Walkers

Chapter 3

Somebody finally shut off the record player to kill the blaring disco sound. The young people gathered quietly around the still form of Joana Raitt at the side of the swimming pool. The colored lights still gave a jarring look of gaiety to the apartment recreation deck.

One of the girls who lived in the apartment held Joana's head in her lap. She braced it with her hands to keep it from rolling from side to side. Glen Early was on his knees beside her. Repeatedly he bent forward and put his mouth over Joana's to force his breath into her lungs, trying to give her life. Then he would raise up and count slowly to five while the air sighed back out of Joana's mouth along with a trickle of water from the pool. She was pale and cold, and there was no sign she would breathe on her own.

Joana, come back! Glen cried in his mind. He could not let this unthinkable thing happen. Breathe into her mouth, count five, breathe, count five. He would keep it up as long as he had breath of his own to give her. Breathe, count five, breathe. Glen was blind and deaf to everything going on around him. His whole being was focused on the pale form lying there on the grass.

Somehow, without Glen really being aware of it, this girl had come to be a vital part of his life. The mundane things that happened to him every day on his job were transformed into amusing adventures merely by the telling of them to Joana. The pleasures of his life were so much richer shared with Joana. He could not lose her now. He would not allow it to happen.

As Glen worked on, the people around him talked in short, excited bursts.

"Did anybody call an ambulance?"

"The paramedics are coming."

"I don't know what good they can do."

'Isn't anybody here a doctor?"

"There's one living in the apartment."

"That's right, Dr. Hovde."

"What unit is he in?"

"Number 12. It's over on the other side by the tennis courts."

"Come on, let's go get him if he's in."

On the far side of the apartment complex, away from the swimming pool and the party deck, Dr. Warren Hovde heard the thump of the disco music suddenly stop. He pulled out a thin gold pocket watch and consulted the delicate hands. It was only a little after ten, much too early for a Marina Village party to shut down, even a mid-week party like this one.

Maybe they blew out an amplifier, the doctor thought hopefully. Whatever the cause, he leaned back to savor the relative quiet while it lasted.

Warren Hovde was fifty-five, which made him one of the senior residents of the Marina Village complex. He wore Brooks Brothers suits in the daytime and he liked classical music, two peculiarities that did not fit in with the local life style. But it was not for the life style that Dr. Hovde chose his furnished one-bedroom unit in the Village. He had taken it because it was convenient to his Santa Monica office and the hospital in West Los Angeles where he put in two afternoons a week. His attorney had found it for him last month when he and Marge decided on the divorce.

He missed the spacious ranch bungalow in Encino, but that would go to Marge, of course, along with the furniture. Also the Mercedes, both the kids, and O'Hara, the Irish setter. Warren came out with the VW Rabbit, his record collection, and an apartment on the Marina where everybody but him seemed to be engaged in a perpetual party.

Warren Hovde had had his fill of parties in Encino. There the whole purpose seemed to be to get drunk enough to get it on with somebody else's wife. Since Warren only wanted to get it on with his own wife, he was considered an old bore. At the Marina Village he was considered merely old.

Lord, was he really middle-aged? He didn't feel middle-aged. Wasn't it just the other day he had turned thirty and could dance all the steps of the cha-cha like an expert until the bars closed? Where the hell did the years go, anyway?

Dr. Hovde sighed and pushed the melancholy thoughts to the bottom of his mind. From a rack on the floor he selected a Mozart record that always made him feel better. He set it gently on the turntable, being careful not to fingerprint the grooves, the way Marge had taught him.

He settled back on the vinyl sofa and put his feet up on the Formica coffee table and let the astringent harmonies of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik cleanse his mind.

Someone rapped urgently on the sliding glass door that opened out onto the tennis courts. The courts were uncommonly empty tonight, with the party going on around by the pool. Warren swung his feet reluctantly to the floor as the rapping continued.

A voice called from outside. "Dr. Hovde, are you home? There's been an accident."

Oh, Lord, he thought, not another OD. At a party last week one of the guests arrived freaked out on angel dust and tried determinedly to put his head through a cinder-block wall. It took three strong young men to hold him down while Dr. Hovde pumped a tranquilizer into him. Last he heard, the kid was in a private sanitarium, still blasted out of his skull. Fortunately, the parties here ran to booze and grass, and maybe a little coke.

Dr. Hovde slid open the glass door. Outside stood a young man and woman, their faces tight and anxious.

"It's a girl, doctor," the young man said. "She was in the pool. She looks drowned."

"What's been done for her?"

"Her boyfriend is giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

"All right, let's go." The doctor took his compact emergency case from the end table where he kept it and hurried out, the strains of Mozart fading behind him.

He followed the young people at a jog around the building and into the courtyard where the recreation deck and pool were located. A cluster of people stood on the strip of grass beside the pool.

"Here's the doctor," called the young man. "Let him through."

The people gave way and Dr. Hovde saw the still form of the girl lying on the grass. Another girl held her head while a young man the doctor recognized as Glen Early breathed into her mouth. He looked up dazedly as the doctor came through the crowd.-

"Keep it up," Hovde said, and Glen picked up the resuscitation without missing a count.

