Walkers (4 page)

Joana closed her eyes and sank at once into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Joana awoke promptly at seven-fifteen. It was her regular waking-up time on a weekday when she had to go to work. It took her a moment to recognize Where she was—in Glen Early's king-size bed at the Marina Village. She stretched luxuriously and buried her face in the indentation left by Glen's head in the other pillow. She inhaled the scent of English Leather. Nice.

She rolled over onto her back and smelled that most delightful of morning aromas—frying bacon and coffee. Faint sounds coming from the kitchen told her Glen was up and making breakfast. Joana stretched again and smiled, feeling content and well loved. Then abruptly her smile fell away. For the first minute after waking she had forgotten the near-tragedy in the swimming pool last night, and the terrible aftermath. Now the whole experience came rushing back into her consciousness.

Glen appeared at the bedroom door. "Hi. You awake?"

"What?"

"I asked if you were awake."

"Oh. Sure. Is that breakfast I smell?"

"It is. Hungry?"

"Starved."

He came over and sat on the bed. Joana rolled onto her side to face him. He stroked her lean hip through the sheet.

"How do you feel, kid?"

"Fine," she said.

"Really?"

"Really. Good as new."

He looked down at her with tender, serious eyes. "That was a close one last night."

"Closer than you know," she said.

"Do you want me to stay with you today?"

"No, you go on to work. I think I'll call my office, though, and take the day off."

"Good idea. Stay here if you want to."

"Thanks, but I think I'd like to get out into the fresh air." She hesitated. "Glen?"

"Yeah?"

"I want to talk about what happened to me last night."

"What's to talk about? You went swimming too soon after eating. You got a cramp."

"No, I mean after that."

Glen's eyes, usually so direct, evaded hers. He said, "I'd better see about breakfast. Will you be ready in ten minutes?"

She nodded. He kissed her cheek and left the bedroom.

Joana lay for a moment looking at the empty doorway. She knew Glen was uneasy about things that could not be explained with formulas and computers, but she badly wanted to talk about her experience. The whole thing was as clear in her mind this morning as though it had happened five minutes ago. It was definitely no dream.

She took a quick shower and dressed in the clothes she had worn to the party last night. Someone must have brought them in from poolside. She went out and joined Glen at the breakfast bar that separated his small kitchen from the even smaller dining area. He had prepared scrambled eggs, bacon, toastecl muffins, orange juice, and coffee. It was the only meal Glen knew how to cook, but he cooked it beautifully.

They ate quietly while an all-news radio station muttered about crises, real and pending. When they finished Joana took a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. Glen frowned slightly. He wouid have liked her to quit smoking, but he never nagged her about it, for which Joana was grateful.

He was saying something about the crowd at the party last night, but Joana found she could not concentrate on his words. At the first pause she broke in.

"Last night," she said, "after my leg cramped in the pool and I couldn't get out, I was actually out of my body for a while."

"Don't you mean out of your head?"

"No, I mean my body. I could actually look down and see it there in the pool, under the water." Glen looked at his watch.

"I could see you and all the other people, and I could hear what you were saying. It was like I was floating there in the air, just suspended."

"Weird," said Glen. "Do you want more coffee?"

"No, I want to talk."

"What about?"

"About this, for Christ's sake, about what happened to me."

"You mean when you felt like you were floating in the air over the pool?"

"Not
felt like
, Glen, I
was
floating there."

"Okay, you were floating."

"But it was the things that happened after that that really bother me."

"Look, you don't have to talk about it now. You're probably still pretty upset."

"Glen, I
want
to talk about it. I want to try to understand it, and I can't do that if I don't start by talking it out."

He put his hand on the back of her neck, up under the hair, and massaged her muscles there. "You had a really rough experience last night. A lot of crazy things went through your mind. It would happen to anybody."

"Damn it, Glen, this is not a crazy imagining, I'm telling you this
happened
." She drew a breath and forced herself to speak in a gentler tone. "I was actually... in another place."

"Look, why don't you just spend today taking it easy. We'll talk about it later."

"You don't want to talk about it at all, do you?"

"It's not that. I just think you're getting altogether too serious about this business of floating outside your body, or whatever it is."

"Are you afraid to hear about it because it might not fit into your tidy little compartmentalized world?"

"I'm not afraid to hear anything," he said, pronouncing his words carefully. "It is time now for me to go to work, and if you still want to, we can talk about it later."

"Fine," Joana said, feeling that it was not fine at all.

Glen got up and began to stack the breakfast dishes in the sink.

"I'll take care of them," Joana said. "You go on to work. I'll lock up when I leave."

"Thanks." Glen went out to the other room and came back in a minute wearing a necktie and jacket. "I'll call you later."

"Fine."

He kissed her briefly and went out.

Joana finished washing and putting away the dishes. She made the bed, then sat down to call her office. She'd had a little accident last night, she said, without going into detail. She was all right today, but still a little shaky, and thought it would be best if she didn't come in. Her boss, advertising manager for a chain of department stores, was sympathetic. Take care of yourself, he told her, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Joana hung up the phone and sat for a moment in Glen's living room collecting her thoughts. She had no idea of what to do with herself today. She truly did not feel like going to work, yet she did not want to be alone. The experience of last night in the shadowy tunnel was too much with her. She needed desperately to talk to someone about it.

Dr. Hovde. He had asked her to call this morning to arrange for a checkup. Physically she felt no need for a doctor, but he might have some understanding of what had happened to her. She found the card he had given her and dialed the number on Glen's phone. When a woman answered at the other end, she gave her name.

"Oh, yes, Miss Raitt, Doctor said you might call. He can take you at nine-thirty, if that's convenient."

"Yes, I can make that."

