Desert of the Heart: A Novel by Jane Rule Page B

looked at the naked, dog-tagged man asleep beside her, her will broke as a dream might. She had been here before in this stale, hot motel room, the sun an orange insistence against the heavy drapes, the rattle of the cleaning wagon outside the window. She reached out to the metal circle on his chest and read his name. He slept on, secure in his identity. Ann got up quietly, dressed, and walked out into the parking area. At a public phone booth, she called Silver.
    “Little fish, do you know what time it is?”
    “Haven’t a clue.”
    “Eight o’clock in the morning!”
    “Oh.”
    “Where are you?”
    “The Rancho Something-or-Other Motel.”
    “Where’s the neatest café?”
    “Next door.”
    “Go have a cup of coffee. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.”
    “Thanks.”
    Silver, huge and haggard, arrived with a prepared list of insulting questions. Ann had been called in on Silver’s own excursions often enough not to feel guilty, but she did apologize.
    “I scared hell out of the paper boy, and his dog howled. Say you’re sorry to him.”
    Ann laughed.
    “Now, what’s the matter?” Silver asked, pouring an unmeasured quantity of sugar into her coffee.
    “I didn’t have my car. I needed a ride home.”
    “I heard a rumor the other day that there’s a cab company in Reno.”
    “Really? Did you hear anything about the drivers?”
    “It’s not the hour,” Silver said. “You’re just not funny.”
    “Are you really irritated?”
    “No.”
    “Sil, did you ever want to kill yourself?”
    “But I might get irritated.”
    “I’m serious.
    “I somehow picked that up. I’m a sensitive sort.”
    “Well, did you?”
    “Christ, Ann, everybody wants to kill himself sooner or later. It isn’t exactly what you’d call an unusual experience.”
    “Isn’t it? I’ve never wanted to, never ever.”
    “What have you been doing in the last twenty-four hours?”
    “I went up to Virginia City yesterday.”
    “Alone?”
    “No, I took Evelyn Hall.”
    “That’s the mother figure of the moment, isn’t it?”
    “What do you mean, ‘of the moment’?”
    “Haven’t you ever noticed that you have a thing about women?”
    “What kind of a thing?”
    “Oh, go to hell. I’ll charge you twenty-five bucks an hour when I decide to tell you who you are.”
    “It’s a funny thing,” Ann said. “Dr. Riesman …”
    “That bastard!”
    “… has me all figured out as well. Only his theory is that I have a thing about men.”
    “Clever! I wonder if he’s ever met a woman who didn’t.”
    “There’s something about figuring people out and summing them up that I don’t like. You find out who somebody is in order to cure him. I haven’t the least desire to be cured.”
    “So you’re sick, so sick you want to live.” Silver finished her coffee. “Then what did you do?”
    “Well, we went home for dinner, and then I took Evelyn up to my room to see some cartoons.”
    “Now we’re getting to it.”
    “But Virginia Ritchie chose just that moment to slash her wrists.”
    “Jealous?”
    “Cut it out,” Ann said.
    “I’m just trying to get the picture.”
    “So I went to the hospital with her, and then, after Riesman and I had a little chat about my complexes, I stopped in at the Club.”
    “I didn’t see you.”
    “I didn’t go upstairs. There was this guy …”
    “Just tell me one thing: why didn’t you go home to mother?”
    “I don’t know. She’s—you know—different.”
    “Sure,” Silver said. “Different.”
    “Don’t you think some people are?”
    “This Evelyn Hall’s really rocked your boat, hasn’t she?”
    “Everybody rocks my boat,” Ann said, grinning suddenly. “There’s a cartoon that will sell.”
    Drawings never came singly. The first of these was the simple, comic sickness, passive, sexless. Then there was a man with an oar, beating off mermaids. In another, a woman wore a cockeyed red cross and was helping a wounded whale into her rowboat. They