Hovde took hold of the girl's icy wrist and felt for a pulse. He could find none. He peeled back an eyelid and grimaced when he saw the dilated pupil. The girl's skin was unnaturally white. The doctor feared he was too late.

He snapped open the case and filled a hypodermic syringe from a vial of digitalis. Sometimes a massive shot directly into the heart muscle could get things started again. From the looks of the girl, it was not going to work this time, but he was a doctor, and the people expected him to do something.

The girl coughed.

Dr. Hovde knelt with the hypodermic syringe in his hand and stared at her unbelievingly.

Glen Early pulled his head back from hers and spat out pool water and phlegm. The girl rolled her head to one side and coughed again and again. Water sprayed from her lungs. The girl who had been holding her head began to cry.

Glen Early buried his face in his hands. "Joana," he cried, "Ah, Joana!"

Dr. Hovde snapped back to his senses. "Get her inside," he said. "Wrap her in blankets to keep her warm."

"We can take her into my place," said Glen. "I'm right over there."

Three of the young men made a cradle of their arms and gently carried the girl across the recreation deck to Glen Early's apartment. Dr. Hovde picked up his bag and followed slowly. His mind clicked like a computer, searching for a medical explanation for what he had just seen.

For Joana the fragments of sound coalesced slowly into voices. Real voices this time, not words being spoken inside her head the way it was in the other place. Gradually she could make out what was being said.

Glen: "Is she going to be all right?"

An older man: "She seems to be coming around surprisingly fast. Her pulse is weak but steady, and her temperature is climbing back up to normal."

Peter Landau: "Do you think there'll be any… brain damage?"

Oh, nice thought. Thank you very much, Peter.

The older man: "It's hard to say. It depends on how long the oxygen supply to her brain was cut off."

Glen: "It couldn't have been more than two or three minutes."

The older man: "Let's hope not. Five minutes is usually the critical period."

Joana opened her eyes and her vision cleared. She was lying on a sofa, the familiar sofa in Glen's apartment where they had sat so often watching television and drinking wine, and sometimes making love while the late movie flickered on unwatched.

A semicircle of faces looked down on her. She saw Glen first, his light hair in a tangle across his brow, his eyes full of relief. And there was Peter Landau watching her curiously. Looking for the first sign of brain damage, no doubt. Standing beside the sofa was a professional-looking man with steel-gray hair and a nice tan. Joana tried to reach out for Glen, but she was cocooned in blankets and could not move her arms.

"How do you feel?" asked the gray-haired man.

"All right, I think. Who are you?"

"My name's Warren Hovde. I'm a doctor."

"Hi, Doctor. My head hurts."

"I shouldn't wonder." The doctor took a silver penlight out of a leather case and shone it into her pupils, one after the other. He nodded, satisfied.

"Will she have to go to the hospital?" Glen asked.

The doctor placed a hand on her forehead. The hand was dry and firm, and smelled faintly of soap. "I don't think so," he said. "Keep her warm and quiet tonight, and tomorrow she ought to see her own doctor for a thorough checkup."

"I'm here," Joana said. "You don't have to talk around me."

"I'm sorry." Dr. Hovde smiled. "Would you like me to repeat that?"

"No need."

"The paramedics are here," someone called from the far side of the room.

"I'll talk to them," Glen said. He gave Joana's hand a squeeze and made his way to the door. Joana turned her head and saw him talking to two young men with short haircuts and blue uniforms. Glen gestured toward Joana on the couch. She gave them a smile, and everybody seemed happy and relieved.

"Dr. Hovde," Joana said.

"Yes?"

"I don't have a doctor of my own. Could I come to you for the checkup?"

"If you like." The doctor fished through his wallet for a card. "Call my office before you come in. I'll tell my girl to be expecting you. It will have to be in the morning-tomorrow's my afternoon in Emergency at West L.A. Receiving."

Joana took the card. "I'll call early."

Some of the people in the crowded room started to move off. The voices picked up to a more normal conversational level.

"Is there any beer left?" somebody asked.

"There's a whole tub hasn't been touched."

"Well, let's go. Get the music started again. It's early."

Several of the people stopped by the sofa to say a few word3 to Glen and smile at Joana, and soon the apartment was empty except for the two of them and Dr. Hovde.

The doctor gave her a small plastic vial of pills. "This is a mild sedative. If you have any trouble sleeping tonight, take two of them. Other than that, keep warm and take it easy."

"I intend to," she said.

"Fine. I'll see you tomorrow."

Glen walked Dr. Hovde to the door and saw him out. He drew the draperies across the broad windows and came back to the sofa. He sat down on the edge of the cushion, looking intently at Joana. She worked one of her arms free of the blanket to take his hand. His grip was strong and reassuring.

"Baby, baby," he said, "for a while there I really thought I had lost you."

"For a while there you did," she told him.

"Can I get you anything? Glass of wine? Coffee? Soup?"

"Hot soup sounds good. Something not too thick, if you've got it."

"I'll check."