Joana hung up and again checked the address on the card. Dr. Hovde's office in Santa Monica was just fifteen minutes away from the Marina. Joana would have liked to go home first and change clothes, but there would not be time.

She idled away thirty minutes leafing through Glen's magazines. They ran to technical journals and business publications, which held little interest for her. Glen was a dear, loving man, but he did not have a whole lot of imagination.

She gave her face a last, unnecessary touch-up in the bathroom and let herself out of the apartment, locking the door behind her.

The sky was a high silver-gray overcast, typical for a June morning in southern California. The recreation deck was deserted except for a maintenance man cleaning up the debris of last night's party. The swimming pool lay quietly blue and innocent. Nothing about it suggested the terror Joana had felt when the cramp seized her and she sank helplessly into the chlorinated depths. She kept well away from the edge of the pool as she headed for the parking lot.

Only a few cars remained in the portion of the lot reserved for visitors to the Marina Village. Joana stopped for a moment to admire a midnight-blue Corvette, then got out her keys and inserted them in

the door of her little orange Datsun.

"Hi."

She turned at the sound of a man's voice behind her. It was Peter Landau, the Disco King and specialist on brain damage.

"Hello," she said coolly.

"How you feeling today?"

"Fine." She saw his genuine concern, and softened a little. "I'm a little shaky, but there seem to be no serious aftereffects."

"That's good. You gave us all quite a scare last night."

"I'll bet. Gave myself quite a scare too."

Peter came closer. "Something happened to you last night, didn't it? Something strange."

Joana looked at him closely. His deep brown eyes were gentle, and seemed to care.

"Yes," she said. "How did you know?"

"It was some of the things you said when we carried you into the apartment, before you were fully conscious."

"Was anyone else listening?"

"I guess they thought you were delirious."

"And you don't?"

"No. What does your friend think?"

"I don't know. He doesn't want to talk about it."

"I will, if you want to."

"Oh?"

Peter took a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.

Joana recalled that she'd seen the card before, when Peter had given her one at the party. Now she read aloud, "
Peter Landau, Psychic Counseling
. What's that?"

"A little of everything. Self-help, paranormal psychology, E.S.P."

"Dance lessons?" Joana said, teasing him.

"That's only a sideline."

She examined the card again. "You don't do astrology, by any chance?"

"As a matter of fact, I do make charts for some of my clients. I also read the Tarot and I Ching."

"That's swell, but I don't think any of that stuff relates to what happened to me."

"Don't be too sure. If you feel like talking about it, give me a call."

"Thanks," Joana said, "I'll keep it in mind."

"Or, if you're interested in those dance lessons..." Joana laughed and shook her head.

Peter gave her a parting salute, crossed the lot, and got into the Corvette.

Joana dropped the card into her bag. She smiled.
Psychic Counseling
. It sounded like a con game to her. Still, it was nice to get a little sympathy from somebody after Glen's no-nonsense reaction this morning.

The Corvette pulled out of the parking lot and turned down Admiralty Way, exhausts burbling.

Joana started the Datsun and drove out behind the 'Vette.

Both cars took the Marina Freeway to the San Diego and headed north. There the Corvette put on a burst of speed and was soon lost to Joana's sight in the traffic up ahead.

She turned off the freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard and drove to the address of Dr. Hovde's office. It was a big Victorian house that had originally been a private dwelling but now housed the medical offices of Dr. Warren Hovde and a partner.

Joana walked into the high-ceilinged waiting room. The furniture was heavy and dark—no pastel plastics here. The oil paintings on the walls were original landscapes. A middle-aged receptionist looked up and smiled. Joana gave her name, and the receptionist picked up a phone to speak to the doctor somewhere in the back of the house.

"It will just be a few minutes," she said.

Joana took a seat and shuffled through copies of
Sunset
and
Arizona Highways
until she found a
National Geographic
. She had just started on an article about the Great Barrier Reef when the receptionist said, "You may go in now, Miss Raitt. Room number two."

Joana laid the magazine back with the others on a marble-topped table and walked down a hallway to the examination room with a metal number 2 screwed to the door. She entered the small room and stood around uncomfortably for a minute, looking at the sparse white-enameled furnishings. Then Dr. Hovde came in looking flesh and cheerful.

In his starched white coat, and with the earpieces of a stethescope protruding from a pocket, he looked, Joana thought, as though he had just come from filming a commercial. His short gray hair was brushed neatly into place, his face glowed with a healthy golf-course tan. His eyes, behind the gold-rimmed glasses, were warm and professional, without presuming too much intimacy.

"Well, Joana," he said, taking her hand, "you certainly don't look any the worse for wear this morning. How are you feeling?"

"All right. No problems."

"How is your appetite?"

"Good. I ate a big breakfast."

"Mm-hmm. We'll just run a few routine tests, but you look healthy as a horse to me."

Without asking her to undress, Dr. Hovde checked her temperature, pulse, blood pressure, pupil reactions, and reflexes. As he worked he kept up a gentle stream of conversation about his boy up at Stanford and his girl who was graduating from high school this month. Joana was relaxed and comfortable throughout the examination.

"Just as I thought," the doctor said, finishing up with the rubber mallet to test her knee jerk.

"What's that?"

"You're in A-1 physical shape. We could go into a more extensive checkup if you want to, but frankly I don't see any reason for it."

"That's good enough for me," Joana said. She hesitated a moment, then made a decision. "There is something I'd like to talk to you about."

"Yes?"

"Last night, when I went under in the pool and couldn't get anybody's attention, after I, well, blacked out, I had a really weird experience."

Dr. Hovde took a chair facing her. "Tell me about it."

Struggling to keep her tone level and unemotional, Joana recounted the whole experience, from the feeling of leaving her body and floating somewhere above the scene to her struggle to return from the tunnel of shadows and the rage she felt directed at her as she finally made good her escape.