Badwater

19

Hap held the door open and I — wearing the voluminous robe and matching terrycloth slippers — stepped out to a roofed walkway supported by stone pillars. The walkway bordered an astonishing lawn.

Hap said, “Wait’ll you see the pool!”

We waded into the steaming grass. The rain had stopped and the sun already blistered through black clouds. We passed white-clothed tables and turquoise-cushioned chairs shadowed by fat umbrellas. We went to the edge of the lawn and stopped at the low stone wall. Stone stairways and meandering paths terraced down to a lower level of red-clay tennis courts and there, directly below, was Hap’s slate-decked pool with its splashing kids and sunning thonged ladies — and gentlemen — on turquoise air floats, and the pool was edged by a wall of stone arches and a stone beehive fireplace, and beyond the stone arches was more lawn, and tall palms, and then the astonishing green ended and the real world of desert gravel began.

“Like I told you,” Hap said, “fantasyland.”

I turned to look back at the Inn buildings, which climbed right up against a mountain face. The red tile roofs and ocher adobe walls reflected the maroons and browns of the native rock.

“Those mountains are called the Funerals. Guess that makes this heaven.”

Close enough, I thought.

“And that down there — if you’ll turn around again — is the low-rent district.”

I turned. The Inn sat up at the head of a giant fan. Down below at the fan’s foot were dark radial lines, like crevices between toes. I recognized those smudges — stands of mesquite. This fan had some significant subsurface drainage. Potable water maybe. I stored the thought, although if one were stranded on this fan all one need do for a drink was stick out one’s thumb and hitch a ride with one of the cars traveling the blacktop that ran from the Inn downfan to the oasis.

“Low-rent district’s known as the village of Furnace Creek.” Hap pointed at the oasis. “Maybe not so low-rent. There’s the Ranch, which is a motel with a pool bigger’n ours. And then there’s gift shops and restaurants and the museum and the stables and the date orchard and the visitor center and the ranger station and the airstrip and…” he swung an imaginary club, “let us not forget the golf course! Ain’t it grand? Hundred and ten in the shade and they got acres of dewey green.”

My vision suddenly swam.

Hap’s arm went around my waist. “Steady, there.”

I leaned into him.

“Now heaven’s complete.”

My breath caught. Not sure how to take that. Not sure how I wanted to take it. With a large grain of salt. I was suffocating in my robe. I whispered, “I need to get out of the sun.”

He steered me back to the walkway. In the shade it was borderline cooler. I straightened up. He let me go.

There were eight rooms along this side of the building.

The girl sat against the wall of the corner room next to mine. There was the same black feathered hair I remembered, and her face was still in shadow. She wore cutoff jeans and a dirty white T-shirt. She hugged her legs. Her arms and legs were lean and brown. She had big puppy feet, brown toes curling over the ends of her sandals.

Hap bowed. “Miss Alien, might I introduce Miss Cassie Oldfield, whose poor desiccated carcass you found. Whose life you nobly saved.”

She tipped up her head.

Her face was childishly round. It hadn’t thinned out like the rest of her. Her eyes were black under straight black brows. Her mouth was wide and curvy. She’s going to get prettier, I thought.

I cleared my throat. “I want to tell you how enormously grateful I am.”

She did not respond.

I began to feel alien, myself. “I don’t even know where it was you found us. On the saltpan somewhere but…”

“Devil’s Golf Course,” Hap offered.

I said, “Good name.”

She spoke. “Bad name.”

I did not know what to say, so I asked, “What’s your name?”

She stared at me.

Hap stepped in again. “How old is youse, Miss Alien?”

I thought she’d ignore him, or give him a number in Klingon years, but she said “fourteen” in her girlish voice and then pointedly looked beyond me to the black and blue sky.

Hap leaned in close to me and whispered, “Kids is scary.”