Was

He panicked again. How am I going to get back? he wondered miserably. How will I ever find the car again, how will I get it back to Hertz? Jesus, I can't even go to a restaurant and park a car anymore. It was dark and traffic whined past on the big blue road around Manhattan where the river had been. Trucks, the odd car, wind, emptiness.

What am I going to do? he wondered.

Then he saw the sign, glittering on down the road. BEST WESTERN. Maybe a mile away. He began to walk.

There were ditches and treacherous green humps of manicured grass. Jonathan kept stumbling. He made a sound over and over, like he was about to sneeze. He was dimly aware of it. It was just how he breathed these days. When he was in trouble.

There were train tracks underfoot, hard metal, and splintering ties, and he kept stumbling. Why were there humps and train tracks? Would he get flattened by a train, or would he hear it first? And where was the other river, why was there only one river now?

A child's voice whispered to him: "There was a flood and the river moved."

Very suddenly, everything spun up and under and away from him. Jonathan lost his balance and fell onto the train track and felt the earth spin and his di

"I can't keep down my food," he said, feeling weak and a little bit tearful. His own body was something precious that had been lost.

It was the beer, he shouldn't have drunk that beer with the chimichanga. Remember, he told himself, no more alcohol anymore. Say goodbye to beer. He managed to reel up to his feet and stagger on along the train track. The train track ended suddenly, no longer wanted. Jonathan veered right and slipped down into a dry, lawn-mowed ditch. Huge trucks buffeted past him, coughing over him. To his left were a Wendy's, a Pizza Hut, alone, isolated and empty, the lights still on.

Ahead was the office of the Best Western, and he could see through its glass walls that it was lit, with a television on. He felt calmer.

Inside, the office smelled like some particularly fruity flavor of bubble gum. Jonathan wiped his face on his sleeve. Angel came out of the back office.

"I'm sorry," said Jonathan. "I can't remember my room number."

He thought he managed to say it very well, with just the slightest catch of tension in his voice.

"Dontcha have the key?" Angel asked, pulling her pallid hair back from her face.

"I forgot it," he said. He made a joke of it. "But I can just about remember my name still, so if I tell you that, will you tell me the room?"

"I'll have to open up for you as well," she said, looking over her list. She glanced up. "Are you all right?" she asked.

What could he tell her? Yeah, I feel great? He felt like mist about to be blown away. "I'm not too well," he admitted.

She waved toward herself. "Lean forward," she told him and felt his forehead. "You got a fever. You want me to drive you to the hospital?"

"No!" he said, too abruptly. He modulated. "No, no thanks, I just want to sleep."

"All righty. Let's get you all tucked in." The keys clinked pleasantly.

As soon as they stood outside the door, Jonathan remembered the room number: 225. The lights were still blazing. Angel opened the door, and everything was just as he had left it: sealed. The room smelled like a headache.

"There's some aspirin in the medicine chest," she said. "If you need anything, just press nine." She pointed to the telephone.

Jonathan couldn't make sense of the words, so he nodded and smiled. Oh, yeah, I'll be fine, he thought he had said. She nodded and closed the door and Jonathan went into the bathroom and retched blood. The droplets spread on the surface of the water of the toilet bowl like stars spi

I can't keep down water, he thought. His stomach burned. The tips of his fingers buzzed. Shivering, he peeled off his clothes. There were patches of sweat on them. The stale, warm air made his tender skin rise up in goosebumps. The sheets felt freezing and he curled up on them, his bones quaking in spasmodic jolts.

There was a knock at the door. "Can I come back in?" Angel asked.

She unlocked the door and looked at him. "Do you want someone to sit up with you?"

Jonathan couldn't answer the question. He didn't know.

"I just thought maybe it would help you sleep if someone read to you."

Jonathan thought that sounded pleasant. "You don't have to."

"It's okay. I got to be on call, kinda, anyway."

"Thanks," said Jonathan.

She sat down primly on the chair by the desk. "What you want me to read?"

"I have some photocopies," he said, trying to think where they were. He had left the papers somewhere on the bed.

"I don't see any," said Angel, leaning forward on her knees.

"That's fu

He went weepy. "They were just here!"

"Ssh ssh ssh," she said. "It's okay, I got them." She coaxed the papers out of a fold of the quilt, thrown on the floor. She tapped them neatly back into order on the desk. "Righty-ho," she said, lightly.

"I'm losing everything," said Jonathan, lying back down.

He told her where to start reading. The memoirs began again. "Pioneer Beauty."

It seemed to him that he was not being read to. It seemed to him that the author of the memoirs was speaking to him with her own flat, plain voice. He thought he heard the crackle of a fireplace.

" 'In those days,' " she read, " 'Manhattan was abolitionist, but St. George was pro-slavery. There were rival gangs, many of them from far afield. Once my father was traveling to Topeka to bear witness to the treatment of the Indians on the Council Grove reservation. He agreed to travel for part of the way with a friend who had an ox team. The friend assumed that my father would travel faster than himself, and so left early, the plan being that my father would catch up with him on the road.

" 'On the road, my father was stopped by a gang of men. Judging them to be from Missouri, he told them he was from near St. George. "Well," the ruffians replied. "It's a mighty good thing you are from St. George or the same thing would have happened to you as happened to that damned man from Manhattan." The gang let my father have his freedom. Further along the road to St. Mary, he found what he was dreading, the body of his friend. He had been murdered and his team stolen.' "