okay if I move my bed next to yours?"
"Sure."
"I'm sorry for the way I talked to you today. I was upset" Marilyn Colson pushed her metal-frame bed close to Richard's and lay on her side, staring through the window of their bungalow at the infinity of stars spattered across the ebony desert sky. Slowly she slid her hand up her husband's leg and began stroking him the way he liked.
The day, one of the worst in a marriage fun of such days, had taken a marked Turn for the better.
After a tense few minutes with the "mental health worker," as Garrett Pike, the shotgun-toting man, called himself, they had,been escorted to a low cinderblock building-the clinic and turned over to Dr. James Barber, the director of the Charity Project.
Barber, a psychiatrist, was a balding, cheery man, with an open smile and manner. And although he had explained little of the project, beyond that it involved the reclamation of an old ghost town and was a federally funded experimental installation for dealing with the criminally insane, he had made them feel welcome. Further, he had promised assistance with their Jeep as soon as his maintenance man returned from a trip to "the city" with the only four-wheel-drive vehicle the project owned. His only requests were that until that time-probably by the following monday stay within the confines of the clinic and its fenced-in yard, and that they ask no further questions about the operation.
Now, after a hot shower, a meal of chicken-fried steak and red wine, and an after dinner conversation in which Barber believed himself to be well-read and thoughtful in a number of areas, they were alone in the guest bungalow, just behind the clinic.
"Richard?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't you think this is sort of romantic? I mean, how many of our friends have ever done it in a mental hospital?"
Richard continued to lie on his back, hands locked behind his head, unresponsive to her touch.
"Something's wrong," he said finally.
"What are you talking about?"
"Just what I said. Something's not right here.
Remember after dinner when I mentioned StackSullivan's theory on maturation inversion in traumatized children?"
"Actually, I don't, no."
"Well, I described it completely backwards."
"You what?"
"I amp;rely for the sake of discussion. And Barber just agreed with what I said. He's either an absurdly uninformed psychiatrist, on"
"Richard, let me get this straight. Here's this man, being incredibly hospitable to us, and you're running a goddam test on him?" She pulled her hand away. "I can't believe you!"
"Yeah," he whispered. "Now, I don't think we should talk about it anymore. For all I know, this cabin is bugged."
"This is crazy, Richard. He probably just wasn't paying much attention to you. God knows I wasn't.
You're not exactly riveting when you get going with that psych theory shit of yours."
Richard's response was cut short by a fit of coughing. He sat up on the side of his bed, hands on knees, until it subsided.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"I don't know. I'm having a little trouble catching my breath. I had asthma as a kid, but nothing for years."
"Maybe there's some mold in here or something.
Or maybe it's unexpressed stress."
"I'm going out into the yard for a bit."
"Should we go see the doctor?"
"I tell you, he's no-" Once again a spasm of coughs cut him off.
He pushed to his feet and stepped out of the bungalow into the cool night air.
Marilyn lay alone on her bunk, wondering how she ever could have thought the two of them were the match for a lifetime. Well, the hell with it, she decided.
She had given it her best shot. Now it was time to move in other directions. Unable to get comfortable, she rolled over, and then rolled back. She bunched the pillow beneath her head. The air felt heavy and sweet. Finally she went to the armoire and brought back a second pillow, which she bunched on top of the first.
Better, she thought as she lay back in bed. Much better.
One minute passed, then another. She began to feel calmer. Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed and seemed to come more easily. The last sound she heard before the darkness of sleep drifted over her was her husband's coughing.
It was seven-thirty by her watch when the loudspeaker bell woke Marilyn from shallow, fitful sleep. She had been up for most of the night, in part from Richard's entering and leaving the bungalow several times, in part from his spasmodic racking cough, and in part from her own increasing shortness of breath-better when she sat up, more marked when she lay back.
She was alone in the cottage. The morning sun washed through the east window, highlighting a dense, shimmering mist of suspended dust.
Marilyn found the mist reassuring. Small wonder they had had such a difficult night. She pushed herself off the aware of a persistent, unsettling tightness in her chest-a band that seemed to prevent her taking in a full, deep breath.
"Richard?"' She called his name, waited a moment, then stepped into the small courtyard. He was seated, facing away from her, in a high-backed wicker chair.
"Richard, you should see all the dust in the air in there. It's no wonder-" She crossed in front of him and stopped in mid-sentence.
Her husband was awake and meeting her gaze, but she had never seen him look worse. His color was an ashen, dusky gray; his eyes, hollow, flat, and lusterless. His breaths, drawn through cracked, pursed lips, were rapid and shallow. It was as if he had aged decades in just one night.
"I'm sick," he managed to say.
"I can see that. Richard, I'm going to get Dr. Barber." Before he could reply she hurried off. By the time she had reached the clinic, not fifty feet away, she had to stop and catch her breath.
Barber, wearing a white lab coat over his sport clothes, listened to her account with concern.
"It's almost certainly an allergic reaction," he said. 'Last year a congressman who came out to check on the program had a similar reaction.
The mold, probably. I'm a psychiatrist, but I have some training in internal medicine as well. I'll have a look at your husband. Some Benadryl, and maybe a little bit of Adrenalin, and hell be better in no time."
Within a few minutes of receiving the medication Richard did seem better, although Marilyn was not certain whether the improvement was due to Barber's treatment or the news that the mechanic had arrived back with Charity's Land Rover and was confident he could repair their Jeep.
At Barber's insistence, she allowed herself to be checked over and dosed with two capsules of Benadryl and a shot of Adrenalin.
Then, after packing their knapsack and taking a supply of Benadryl from Barber, they set off in the Land Rover to retrace the to the Jeep indicated by Richard's careful notes and compass readings. The mechanic, a taciturn Native American who gave his name only as John, seemed to know the desert well.
"Nine mile," he said. "That is how far you walked."
"Seemed farther," Richard managed before yielding once again to a salvo of violent coughing.
"Nine mile," John said again.
Marilyn reached over and wiped a bit of pink froth from the corner of her husband's mouth. His complexion had once again begun to darken, and his fingernails were almost violet. Still, he sat forward gamely, following his notes as, one by one, they passed the landmarks he had noted. Watching him, Marilyn sensed a rebirth of the pride and caring that had long ago vanished from her feelings toward the man.