Glen went out to the kitchen. Joana readjusted the pillows and laid her head back. She closed her eyes and drew in a breath of clean, dry air. Her chest hurt a little, and there was still a faint headache, but nothing serious.

Joana thought back over what had happened to her. The panic of drowning, then floating out of her body and up somewhere above the pool, the flash scenes of her life, the powerful magnetic pull on her to go… somewhere. Then the tunnel, the shadowy forms along the walls, the pure white light at the end, and the figure-whoever or whatever it was-that sat in the circle of light. She remembered the overwhelming sense of peace and comfort she had experienced at first, and how very much she wanted to go to join the seated figure. There was the feeling of sailing at great speed along the tunnel, then suddenly the voice calling her back. It had been Glen's voice, she knew that now. Once she had heard Glen's voice and hesitated, everything changed. The figure in the light became cold and menacing, the shadow people along the walls reached out to prevent her from going back. But she had come back. She was here.

Joana knew that something very special had happened to her. It was no dream. Everything that had occurred was fresh and clear in her memory. Although her rational mind fought against acceptance, she knew in her heart what had happened. She had died. She had been dead for a little while, and then she had come back. She felt a golden, breathless sense of relief. It was like almost slipping over a cliff, then barely pulling back at the last instant. Only in this case Joana had actually gone over, and still she made it back. She should be the happiest, most grateful young woman in the world. But there was a shadow across her happiness. The final thundering words of the thing in the tunnel still echoed in her brain.

You may win once, not likely twice, most rarely thrice, and four times-never! You must return by the Eve of St. John.

What did it mean? Why did the memory make her shiver with the cold here in Glen's cozy apartment?

Glen came out of the kitchen. "Did you say something?"

"No. I was just thinking."

"I put on a can of chicken gumbo, is that okay?"

"That's fine. Glen?"

"What, baby?"

"What is the Eve of St. John?"

"I don't know. Title of a play?"

"No, that's The Eve of St. Mark."

"Then you've got me. Is it important?"

"It might be. Come here and sit by me for a minute."

He walked over and sat down on the edge of the sofa. He leaned down to brush her forehead with his lips.

"You know, you brought me back, Glen."

He laughed self-consciously. "That's the first time I ever tried to give somebody mouth-to-mouth. I wasn't even sure I was doing it right. I'm just glad it wasn't some dude with a beard."

Joana did not smile. "I don't mean only that," she said. "You called me back."

"Called you?"

"Glen, we know each other pretty well, but there are some important things we've never talked about."

"Like what?"

"Like death."

Glen looked uncomfortable. "It really doesn't make for a fun conversation."

"We can't just talk fun all the time."

"Of course not. What about it? Death."

"What do you think happens? Afterward, I mean."

"Afterward? The family and friends gather around and say nice things about you. Then they put you in the ground. Or they cremate you."

"I don't mean the body," she said. "I mean what happens to your spirit? Your… soul, or whatever the spark is that makes us alive?"

"God, Joana, I don't know, I'm an engineer and an agnostic. Do you really feel like having a philosophical discussion right now?"

"It's important to me."

"All right, then. Wait a minute, though, I think the soup is boiling. And you'd better get out of that wet swimsuit. I'll bring you a robe."

Joana sat up and freed herself from the blankets. "I'll get it. I know where it is."

"Sure you're steady enough to walk?"

"I'm steady enough for a lot of things. You go tend to the soup."

Joana went into the bathroom and peeled off the new blue maillot that nobody even got a chance to admire. She hung it over the shower head. With Glen's big furry towel she rubbed her skin to a pink glow, then put on the plaid Pendleton robe he kept hanging on the back of the bathroom door. When she went back into the living room, Glen had a bowl of hot soup waiting on the coffee table, and next to it a dish of crackers.

Joana found the canned gumbo delicious. Her tongue discovered new subtleties in the taste. She felt the way she sometimes did after smoking grass, and all her perceptions were especially acute.

When she finished the soup Glen poured them each a glass of brandy. They sat close together on the sofa and listened to the laughter and party sounds outside. Joana felt pleasantly warm and fuzzy. She did not bring death into the conversation again.

Glen kissed her. He slipped a hand inside the robe and gently squeezed her breast. Joana responded eagerly. When at last they broke apart Glen looked at her with some surprise.

"For a lady who nearly drowned a couple of hours ago, you sure can kiss. Are you feeling well enough to follow up?"

"Take me to bed and find out," Joana said.

Glen picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

Very few things, Joana decided, made a woman feel sexier than being carried to bed. Some deeply repressed rape fantasy, she guessed.

They made love. Joana explored Glen's body as though she were just discovering it. In a way she was, as all of her senses remained extraordinarily keen. Her reactions to the textures, the smells, the tastes of him were stronger than ever before. She savored his touch on her body as though it were the very first time.

When she held Glen inside her it felt so ineffably good she wanted it never to end. When at last the climax came it was a series of soft explosions that wracked her body and left her limp and wrung out and indecently satisfied. At that moment she felt so completely close to Glen that she wanted to tell him of the miraculous thing that had happened to her tonight. She wanted to tell him every one of the details while they were still etched in her mind. But she was just too sleepy. She would tell him in the morning.

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