Then she rolled over and clung to me. "We shouldn't make fun."
"I'm sorry."
"I really did enjoy it."
"So did I."
"And it really was good sex."
"Yes, it was."
"And I hope we do it again sometime."
"I hope so, too."
It felt ridiculously good holding her, just as good as the sex. I pulled the covers up on us and we snuggled. She was my wife and she was the last serious woman, too, the crazy and sweet woman who'd recently dumped me for her ex-husband, and she was this night's woman, Tandy West herself, and she was all potential women, one of whom I hoped would help give some shape and meaning to my future.
And she was a snoring woman.
She snored quietly, the way a kitten does. She didn't let go of me. She clung like a kid and I clung right back. I kept stroking her and putting little kisses on her head and forehead and shoulder and it was fucking wonderful.
Eventually, I slept, too.
Waking up so abruptly, I immediately thought of danger. But there was no danger, there was just prairie wind slanting hard prairie autumn rain against the window and the door and the roof, and the kitten mewls and tiny nervous fits of Tandy's nervous limbs, arms and legs thrashing, jerking in response to something terrible that was stalking the corridors of her mind. I had to pee and pee I did, closing the door against the steady noise of the yellow stream.
When I got back to the bed, the mewl had become nightmare cries. I rushed to her, held her, rocked her the way I would a child.
Then she was awake. Wide startled eyes. No recognition at first. Who was I? Bad guy or good guy? Then recognition, followed by her pushing away from me, heels of hands hurting my chest as they pushed. Then she was up, naked, pacing, screaming, "Don't say anything! Don't say anything!"
I had no idea what was going on. It was scary. All I could think of was a seizure of some kind. Or madness.
She just kept pacing, naked, arms flailing wildly as if she was being attacked, and then she'd abruptly put her hands to her head as if a headache were splitting her skull in half. And then she was sobbing. Fell to the floor. And sobbed. And sobbed.
I was scared to approach her. Scared not to approach her.
Two naked people in a shabby little prairie hotel room, her wailing louder than the wind, and me without a clue of what to do.
I approached her. Knelt next to her. She came to me instantly. Enveloped me, warm tear-wet face against mine, soft tender breasts to my chest, arms desperately tight around me.
"An image came to me, Robert. An image."
There was joy and fear in her voice, maybe even a real edge of lunacy.
"What kind of image?"
"An old railroad trestle bridge."
"Any idea where?"
"No."
"Any idea of what it means?"
"There's a body there. Buried. Long ago."
"Are you all right?"
"I don't know." Then, "Can we get in bed and you just hold me?"
"Sure."
So we got in bed and I just held her. "What if I'm wrong?"
"We'll look for the bridge."
"But what if I'm wrong?"
"Then you're wrong. It's not a big deal."
"I don't want people laughing at me."
"This is how it happened before, right? In your sleep?"
"Yes."
"And they were just images. Disconnected."
"Yes."
"Then why wouldn't this one be right?"
"Because it's been so long. I thought I'd-lost my power. You remember our conversation."
"Yes."
"Cheated on it. Sold out. And it went away."
"We won't tell anybody about it. We'll work on it together." Then, after a time, "You think we could ever fall in love, Robert?"
"Maybe."
"You're as lonely as I am."
She needed me to say something strong. Even if it was only momentarily truthful.
"Yeah. I probably am."
"Then it could happen for us?"
"Sure. It could."
"God, things can get so fucked up, can't they?"
I thought back to the restaurant tonight, and that attack of the lonesomes. This was nice. Maybe it wasn't love-hell, it wasn't love-but it was two people who liked and trusted each other having a little fleshly fun and connecting, however briefly, however superficially, with each other's soul. That was a lot better than the lonesomes any day, and not fucked up at all.
When I woke up in the morning, we were totally entangled, so complicatedly, in fact, that my first act of the day was to smile. God only knew how we'd ever gotten pretzeled-up this way.
She said, "Oh, man, my breath is so bad. I eat so much garlic these days."
"Mine isn't any better."
"I didn't fart last night, did I?"
"Not that I noticed."
"I eat a lot of beans, too. I'm a vegetarian. I take stuff that's supposed to help vegetarians with flatulence but it doesn't always work."
"You're just fine, relax."
"I'm sure I look like shit, too."
"Bad breath. Farts. Looks like shit. You're just the girl I've been waiting for."
She laughed and jumped out of bed. "I'm doing it again, aren't I? Running myself down?"
"Yeah. You are."
She said, "I get the bathroom first."
THREE
Back in the first days of the prairie, the government had trouble rounding up soldiers to fight the various Indian wars. This was particularly true of the Black Hawk Wars in 1832 and the Civil War.
That's when they got a very bright idea. In addition to wages, the soldiers would be given land. In Iowa. All the way up to 120 acres. This served two purposes. The army got soldiers (or cannon fodder, depending on your point of view), and Iowa, not exactly teeming with new arrivals, got new voters and taxpayers.
The land back then was about $1.25 an acre. A hundred dollars could buy you a very nice farm. You'd stack rocks as a fence meant to define the dimensions of your land, and then you'd build yourself a soddy-a house made of sod-and then you'd move in. If disease, flood, or prairie fire didn't get you, you could have yourself a nice, ass-busting life for you and your family.
On my drive up to see Dr. Williams, I looked at prairie land that had undoubtedly been the site of soddies. Nearby creek. Plenty of timberland for firewood. Rich black earth for planting. Of course, the Big Mac billboard probably hadn't been there in the distance.
Nor the small airport to the east, a small plane just now landing in some turbulent air. Nor the TV tower beaming forth mediocrity twenty-four hours a day. There was always something to spoil the idyllic vision I had of pioneer days. I wanted to crawl into one of those pulpy old book covers of the brave musket-carrying mountain man and his flaxen-haired immigrant woman surveying a beautiful valley just at gorgeous sunset.
The hospital was located on a hill overlooking a valley, all right. But the valley was filled with two strip malls, a high school football stadium, and a truck depot. To make things even worse, I didn't have a flaxen-haired immigrant woman with me.
If you faced away from the valley, you had a very different sense of the area. A much nicer one. Oaks and hardwoods surrounded three large brick buildings. A swimming pool, tennis courts, and a picnic area lay to the west of the buildings. Nurses in crisp white uniforms watched over a variety of adults engaged in various quiet endeavors such as checkers, chess, badminton, and volleyball. Oddly, nobody was in the pool-the temperature was in the seventies-nor was anybody playing tennis.
A sign, black letters on white, read ADMINISTRATION. I parked in the visitors' area and went inside. It had that smell, that feel, that aura of all bureaucracies. Busy busy. Even people with the brightest souls would be blanched to an administrative gray after a few months of working here. Each little office group would have its gossip, its victim, its slacker. Each group head would have his or her secret, a drinking problem, an adultery problem, a money problem, a son or daughter with a law problem. Some of the nurses would be sleeping with some of the doctors. And some of the lesser staffers would be sleeping with some of the other lesser staffers, hoping someday to be sleeping with some of the doctors, thereby enjoying a new status. Every year at the Christmas party somebody would jump up on a desk and announce that this wonderful group of folks was the best fucking wonderful group of folks in the wide world-pardon my French, ladies-and he was goddamned proud to be a goddamned part of it. The more emotional would cry; the more sensible would want to fill a barf bag. But Christmas was three months away, this was still Indian summer, and a workday, and so busy busy was what was going on here, busy busy the computer keyboards, the ranks of phone consoles, the clack of high heels on polished floors.